I think you're confusing climate with weather here. Chaos theory completely scuppers weather prediction (I'm thinking of the classic simulations in the 1970s which, as now, could only give a reasonable prediction about a week ahead) but its effects are damped at larger scales in time and space. One can predict climate on a longer range than one can predict weather, and one can predict global climate even further out. While there's still a limit in how far you can reach, it's very far above zero.
"Darwinism" - survival of the fittest as a concept - has been used as an argument for laissez-faire capitalism, which is something of a libertarian ideal. However darwanism as concept hasn't much to do with evolution as science. For one thing people forget that "fittest" means "most survivable", not "best", because "best" is ill-defined. There's no a priori reason to suppose that economic darwinism would result in an optimally efficient economy. That's a matter for economists and I couldn't tell you whether there was a concensus, much less what it was.
Short answer: no, evolution doesn't have much to do with the political beliefs of the left and right, although I'm sure plenty of people think it does.
Actually, scientists determined that the world was round, and pretty confidently settled on the issue, hundreds of years before one particular religious orthodoxy decided that it must be flat. And even then sailors knew to ignore it.
The impact of the concensus amoungst climate scientists comes not from their numbers, but the vast body of evidence they have presented. We may suck at forecasting weather for obvious reasons, but climate modelling is very well-understood, in much the same way that individual-level medical diagnosis is still an uncertain art, but medical epidemiology is a settled issue.
"Brown people", by who I assume you mean starving people in much of Africa, or perhaps just developing communities everywhere, are not particularly energy-hungry societies. While the impacts of environmental legislation must be weighted carefully to protect the vulnerable, the fact is that carbon capping does more to damage the bottom line on your iPod than it does to damage the harvest of a subsistence farmer in central Asia.
Social impact is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The social impact of discovering XYZ causes cancer, or can extend your lifespan, or whatever is equally important to people's quality of life, but it doesn't get nearly as much scrutiny. People generally accept the research at face value. (If only people would actually scrutinise a newspaper report in which it's revealed that chocolate has lots of antioxidants, via a study sponsored by Hershey and Googolplex Cinemas.) Climate science is argued back and forth because it's something people are conditioned to treat as a controversial issue. There are other topics - vaccination, mobile phone health - where a scientific consensus with a large impact on people's lives is presented as a controversial issue because it's one of the press's main "stories" to tell, and not because there is a genuine issue.
statistical methods and conclusions from correlated data (as in the global warming debate) just DON'T carry the same logical force as objective, emperical, experimental science
Do you really believe that statistical analysis is unique to climate science? What do you think CERN publishes? What do you think its terabytes of storage are for? What do you think biologists, and epidemiologists, and biochemists, and evolutionary biologists, and developmental researchers, and medical researchers publish in their journals? What about chemists? What do you think these guys did to pull the tiny variances in data out that betrayed the existence of a planet made of diamond?
You really have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Besides, the author ignores the fact that the public and media scrutinity occurred because scientists themselves can't agree on the facts.
The fraction of climate science researchers who come down on the side of anthropogenic global warming is over ninety eight percent. You won't find a stronger concensus on a front-line research issue anywhere. There is no scientific debate on this issue. It's settled.
My point is that any decision by the EU authorities on an issue, especially a non-binding, advisory decision, is used as an opportunity for buck-passing by politicians in the UK. The long history of MPs raging about "EU health and safety" in response to laws passed by local councils or even the rules binding private institutions should speak to that.
Well, given the current life expectancy of about 80 years, and how a musician's career is basically over by the time they're ten years old, obviously they need 70 years of protection to live off the income.
You're kind of naive. When the trade bodies in the UK are crowing for 70-year music copyright, what do you think David Cameron is going to do? Put up a brave fight, or fold like Superman on laundry day and complain about how "the EU bureaucracy already made the decision"?
I had no idea it was shot on 35mm. That's some good forward planning. Remember B5's CGI shots were kept on video on the assumption they could be re-rendered at higher resolution in future, and they misplaced the CGI models?
Not really, because unlike a real hibernation it's not writing the whole RAM contents to disk. The idea is that you skip a whole lot of reinitialisation of the OS that isn't really necessary.
They tried "thinks or feels like his computer boots up in 10 seconds" in XP, what you got was people whining about how slow and chuggy Windows is (because it chugs like hell after you log in while it really finishes booting). I'm not sure that's a mistake they want to repeat.
GeoEye gets paid millions and millions of dollars for high-resolution imagery of the Earth's surface, which it takes using an incredibly expensive satellite built for that purpose. NASA gets paid a pittance to generate a complete visual and geological survey of the moon's surface, using a remarkably cheap satellite built for that purpose.
Yes, as a rule unless something is actually enacted by Parliment in some way, then a politician's promise on the subject is worth no more than anyone else's.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you'd be happy with a phone running unoptimised desktop software, in other words? Do you enjoy carrying bags of batteries with you?
I'm not sure much of that software could be used as a selling point for a phone.
What phones need is more software designed for the mouse and keyboard.
I guess it depends on whether he comes across as more like the jazz trumpet sort of a guy, or the Quake deathmatch sort of a guy. I prefer the former.
This widely-publicised study that had nothing at all to do with climate change?
I think you're confusing climate with weather here. Chaos theory completely scuppers weather prediction (I'm thinking of the classic simulations in the 1970s which, as now, could only give a reasonable prediction about a week ahead) but its effects are damped at larger scales in time and space. One can predict climate on a longer range than one can predict weather, and one can predict global climate even further out. While there's still a limit in how far you can reach, it's very far above zero.
Well, yes, the burden of proof lies with the party making the claim, whether that claim is positive or negative in nature.
Then people should stop wasting time arguing the science and instead argue the politics.
"Darwinism" - survival of the fittest as a concept - has been used as an argument for laissez-faire capitalism, which is something of a libertarian ideal. However darwanism as concept hasn't much to do with evolution as science. For one thing people forget that "fittest" means "most survivable", not "best", because "best" is ill-defined. There's no a priori reason to suppose that economic darwinism would result in an optimally efficient economy. That's a matter for economists and I couldn't tell you whether there was a concensus, much less what it was.
Short answer: no, evolution doesn't have much to do with the political beliefs of the left and right, although I'm sure plenty of people think it does.
Actually, scientists determined that the world was round, and pretty confidently settled on the issue, hundreds of years before one particular religious orthodoxy decided that it must be flat. And even then sailors knew to ignore it.
The impact of the concensus amoungst climate scientists comes not from their numbers, but the vast body of evidence they have presented. We may suck at forecasting weather for obvious reasons, but climate modelling is very well-understood, in much the same way that individual-level medical diagnosis is still an uncertain art, but medical epidemiology is a settled issue.
"Brown people", by who I assume you mean starving people in much of Africa, or perhaps just developing communities everywhere, are not particularly energy-hungry societies. While the impacts of environmental legislation must be weighted carefully to protect the vulnerable, the fact is that carbon capping does more to damage the bottom line on your iPod than it does to damage the harvest of a subsistence farmer in central Asia.
Social impact is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The social impact of discovering XYZ causes cancer, or can extend your lifespan, or whatever is equally important to people's quality of life, but it doesn't get nearly as much scrutiny. People generally accept the research at face value. (If only people would actually scrutinise a newspaper report in which it's revealed that chocolate has lots of antioxidants, via a study sponsored by Hershey and Googolplex Cinemas.) Climate science is argued back and forth because it's something people are conditioned to treat as a controversial issue. There are other topics - vaccination, mobile phone health - where a scientific consensus with a large impact on people's lives is presented as a controversial issue because it's one of the press's main "stories" to tell, and not because there is a genuine issue.
If you posit that chaos theory disproves climate science, it is your job to prove that. It is not eldavojohn's job to disprove your disproof.
statistical methods and conclusions from correlated data (as in the global warming debate) just DON'T carry the same logical force as objective, emperical, experimental science
Do you really believe that statistical analysis is unique to climate science? What do you think CERN publishes? What do you think its terabytes of storage are for? What do you think biologists, and epidemiologists, and biochemists, and evolutionary biologists, and developmental researchers, and medical researchers publish in their journals? What about chemists? What do you think these guys did to pull the tiny variances in data out that betrayed the existence of a planet made of diamond?
You really have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Besides, the author ignores the fact that the public and media scrutinity occurred because scientists themselves can't agree on the facts.
The fraction of climate science researchers who come down on the side of anthropogenic global warming is over ninety eight percent. You won't find a stronger concensus on a front-line research issue anywhere. There is no scientific debate on this issue. It's settled.
My point is that any decision by the EU authorities on an issue, especially a non-binding, advisory decision, is used as an opportunity for buck-passing by politicians in the UK. The long history of MPs raging about "EU health and safety" in response to laws passed by local councils or even the rules binding private institutions should speak to that.
Well, given the current life expectancy of about 80 years, and how a musician's career is basically over by the time they're ten years old, obviously they need 70 years of protection to live off the income.
You're kind of naive. When the trade bodies in the UK are crowing for 70-year music copyright, what do you think David Cameron is going to do? Put up a brave fight, or fold like Superman on laundry day and complain about how "the EU bureaucracy already made the decision"?
TNG wasn't made in 1965.
I had no idea it was shot on 35mm. That's some good forward planning. Remember B5's CGI shots were kept on video on the assumption they could be re-rendered at higher resolution in future, and they misplaced the CGI models?
Not really, because unlike a real hibernation it's not writing the whole RAM contents to disk. The idea is that you skip a whole lot of reinitialisation of the OS that isn't really necessary.
They tried "thinks or feels like his computer boots up in 10 seconds" in XP, what you got was people whining about how slow and chuggy Windows is (because it chugs like hell after you log in while it really finishes booting). I'm not sure that's a mistake they want to repeat.
GeoEye gets paid millions and millions of dollars for high-resolution imagery of the Earth's surface, which it takes using an incredibly expensive satellite built for that purpose. NASA gets paid a pittance to generate a complete visual and geological survey of the moon's surface, using a remarkably cheap satellite built for that purpose.
Yes, as a rule unless something is actually enacted by Parliment in some way, then a politician's promise on the subject is worth no more than anyone else's.
The linked-to article cites a BBC FOI request as the source, but doesn't link to the BBC's own article on the subject, as far as I can tell.
Yeah, I suppose "it's not as unhygenic as an outdoor touchscreen" isn't exactly a positive trait.