Congress What is it good for Absolutely nothing Congress What is it good for Absolutely nothing Congress is something that I despise For it means suffering of those trying to survive For it means fear as they pry into our lives Replacing freedom with a thousand different lies
Congress What is it good for Absolutely nothing Say it again Congress What is it good for Absolutely nothing
Congress It's nothing but a heartbreaker Congress Friend only to the traitors Congress is the enemy of all mankind The thought of Congress blows my mind Re-elected from generation to generation Induction obstruction How many can you bribe?
Congress What is it good for Absolutely nothing Say it again Congress What is it good for Absolutely nothing
Congress has shattered all our dreams Role models? No, just angry, bitter, and mean Life is too precious to be fighting Congress each day Congress can't give rights, it can only take it away
Congress It's nothing but a heartbreaker Congress Friend only to the traitors Peace, love, and understanding There must be some place for these things today They say we must fight to keep our freedom But Lord there's gotta be a better way That's better than Congress
Congress What is it good for Absolutely nothing Say it again Congress What is it good for Absolutely nothing
That's because people are ignorant, either willingly or because they can't be bothered to do their research. Being ignorant allows for the "my team vs. their team" approach to politics, and elects ignorant representatives as a result.
Congress is the reflection of the ignorance and apathy of the public. They are a reflection of US, whether you like it or not. And this is what the rest of the world sees when they look at us. A bunch of mewling, squabbling, greedy, bigoted, incompetent idiots at the helm of the world's largest superpower.
We're like the big stupid bully in elementary school. No one is going to stand up to us. They're just going wait around until we sniff so much glue we turn into a vegetable.
Things like unemployment, climate change, etc., aren't about concrete objective things, but instead are really various facets of one's ideology.
The identification and study of climate change is just one result from some 120+ years of climate research. In fact, if you go back to the origins of greenhouse theory it's closer to 200 years of climate research.
Perhaps you have a different definition of "concrete and objective".
There are other isotopes that have longer half-lives, but they are not alternatives.
In order to be a decent RTG power source, and isotope needs to have:
1. Good power density 2. Good half-life 3. Require little to no shielding
Plutonium 238 is the ideal fuel because it is the best (or close to it) in all three categories. Strontium-90 has a much shorter half-life and lower decay energy. Polonium-210 has a high power density but comes at the cost of an extremely short half-life (138 days). Curium-242/244 is a gamma and neutron emitter so requires heavy shielding.
The only reasonable alternative at this time is the same material they put into smoke detectors: Americium-241. It has a much longer half-life than plutonium, however due to that half-life it only has about 1/4 of the power density. It does emit more penetrating radiation but doesn't require a lot of shielding.
People get attached to all sorts things, not just robots, and this has happened for centuries. Captains get attached to their ships, soldiers get attached to their weapons, people get attached to their cars, or houses, or places, so on and so forth.
It seems to be built into our nature to do so. That people would/could development an attachment to a robot is no surprise.
I will believe you when you can do one simple little task that I ask all deniers: provide a model of the climate system that can have an increase in greenhouse gases and not result in increased global temperatures without violating the known laws of physics.
You see, it's very easy to sit back and make ignorant accusations and nonsensical claims. It's quite another to actually construct a solid, well verified argument. To date, not a single skeptic or denier has created a global climate model, let alone one that reproduces historical and current climate conditions without including forcings from additional greenhouse gases. Now why do you think that is?
Provide that model huckamania, and you'll win at least one Nobel prize in science.
The problem with that analogy is that is seems people forget about the fact that a human can start exercising, therefor burning more calories that previously, and lose weight while taking in an even larger amount of calories.
I don't think we'd be here long if the Earth decides to "start exercising".
In other words, models are based on one scenario, and then not accurately corrected as reality shows them to be wrong.
That's quite a load of horse manure you're hauling. No scientific model (climate or otherwise) is based on a "scenario". They are based on PHYSICS. A "scenario", as you call it, would be a SINGLE CONFIGURATION of the model (starting parameters, initial conditions, model component configurations, etc.). Typically, a scientific run of a model will include 100's to 1000's of these configurations and the results will be statistically analyzed. Then those results are used by the scientists to help them make predictions, adjustments, etc. for whatever they are doing. The models are the result of the science, not vice versa.
Then what about the other 20,000 or so climate scientists out there? They're just grant farming as well, right?
Hmmm. I guess that's what all scientists do then, right? Because after all, they're just in it for the money. I mean, why would any self-respecting scientists actually want to do actual science? That sounds too much like work. They can just get together into these big conspiracy groups, make up some research proposal technobabble, and get grants until they can retire.
Hey wait a minute. These climate scientists are doing it all wrong then. If they're in this for the money, why squabble over the scraps coming from grants? I mean, grants are crap. Someone like Exxon would pay A LOT of money for a quality climate scientist to come on board and say climate change is a load of crap. In fact, that's a win-win for the the fossil fuel industry. They could make every single climate scientist a millionare without batting an eye, and instantly turn climate change into a non-argument. The scientists get their greedy little hearts satisfied, and fossil fuel companies continue business as usual. And all it would take is maybe a few quarters of profits being "invested in climate science".
Now that sounds like a plan. I wonder why that isn't happening?
Climate change has been occurring since the Earth, ejected as a lump of molten iron form the heart of the Sun, settled into orbit and began slowly cooling...
Exactly what part of climate change do you not understand? Climate scientists are well aware of the fact that Earth's climate has changed many times throughout it's history, usually at the detriment to any life forms present at the time.
You want to stop hypothesized, anthropogenic contribution?
Hypothesis my ass. AGW Theory as been around since the 1800's. The theory behind the greenhouse effect of atmospheric gases is almost 200 years old. Both of these theories are built upon known and well established physical principles that are used practically every day in one form or another.
Downsize the US navy to coastal defense. You will remove enough human-released C02 from being projected into the atmosphere, to prevent imposing tax-based austerities on the captive population. This will also block the creation of a speculative secondary derivative market for carbon credits - which is the real motivator behind this farce. Getting more of your limited financial resource into the pockets of the - already - super-rich.
Nonsense. The emissions of the US navy are negligible compared to the emissions from transportation and power production.
Gore is not a climate scientist. He isn't. He hasn't written any peer reviewed science articles. He is not a member of the IPCC. Therefore, he has not and does not represent the body of climate science in any way.
He has his opinions and viewpoints that may incorporate some of the science. But his presentations/movies/what have you are not scientifically reviewed and should not be taken as such.
There is no billion dollar machine behind climate scientists. There isn't. A mediocre programmer makes more than an established climate scientist. The combined funding for all climate research programs adds up to squat. Exxon makes enough profit in a single quarter to fund all the climate research in the country many times over.
Climate scientists do not make policy, they do science. Policy is decided by politicians. Keep your political views and scientific results separate.
Civilization is a thin veneer of rationality on top of an ocean of viscous animalistic ugliness. It really doesn't take much. When people run out of water and food those lines of morality that hold people in check start getting mighty thin.
A quote I've heard more or less says that civilization is always 3 meals and 48 hours away from destruction. While the numbers may not be accurate, the sentiment is.
Strike 1: You linked to WUWT, a nutter/tin-foil hat site which has about as much scientific credibility as a hooker has chastity. Strike 2: You don't seem capable of making the distinction between weather (a hurricane season) and climate (20 years of hurricane seasons). Strike 3: Long term climate projections actually predict a decrease in tropical activity, so a season such as this would, if anything, lend credence to climate change.
However, since you do apparently truck with WUWT I don't expect any of this will make difference in your opinion. Carry on.
Indeed. In fact, the one really critical lesson of the last 2 or so years, from both Fukushima and NYC/SuperStorm Sandy, is do ***NOT*** build critical or fragile structures near, at, or below sea-level in a near-ocean-shore environment.
And which sea-level are you going to use for this measure? The sea level from 1900? The sea level now? The projected sea level of 2050? 2100? The projected sea level along with projected storm surge? How much inconvenience will that cause? Is increasing the risk for lower inconvenience a good trade off?
Look, nobody is stupid enough to believe that climate is static. It never has been in the past, and it certainly won't be so going forward. The big questions are what are the driving forces, what are the positives and negatives of climate change as it is currently occurring, what ought to be done, and what can be done. None of these questions are nearly settled.
You make it sound like we don't have a clue, which is incorrect. Research on anthropogenic warming goes back about 120 years or so. Greenhouse theory goes back almost 200 years. These concepts are not new.
As an aside, it's always interesting to me when the stereotypical political orthodoxy gets flipped. Republican doves and Democrat hawks on Syria? Likewise, liberals lampoon conservatives as being stuck in the past and afraid of change. Yet for many liberals, climate change is a great fear, a purely negative outcome, and has no conceivable positive results. ~shrug~
Political ideology doesn't factor into it. The science does. And the result of tat science paints a grim picture of the future if we don't get our at together. No credible scientist is predicting the end of human civilization as a result, but the change and the speed that it happens is going to present some serious obstacles. Even the DoD has released several reports on the subject, including projections of future "hot spots" where rising sea levels, droughts, depleted watersheds, etc. may cause unrest.
It takes time and resources to respond to change. Our current civilization is built upon a certain expected climate. A shift in that climate is going to cause problems EVEN IF the overall outcome would be beneficial (current projections show it won't be, especially the worst case scenarios).
What's most interesting about your post is that you apparently find it wise to chastise your father for his foolish beliefs--and gosh darn it, the man just won't listen to facts! At the same time, it's pretty obvious you're throwing around statistics that you can't have read anything about.
I'm assuming the 97% statistic you are referring to is from Cook et al., Quantifying the Consensus on AGW. Cook et al. took two approaches to find the consensus number. The author team first searched databases for papers that had terms such as "global warming" and "global climate change" (I'm not a statistician, but I would think these terms would introduce some pretty intense selection bias right off the bat).
Selection bias? That's what they were looking for. They wanted papers explicitly researching aspects of climate change. However, there are a lot of climate research papers that don't deal with climate change. So what would you recommend as a filter? Global cooling?
Finding 12,465 match papers in the ISI Web of Science database, they tossed 520 (4%) and analyzed the results: 34.8% of these papers endorsed AGW 64.6% took no position on AGW 0.4% rejected AGW 0.2% were uncertain on AGW
Why did you bold the papers that took no position? Do you think all climate research is about global warming? Global warming is one, just one, subject of study in climatology. And since they were trying to determine what scientists thought on the subject of global warming, there's no point in including those papers which had nothing to do with global warming research.
Amongst ONLY those papers (34.8% of the total) that took a position on AGW, 97.1% "endorsed the scientific consensus."
I'm not sure what point you are trying to convey here. Of the papers that were related to global warming research, there was a 97.1% agreement. Given the number of research papers and scientists that represents, that's pretty good agreement.
The second approach was to mail out a survey to certain selected paper authors. The response rate of the survey was 14%. Again, I'm not a statistician, so I have n
Climate change by itself is not under dispute. The question is: what causes climate change. And then there are three sides: - It must be us, the human population, burning all those fossil fuels causing CO2 levels to rise; - It can't be us, we are to insignificant. Climate change is caused by increased solar activity and oceans releasing vast amounts of CO2. - It is a combination of both: we can slow it down but it is inevitable;
Well, only you first one matches the observational data. The isotope analysis of the CO2 in the atmosphere has shows a rapidly increasing C12/C13 isotope. If the CO2 were coming from organic sources, there would be more C14. Also, solar activity has not increased over the past 100 years. In fact, it appears to be slacking off a bit.
What I do care about is that we start taking the necessary measures to ensure that my daughter and her future children still have a place to live once I'm long gone.
I took that class and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone having any interest in executing heroes. They teach you everything about constructing high tech execution machines, but when I asked the teacher why a bullet to the head wouldn't be more time and cost effective I got shouted at.
The worst bit is having to memorize your entire evil plot so you can soliloquize in front of the hero, while you think you have him/her utterly at your mercy, so they can then make an improbably escape and foil your plot.
But then, it can't be all milk and cookies at the hero academy, having to practice your improbable escapes and practice remembering entire evil plots, so you don't leave anything important out while foiling them. Nothing more embarrassing than finding that female reporter rotting away in a dungeon cell several weeks later, when all you had to do was rip the door off its hinges.
That's why I left the Hero academy. I never could do things like save the female reporter because I would become so focused on overly complicated rescue plans or end up destroying everything. My guidance councilor suggested that maybe becoming a hero wasn't the best option for me, especially since I have Aggressive Destruction Disorder, and recommended I either try Minion Vocational School or Evil Overlord Academy.
It was some of the best advice I had ever received. Even though the entry test to get into Evil Overlord Academy was tough, the admittance examiners recognized my inherent abilities (after only killing 3 of them). I even placed so well on the Rube Goldberg AP exam that I got to skip all the entry level Evil Engineering classes. I got a double major in Applied Destruction and Evil Engineering, and am now working on my Ph. D in Taking Over The World.
While it has been a long and challenging road to get here, I'm hoping that when I create a genetically engineered clone of myself that I can give him the advantages that I never had, like a laser guided missile launcher cyberneticly implanted on his shoulder. Or maybe some horns on his head that shoots lightning. You know, things that might give him a leg up in life.
Well, that's a long ways off. Right now I have to create a hideously complex doomsday machine so my nemesis Hero Man can escape with some minor flesh wounds and save the city.
I think all you really demonstrated here is that you're out of touch with reality and are really bad at math. Let me point out the flaws of your plan.
1. Where are you going to get 3%? The average 5 year CD rate is 1.5%. The average money market is 0.6%. Where else are you going to put it? The market? There are no safe (i.e. guaranteed principle) investments that will earn you 3%.
2. Historical inflation rates indicate your 3% will lose money. The inflation rate for the last 18 years comes out to about 3.6% per year.
3. On average, college tuition rates are increasing at around 8% per year.
4. A full time minimum wage job grosses about $15K per year. Your assumption here is that someone trying to make a living on a minimum wage job can save 11%-30% of their GROSS INCOME and still manage to pay all the bills. To show you how out of touch with reality this is, the national average rent for a 1 bd apartment is $700 if you live outside of a city. Your monthly net on minimum wage is about $1000. It doesn't take advanced math skills to see where this is going.
And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes. well, not humans becasue we will all be dead, the the planet could see it.
Please stop. There is no conceivable scenario where the Earth could ever support a hurricane with 700 mph winds. All you're doing by spouting off nonsense like this is giving deniers more fuel.
The impacts of climate change are considerable enough without exaggerating them beyond reality. Stick to the science.
Slashdot Mirror
In the USA, freedom of speech exercises YOU!
Congress
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Congress
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Congress is something that I despise
For it means suffering of those trying to survive
For it means fear as they pry into our lives
Replacing freedom with a thousand different lies
Congress
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Congress
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Congress
It's nothing but a heartbreaker
Congress
Friend only to the traitors
Congress is the enemy of all mankind
The thought of Congress blows my mind
Re-elected from generation to generation
Induction obstruction
How many can you bribe?
Congress
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Congress
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Congress has shattered all our dreams
Role models? No, just angry, bitter, and mean
Life is too precious to be fighting Congress each day
Congress can't give rights, it can only take it away
Congress
It's nothing but a heartbreaker
Congress
Friend only to the traitors
Peace, love, and understanding
There must be some place for these things today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord there's gotta be a better way
That's better than
Congress
Congress
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Congress
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
That's because people are ignorant, either willingly or because they can't be bothered to do their research. Being ignorant allows for the "my team vs. their team" approach to politics, and elects ignorant representatives as a result.
Congress is the reflection of the ignorance and apathy of the public. They are a reflection of US, whether you like it or not. And this is what the rest of the world sees when they look at us. A bunch of mewling, squabbling, greedy, bigoted, incompetent idiots at the helm of the world's largest superpower.
We're like the big stupid bully in elementary school. No one is going to stand up to us. They're just going wait around until we sniff so much glue we turn into a vegetable.
...Would we really be stupid enough to build something that is smarter and stronger than us, and designed to kill us without safeguards?...
In order to guarantee the American way of life? I'm willing to take that risk!
10 points and a doughnut if you can guess the movie. :)
One of the issues is that it is hard to experimentally falsify the thoery of evolution...
No it isn't. Evolution has been observed directly in nature as well as in experiments in lab settings.
Things like unemployment, climate change, etc., aren't about concrete objective things, but instead are really various facets of one's ideology.
The identification and study of climate change is just one result from some 120+ years of climate research. In fact, if you go back to the origins of greenhouse theory it's closer to 200 years of climate research.
Perhaps you have a different definition of "concrete and objective".
There are other isotopes that have longer half-lives, but they are not alternatives.
In order to be a decent RTG power source, and isotope needs to have:
1. Good power density
2. Good half-life
3. Require little to no shielding
Plutonium 238 is the ideal fuel because it is the best (or close to it) in all three categories. Strontium-90 has a much shorter half-life and lower decay energy. Polonium-210 has a high power density but comes at the cost of an extremely short half-life (138 days). Curium-242/244 is a gamma and neutron emitter so requires heavy shielding.
The only reasonable alternative at this time is the same material they put into smoke detectors: Americium-241. It has a much longer half-life than plutonium, however due to that half-life it only has about 1/4 of the power density. It does emit more penetrating radiation but doesn't require a lot of shielding.
People get attached to all sorts things, not just robots, and this has happened for centuries. Captains get attached to their ships, soldiers get attached to their weapons, people get attached to their cars, or houses, or places, so on and so forth.
It seems to be built into our nature to do so. That people would/could development an attachment to a robot is no surprise.
I will believe you when you can do one simple little task that I ask all deniers: provide a model of the climate system that can have an increase in greenhouse gases and not result in increased global temperatures without violating the known laws of physics.
You see, it's very easy to sit back and make ignorant accusations and nonsensical claims. It's quite another to actually construct a solid, well verified argument. To date, not a single skeptic or denier has created a global climate model, let alone one that reproduces historical and current climate conditions without including forcings from additional greenhouse gases. Now why do you think that is?
Provide that model huckamania, and you'll win at least one Nobel prize in science.
The problem with that analogy is that is seems people forget about the fact that a human can start exercising, therefor burning more calories that previously, and lose weight while taking in an even larger amount of calories.
I don't think we'd be here long if the Earth decides to "start exercising".
In other words, models are based on one scenario, and then not accurately corrected as reality shows them to be wrong.
That's quite a load of horse manure you're hauling. No scientific model (climate or otherwise) is based on a "scenario". They are based on PHYSICS. A "scenario", as you call it, would be a SINGLE CONFIGURATION of the model (starting parameters, initial conditions, model component configurations, etc.). Typically, a scientific run of a model will include 100's to 1000's of these configurations and the results will be statistically analyzed. Then those results are used by the scientists to help them make predictions, adjustments, etc. for whatever they are doing. The models are the result of the science, not vice versa.
Then what about the other 20,000 or so climate scientists out there? They're just grant farming as well, right?
Hmmm. I guess that's what all scientists do then, right? Because after all, they're just in it for the money. I mean, why would any self-respecting scientists actually want to do actual science? That sounds too much like work. They can just get together into these big conspiracy groups, make up some research proposal technobabble, and get grants until they can retire.
Hey wait a minute. These climate scientists are doing it all wrong then. If they're in this for the money, why squabble over the scraps coming from grants? I mean, grants are crap. Someone like Exxon would pay A LOT of money for a quality climate scientist to come on board and say climate change is a load of crap. In fact, that's a win-win for the the fossil fuel industry. They could make every single climate scientist a millionare without batting an eye, and instantly turn climate change into a non-argument. The scientists get their greedy little hearts satisfied, and fossil fuel companies continue business as usual. And all it would take is maybe a few quarters of profits being "invested in climate science".
Now that sounds like a plan. I wonder why that isn't happening?
Climate change has been occurring since the Earth, ejected as a lump of molten iron form the heart of the Sun, settled into orbit and began slowly cooling...
Exactly what part of climate change do you not understand? Climate scientists are well aware of the fact that Earth's climate has changed many times throughout it's history, usually at the detriment to any life forms present at the time.
You want to stop hypothesized, anthropogenic contribution?
Hypothesis my ass. AGW Theory as been around since the 1800's. The theory behind the greenhouse effect of atmospheric gases is almost 200 years old. Both of these theories are built upon known and well established physical principles that are used practically every day in one form or another.
Downsize the US navy to coastal defense. You will remove enough human-released C02 from being projected into the atmosphere, to prevent imposing tax-based austerities on the captive population. This will also block the creation of a speculative secondary derivative market for carbon credits - which is the real motivator behind this farce. Getting more of your limited financial resource into the pockets of the - already - super-rich.
Nonsense. The emissions of the US navy are negligible compared to the emissions from transportation and power production.
Gore is not a climate scientist. He isn't. He hasn't written any peer reviewed science articles. He is not a member of the IPCC. Therefore, he has not and does not represent the body of climate science in any way.
He has his opinions and viewpoints that may incorporate some of the science. But his presentations/movies/what have you are not scientifically reviewed and should not be taken as such.
There is no billion dollar machine behind climate scientists. There isn't. A mediocre programmer makes more than an established climate scientist. The combined funding for all climate research programs adds up to squat. Exxon makes enough profit in a single quarter to fund all the climate research in the country many times over.
Climate scientists do not make policy, they do science. Policy is decided by politicians. Keep your political views and scientific results separate.
Indeed. The Wall Street Journal's science reporting in regards to climate science is about as credible as Wile E. Coyote's Guide to Physics.
Thanks, but I'll wait for the real report.
I'm a foreigner. I had the honor to be subjected to both your border guard and TSA. I wouldn't trust them with a fucking fruitcake.
I wouldn't either. Fruitcake is consider, at best, a biohazard in most of the civilized world.
...Otherwise, you are just navel gazing.
There's an app for that.
Civilization is a thin veneer of rationality on top of an ocean of viscous animalistic ugliness. It really doesn't take much. When people run out of water and food those lines of morality that hold people in check start getting mighty thin.
A quote I've heard more or less says that civilization is always 3 meals and 48 hours away from destruction. While the numbers may not be accurate, the sentiment is.
Let's just say it's all true.
Then what? In order to have ANY appreciable effect GLOBAL GDP would have to be rolled back.
that simply aint going to happen.
[citation needed]
Is that considered extreme weather? If so, which half is it in?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/30/a-head-scratcher-no-atlantic-hurricane-by-august-in-first-time-in-11-years/#more-92771
Strike 1: You linked to WUWT, a nutter/tin-foil hat site which has about as much scientific credibility as a hooker has chastity.
Strike 2: You don't seem capable of making the distinction between weather (a hurricane season) and climate (20 years of hurricane seasons).
Strike 3: Long term climate projections actually predict a decrease in tropical activity, so a season such as this would, if anything, lend credence to climate change.
However, since you do apparently truck with WUWT I don't expect any of this will make difference in your opinion. Carry on.
Indeed. In fact, the one really critical lesson of the last 2 or so years, from both Fukushima and NYC/SuperStorm Sandy, is do ***NOT*** build critical or fragile structures near, at, or below sea-level in a near-ocean-shore environment.
And which sea-level are you going to use for this measure? The sea level from 1900? The sea level now? The projected sea level of 2050? 2100? The projected sea level along with projected storm surge? How much inconvenience will that cause? Is increasing the risk for lower inconvenience a good trade off?
Few things in this world are black and white.
Look, nobody is stupid enough to believe that climate is static. It never has been in the past, and it certainly won't be so going forward. The big questions are what are the driving forces, what are the positives and negatives of climate change as it is currently occurring, what ought to be done, and what can be done. None of these questions are nearly settled.
You make it sound like we don't have a clue, which is incorrect. Research on anthropogenic warming goes back about 120 years or so. Greenhouse theory goes back almost 200 years. These concepts are not new.
As an aside, it's always interesting to me when the stereotypical political orthodoxy gets flipped. Republican doves and Democrat hawks on Syria? Likewise, liberals lampoon conservatives as being stuck in the past and afraid of change. Yet for many liberals, climate change is a great fear, a purely negative outcome, and has no conceivable positive results. ~shrug~
Political ideology doesn't factor into it. The science does. And the result of tat science paints a grim picture of the future if we don't get our at together. No credible scientist is predicting the end of human civilization as a result, but the change and the speed that it happens is going to present some serious obstacles. Even the DoD has released several reports on the subject, including projections of future "hot spots" where rising sea levels, droughts, depleted watersheds, etc. may cause unrest.
It takes time and resources to respond to change. Our current civilization is built upon a certain expected climate. A shift in that climate is going to cause problems EVEN IF the overall outcome would be beneficial (current projections show it won't be, especially the worst case scenarios).
What's most interesting about your post is that you apparently find it wise to chastise your father for his foolish beliefs--and gosh darn it, the man just won't listen to facts! At the same time, it's pretty obvious you're throwing around statistics that you can't have read anything about.
I'm assuming the 97% statistic you are referring to is from Cook et al., Quantifying the Consensus on AGW. Cook et al. took two approaches to find the consensus number. The author team first searched databases for papers that had terms such as "global warming" and "global climate change" (I'm not a statistician, but I would think these terms would introduce some pretty intense selection bias right off the bat).
Selection bias? That's what they were looking for. They wanted papers explicitly researching aspects of climate change. However, there are a lot of climate research papers that don't deal with climate change. So what would you recommend as a filter? Global cooling?
Finding 12,465 match papers in the ISI Web of Science database, they tossed 520 (4%) and analyzed the results:
34.8% of these papers endorsed AGW
64.6% took no position on AGW
0.4% rejected AGW
0.2% were uncertain on AGW
Why did you bold the papers that took no position? Do you think all climate research is about global warming? Global warming is one, just one, subject of study in climatology. And since they were trying to determine what scientists thought on the subject of global warming, there's no point in including those papers which had nothing to do with global warming research.
Amongst ONLY those papers (34.8% of the total) that took a position on AGW, 97.1% "endorsed the scientific consensus."
I'm not sure what point you are trying to convey here. Of the papers that were related to global warming research, there was a 97.1% agreement. Given the number of research papers and scientists that represents, that's pretty good agreement.
The second approach was to mail out a survey to certain selected paper authors. The response rate of the survey was 14%. Again, I'm not a statistician, so I have n
Climate change by itself is not under dispute. The question is: what causes climate change. And then there are three sides:
- It must be us, the human population, burning all those fossil fuels causing CO2 levels to rise;
- It can't be us, we are to insignificant. Climate change is caused by increased solar activity and oceans releasing vast amounts of CO2.
- It is a combination of both: we can slow it down but it is inevitable;
Well, only you first one matches the observational data. The isotope analysis of the CO2 in the atmosphere has shows a rapidly increasing C12/C13 isotope. If the CO2 were coming from organic sources, there would be more C14. Also, solar activity has not increased over the past 100 years. In fact, it appears to be slacking off a bit.
What I do care about is that we start taking the necessary measures to ensure that my daughter and her future children still have a place to live once I'm long gone.
That I agree with. :)
Hero Killing 112
I took that class and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone having any interest in executing heroes. They teach you everything about constructing high tech execution machines, but when I asked the teacher why a bullet to the head wouldn't be more time and cost effective I got shouted at.
The worst bit is having to memorize your entire evil plot so you can soliloquize in front of the hero, while you think you have him/her utterly at your mercy, so they can then make an improbably escape and foil your plot.
But then, it can't be all milk and cookies at the hero academy, having to practice your improbable escapes and practice remembering entire evil plots, so you don't leave anything important out while foiling them. Nothing more embarrassing than finding that female reporter rotting away in a dungeon cell several weeks later, when all you had to do was rip the door off its hinges.
That's why I left the Hero academy. I never could do things like save the female reporter because I would become so focused on overly complicated rescue plans or end up destroying everything. My guidance councilor suggested that maybe becoming a hero wasn't the best option for me, especially since I have Aggressive Destruction Disorder, and recommended I either try Minion Vocational School or Evil Overlord Academy.
It was some of the best advice I had ever received. Even though the entry test to get into Evil Overlord Academy was tough, the admittance examiners recognized my inherent abilities (after only killing 3 of them). I even placed so well on the Rube Goldberg AP exam that I got to skip all the entry level Evil Engineering classes. I got a double major in Applied Destruction and Evil Engineering, and am now working on my Ph. D in Taking Over The World.
While it has been a long and challenging road to get here, I'm hoping that when I create a genetically engineered clone of myself that I can give him the advantages that I never had, like a laser guided missile launcher cyberneticly implanted on his shoulder. Or maybe some horns on his head that shoots lightning. You know, things that might give him a leg up in life.
Well, that's a long ways off. Right now I have to create a hideously complex doomsday machine so my nemesis Hero Man can escape with some minor flesh wounds and save the city.
I think all you really demonstrated here is that you're out of touch with reality and are really bad at math. Let me point out the flaws of your plan.
1. Where are you going to get 3%? The average 5 year CD rate is 1.5%. The average money market is 0.6%. Where else are you going to put it? The market? There are no safe (i.e. guaranteed principle) investments that will earn you 3%.
2. Historical inflation rates indicate your 3% will lose money. The inflation rate for the last 18 years comes out to about 3.6% per year.
3. On average, college tuition rates are increasing at around 8% per year.
4. A full time minimum wage job grosses about $15K per year. Your assumption here is that someone trying to make a living on a minimum wage job can save 11%-30% of their GROSS INCOME and still manage to pay all the bills. To show you how out of touch with reality this is, the national average rent for a 1 bd apartment is $700 if you live outside of a city. Your monthly net on minimum wage is about $1000. It doesn't take advanced math skills to see where this is going.
You're not sending anyone to college.
And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes. well, not humans becasue we will all be dead, the the planet could see it.
Please stop. There is no conceivable scenario where the Earth could ever support a hurricane with 700 mph winds. All you're doing by spouting off nonsense like this is giving deniers more fuel.
The impacts of climate change are considerable enough without exaggerating them beyond reality. Stick to the science.