lives in such a bubble that he didn't even realize that gasoline was approaching $4/gal. First, source?
Next, you can't blame the president for high energy prices. It's the "other party" that doesn't quite understand the law of supply and demand. Notice, I said LAW of supply and demand, not theory.
Even though he is against torture, he doesn't want the CIA limited to the Army manual. That's because the US Army is not in the business of interrogation. That's the CIA's job.
So he's against torture, except during interrogations? I guess it's good to know he's against the recreational use of torture, but it's hardly a principled stand. OK, you're making stuff up here. No one has ever said that.
The CIA can use interrogation techniques that are far short of torture that they would NOT be able to do if this law were passed.
Wow... have they managed to brainwash you into believing water-boarding is not torture? McCain explicitly supports the current use of water-boarding by the CIA. I'm not the one brainwashed here. Please, read McCain's statements from the link I provided:
This necessarily brings us to the question of waterboarding. Administration officials have stated in recent days that this technique is no longer in use, but they have declined to say that it is illegal under current law. I believe that it is clearly illegal and that we should publicly recognize this fact. But don't let the facts get in the way of your political preconceived notions. The fact is that this bill went too far. Like a bill that completely eliminated the CIA would end any chance the CIA had of waterboarding, it would go too far, like the bill we are talking about here.
You can't be "against torture" and be okay with it as long as it's the CIA doing it. He actually said he is AGAINST the CIA doing it. Which part of "it is not intended to permit the CIA to use unduly coercive techniques - indeed, the same act prohibits the use of any cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment" do you not understand? The CIA can use interrogation techniques that are far short of torture that they would NOT be able to do if this law were passed.
That was nothing more than bullshit PR. It was just another "I will not condone torture, as I George W. Bush define torture" unenforceable vague statement. When the rubber hits the road, and it comes down to passing an actual law with real teeth in it, John McCain quietly votes against it. Right. And here is why. This is from the same link and statement in my previous post, (the GP).
When, in 2005, the Congress voted to apply the Field Manual to the Department of Defense, it deliberately excluded the CIA. The Field Manual, a public document written for military use, is not always directly translatable to use by intelligence officers. In view of this, the legislation allowed the CIA to retain the capacity to employ alternative interrogation techniques. I'd emphasize that the DTA permits the CIA to use different techniques than the military employs, but that it is not intended to permit the CIA to use unduly coercive techniques - indeed, the same act prohibits the use of any cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. Even though he is against torture, he doesn't want the CIA limited to the Army manual. That's because the US Army is not in the business of interrogation. That's the CIA's job. If you limit the CIA to the Army's rules, you are eliminating the CIA's ability to do it's job. Unless, of course, you consider getting a name, rank and serial number to be a successful interrogation session.
McCain has supporters who have blogs? Clearly the Internet belongs to Ron Paul, and we don't take too kindly to flippy-floppy neocons around these parts. How'd that whole "owning the Internet" thing work out for Ron Paul?
He was a maverick not afraid to point out the stupidity of cutting taxes while not cutting spending. You half right. First, the wrong half. Cutting taxes increased the size of the economy which led to the government bring in record receipts. In other words, the government made more money than it ever had before with lower taxes.
However, you are correct that spending should have been cut. At first, you could attribute it to there being a surplus the year before. It's hard to cut spending when you have a surplus. Now, there is no excuse.
But above all else, I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought I would see a man who was a torture victim and POW stand up and support that very torture by HIS OWN COUNTRY. This part, you are 100% wrong.
President Bush reversed course on Thursday and accepted Sen. John McCainâ(TM)s call for a law banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of foreign suspects in the war on terror. Here are McCain's own words in Feb of this year.
It is unfortunate that the reluctance of officials to stand by this straightforward conclusion has produced in the Congress such frustration that we are today debating whether to apply a military field manual to non-military intelligence activities. It would be far better, I believe, for the Administration to state forthrightly what is clear in current law â" that anyone who engages in waterboarding, on behalf of any U.S. government agency, puts himself at risk of criminal prosecution and civil liability.
Found a reference to the experiment I was talking about above... and forgive me if this seems OT, but there is a point to be made here. People suffer from envy. I feel this is what has led to our reluctance to drill for oil, for example. I believe that many environmentalists are afraid that someone may make money off of it. Before Global Warming, drilling was banned in ANWR. The excuse given was that it may harm the porcupine caribou, as the area to be drilled was in the path of their annual mating migration. It didn't matter that the porcupine caribou had been actually doing better since starting another area of drilling in Prudhoe Bay, along the same migration path. Which leads me to wonder, if not because of the environmental concerns they were citing, then why the resistance? Here may be an explanation (it is the study I mentioned in the post above... and PDF warning):
We design an experiment where subjects can reduce (âoeburnâ) other subjectsâ(TM) Money. Those who burn the money of others have to give up some of their own cash. Despite this cost, and contrary to the assumptions of economics textbooks, the majority of our subjects choose to destroy at least part of othersâ(TM) money holdings. We vary experimentally the amount that subjects have to pay to reduce other peopleâ(TM)s cash. The implied price elasticity of burning is calculated; it is mostly less than unity. There is a strong correlation between wealth, or rank, and the amounts by which subjects are burnt. In making their decisions, many burners, especially disadvantaged ones, seem to care about whether another person âdeservesâ(TM) the money he has. Desert is not simply a matter of relative payoff. To bring this back on topic, I fear that the REAL motivation behind some (not all) of th environmental concerns are part of this. How often do you hear the argument that drilling for new oil would "line the pockets of big oil CEO's"? So what? Why do I care if some big oil CEO if it will save me and everyone else $0.25 a gallon? I still end up ahead! What difference does it make if someone else ends up further ahead than I do? I understand that there may be legitimate environmental concerns, then why bring up how much money someone may make?
Anyway, the GP post is upset that even though workers will be better off, and environmental concerns are addressed, the "haves" will do better than everyone else.
There is one line in this entire post that is very telling:
The industrial revolution merely widened the gap between the "haves" and "have nots". So, it doesn't matter that the "have not" have MORE than they did before? This AC is pissed because someone increased the amount they have MORE than others, even though everyone ended up with more than they started? Are we so afraid that someone may have more than we do that we will accept poverty as long as there are no winners? What kind of crap is that?!!?
I'm reminded of an experiment someone did a while back (don't care to find the link), where people were allowed to play a gambling game where you could see you winnings and everyone else's. The game was rigged of course and set up so that the player would win some, but could also see that other people won less or even lost and some people won more. At the end of the game, they were given the option to reduce the winnings of the top winners and give it back to the "house", but it would cost the player a smaller percentage of their winnings. An overwhelming percentage of people (75% or something) chose to reduce the winnings of the top winners, even though it did not benefit them at all, and even actually cost them some of their own winnings. Maybe it's human nature to want poverty over prosperity as long as everyone suffers equally.
From the first article:
Jay Pasachoff, an astronomy professor at Williams College, said that Pluto's global warming was "likely not connected with that of the Earth. The major way they could be connected is if the warming was caused by a large increase in sunlight. But the solar constant--the amount of sunlight received each second--is carefully monitored by spacecraft, and we know the sun's output is much too steady to be changing the temperature of Pluto." From the second:
The moon is approaching an extreme southern summer, a season that occurs every few hundred years. During this special time, the moon's southern hemisphere receives more direct sunlight. The equivalent on Earth would be having the sun directly overhead at noon north of Lake Superior during a northern summer. From the third:
The global change cycle began when the last of the white oval-shaped storms formed south of the Great Red Spot in 1939. As the storms started to merge between 1998 and 2000, the mixing of heat began to slow down at that latitude and has continued slowing ever since. You really should read articles you try to use for evidence. I read it. I find it a mighty coincidence that all these things happen to occur at the same time. Along with warming from Mars, Triton and so on. It almost seems as if these guys were looking for a way to report their data without taking the heat off the man-made global warming crowd. It's almost as if they are afraid they'll lose their job or not get that next grant.
University of Washington climate scientist Mark Albright was dismissed on March 12 from his position as associate state climatologist, just weeks after exposing false claims of shrinking glaciers in the Cascade Mountains. and...
The human-caused global-warming paradigm is most likely false (Soon et al., 2001; Editorial, 2006). Two climate astrophysicists, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, present evidence that shows the climate of the 20th century fell within the range experienced during the past 1,000 years. Compared with other centuries, it was not unusual (Soon and Baliunas, 2003). Unable to obtain grants from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), Soon (personal communication, August 31, 2006) observes that NASA funds programs mainly on social-political reasoning rather than science. Sorry, but when people are fired and grants are lost because they questioned GW, the GW crowd has loses its credibility. I know it's wrong, but it's as if you have to pick and chose what to believe. What choice do you have when you see such a strong and determined effort to silence those that don't carry the "we're doomed" agenda? It's as if these guys have a choice: Continue working in the field they have spent their lives getting an education in and continue to feed their families, or lose it all along with your credibility among your peers by reporting findings that don't jive with the "consensus".
Although it's not politically correct to say so, anyone who doesn't think Race is a factor need only look at this map. It looks like the North vs the South (with the West Coast siding with the North and all the plain states siding with the South) How can you claim race is a factor when the map looks extremely similar to the electoral results of 2000 and 2004?
We are talking about fractions of a second AFTER the big bang, not the current inflation that the universe is experiencing. In other words, it's not a problem now, but would have prevented EVERYTHING about 13 billion years ago.
Yea, there might be a misunderstanding, but I don't know who's it is. If the universe is expanding faster now than what it was thought it was expanding either what was thought as the initial conditions is wrong or there's an outside force, or one we just don't know of, that's forcing it to speed up.
Falcon You are correct. I don't pretend to understand the math that is involved here, but I do have a "better than average" grasp on the concepts. The concept in this case is not how fast the universe is expanding, or what could be causing the acceleration of the expansion, but the extremely extraordinarily narrow window of the speed of that original expansion that would be required to allow for matter itself to form. If it has expanded just a minute smidgen (technical term) faster or slower, then matter wouldn't have happened.
Sure, it could have happened purely by chance... that's what chance is, but it's such a small chance and such an enormous coincidence that, given our current understanding, it's overwhelmingly unlikely.
Now, I'm not saying God did it, as that's for each to make up their own mind, but I am saying that we don't understand what the driving factors are. There are possibilities and theories that attempt to explain it all. An example would be that there are infinite universes, with infinite possible laws of nature. With that theory, every conceivable universe would be created. Personally, I see more evidence for God than I do multiple universes as no one has ever claimed to have witnessed or "experienced" another universe. But, then again, that's for each of us to decide. There have been brilliant scientists who started as atheists who became theists after researching the origins of the universe. It is also just as likely that a religious scientist would go the other way and give up on God as he learns things that contradict his religious views. It's for you to decide. That's the whole point.
To get back on the topic that this thread started with, I don't want science class being taught that religion. I don't want The Book of Genesis being read in school. Nor do I want science classes claiming that everything is a coincidence and a Creator is not necessary and does not exist. I want students given the data, taught the math and left to make up their own minds. There is no lesson more important for any school or class to teach than the ability to think and form conclusions based on the knowledge at hand.
Either way, the odds that universe would exist in any recognizable, with planets, galaxies, stars and so on, are way too small to be coincidence. (source)
Here is more from the original article:
The fundamental boundary value (or initial condition) problem with the big bang is the criticality of the initial velocity. If this velocity is to fast, the matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into planets, stars, and galaxies.
Actually I don't see that as a problem. Earlier this year I read an article in I believe Sciam about how the universe is expanding faster than people thought and gave this scenario of how our heavens may look in 100 billion years or whatever, I don't recall. The galaxies fly out so far and fast people on earth will no longer see the lights from them. Meanwhile the stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, grow closer together with nothing visible outside of it. Then last week I read another article on the life span of different living species. Trees can live for thousands of years, humans and whales for 100 years or more, but some insects only live days. In a universe where the velocity is "too fast" for you may not be for life forms that only live in a nanosecond.
THEN you multiply those odds by the odds you speak of with carbon forming and such...
Just because all the life humans know are carbon based how does this rule out life based on another element?
only then do you come up with the odds for our type of life
Ah, I thing I may see, "our type of life". What if there are other types of life? Such as silicon based life that only lives a nanosecond? I don't know the answers, and I heard elsewhere lawyers aren't supposed to ask questions they don't know the answer to, but I'm not a lawyer and I am asking and seeking.
Falcon You misunderstood the whole point. It was not about how fast the current universe is expanding, or how fast we think it is expanding... Here, read the quote again:
The fundamental boundary value (or initial condition) problem with the big bang is the criticality of the initial velocity. If this velocity is to fast, the matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into planets, stars, and galaxies. We are talking about fractions of a second AFTER the big bang, not the current inflation that the universe is experiencing. In other words, it's not a problem now, but would have prevented EVERYTHING about 13 billion years ago.
While it is nice that the number of electrons match to within 10^37, that does not really explain the odds. To use the lottery example, now you are talking about the odds that the winner lives on a particular street (and then the odds that the winner was born on a particular day, since the person had to be born to win, right?)...
So what if the number of protons matches the number of electrons to 10^-37. The process that created (converted energy for) large numbers of protons could require an equivalent number of electrons to occur.
And unless you can rule out all possibilities of all alternative styles of life, your restrictive argument doesn't hold much water with me. Maybe intelligent life could develop using entangled neutrinos if the ratio of electrons to protons is unbalanced by a factor of 1^12. You don't know all of the possible conditions that could support all possible forms of intelligent life. Come back with the 'odds' once you can. I still don't think you understand the whole odds thing. If the strengths of the forces we were talking about were different by 1 over 10^37, then we wouldn't have things like planets, stars, galaxies and so on. Now you use your lottery example, but you have a flaw. Sure, someone on some street will win, and the odds of that particular person winning are pretty slim. But that's not the odds we are talking about. If you want to make a valid comparison, it would be like saying, "Unless a white male, 50 yrs of age, named Jim at 334 Maple St. in Okemos MI wins the lottery, we are dumping the whole thing." Then you have your 50 ball drawing and someone at 334 Maple St in Okemos MI gets all 50 numbers plus the power ball... and he's a white male, 50 yrs of age named Jim... on the very first, second and third drawing.
The main difference between the lottery example and the way things are is that someone has to win the lottery. If not, they draw again. The way this works is that no one had to win, but on the first and only shot, everything fell into place too perfectly. Had it not, nothing would be here.
Let me guess, you don't mind illegal, unwarranted tapping of your phone because you have nothing to hide? No, because I want them to catch the terrorists before the next attack!
I have lots to hide, but I know that the second they bust me for buying that dime bag of weed because they used terrorist laws to listen to my call with my dealer is the day that all surveillance ends!
The fact that it was a lie about a trivial matter (trivial to the public anyway; obviously not trivial to the Clinton family) was irrelevant to the right-wingers who attacked him on what many of them saw as a matter of principal. Clinton lied about having an affair in a SEXUAL HARASSMENT lawsuit. Sorry, but sexual harassment is NOT a trivial matter.
Read my post and then kick yourself for responding to something I never said. What I said was:
For example, if all the planets and even asteroids in the solar system are warmer, then you can eliminate all the causes that are unique to one particular solar body. On the other hand, if one particular body is warming more than the others, THEN you look at that particular object to find out what makes that body unique that could be the cause. But since you brought it up, I did a little research on the matter and found that you were dead wrong when you said:
Earth IS warming more than the others, where have you heard otherwise? I don't belive you are going to make me look this up, but here it goes... From MIT:
the average surface temperature of the nitrogen ice on Pluto has increased slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius over the past 14 years Also from MIT:
At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming. Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase," said Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory. The 5 percent increase on the absolute temperature scale from about minus-392 degrees Fahrenheit to about minus-389 degrees Fahrenheit would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of about 22 degrees Fahrenheit. From Space.com:
The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe. For comparison sake, the most extreme guesses at how much the earth has warmed in the past 100 years is 1 (ONE) degree Fahrenheit.
I must respectfully disagree. Based on history, Creationism has never pushed anyone to investigate the origins of the universe. Only when science provided a more plausible alternative did Creationism try to use a better answer than "God did it". I must respectfully disagree. Georges Lemaître is an example of the Church investigating the origins of the Universe.
As for the odds of something happening by chance, the odds of someone winning a lottery are very different than the odds of a particular person winning the lottery. The second-guessing the odds that Creationism argues is akin to "The odds that the lottery winner over there could have won are astronomical. So, therefore the game must have been manipulated for him to win". I think you are underestimating these odds. I hate to post this twice, but I would hate to ask you to go find it even more:
"Unless the number of electrons is equivalent to the number of protons to an accuracy of one part in 10^37, or better, electromagnetic forces in the universe would have so overcome gravitational forces that galaxies, stars, and planets never would have formed.
One part in 10^37 is such an incredibly sensitive balance that it is hard to visualize. The following analogy might help: Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles. (In comparison, the money to pay for the U.S. federal government debt would cover one square mile less than two feet deep with dimes.) Next, pile dimes from here to the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America. Paint one dime red and mix it into the billion piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are one in 10^37. And this is only one of the parameters that is so delicately balanced to allow life to form."* Now this isn't the odds for life forming. These are the odds of the universe forming anything of substance at all. And this is just ONE piece of the equations. These odds must be multiplied by several other just-as-unlikely happenings that allowed our universe, with planets, starts and the like to exist at all.
Of course "the Universe would not exist as we know it". After all, we are the ones doing the knowing of it. If the constants were different, others would have to be the ones doing the knowing of it. Maybe that knowledge would not be borne by creatures of carbon and water, but to say "life would not form"? That's just an extension of the anthropomorphism we have come to expect from religious grandeur-delusional thinking. I don't think we are talking about "life not forming". We are talking about the infinitesimally small odds that gravity would be strong enough to hold stars together with enough pressure to allow for hydrogen to fuse, but not so strong to prevent the big bang, or so strong to cause the universe to collapse in on itself, and not so strong that all stars would quickly become black holes. Either way, the odds that universe would exist in any recognizable, with planets, galaxies, stars and so on, are way too small to be coincidence. (source)
Here is more from the original article:
The fundamental boundary value (or initial condition) problem with the big bang is the criticality of the initial velocity. If this velocity is to fast, the matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into planets, stars, and galaxies. If the initial velocity is too slow, the universe expands only for a short time and then quickly collapses under the influence of gravity. Well-accepted cosmological models tell us that the initial velocity must be specified to a precision of 1 / 10^55. This requirement seems to overwhelm chance and has been the impetus for creative alternatives, most recently the new inflationary model of the big bang. However, inflation itself seems to require fine-tuning for it to occur at all and for it to yield irregularities neither to small nor to large for galaxies to form. Early on it was estimated that two components of an expansion-driving cosmological constant must cancel each other with an accuracy better than 1 part in 10^50. More recently in Scientific American (January 1999), the required accuracy is stated to be 1 part in 10^123. Furthermore, the ratio of the gravitational energy to the kinetic energy must equal to 1.00000 with a variation of 1 part in 100,000. This is an active area of research at the moment and these values may change over time. However, it appears that the essential requirements of very highly specified boundary conditions will be present in whatever model is finally confirmed for the big bang origin of the universe. THEN you multiply those odds by the odds you speak of with carbon forming and such... only then do you come up with the odds for our type of life. But you got way ahead of me there. I'm just talking about an existing universe as even those numbers are big enough for me.
First, the unlikely happens. If I flip a coin 1,000,000 times, the odds of that exact sequence of results is astronomically small (1/2^1,000,000). If something happened against the odds, that isn't magic its happenstance. Did you read the article? I don't think you understand the odds that we are talking about here. We're not taking about your coin toss experiment ending up with 500,001 heads. The odds of a functioning universe are a bit lower. More like your coin hitting heads every single time. Here:
"Unless the number of electrons is equivalent to the number of protons to an accuracy of one part in 10^37 (10 to the 37th power), or better, electromagnetic forces in the universe would have so overcome gravitational forces that galaxies, stars, and planets never would have formed. One part in 10^37 is such an incredibly sensitive balance that it is hard to visualize. The following analogy might help: Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles. (In comparison, the money to pay for the U.S. federal government debt would cover one square mile less than two feet deep with dimes.) Next, pile dimes from here to the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America. Paint one dime red and mix it into the billion piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are one in 10^37. And this is only one of the parameters that is so delicately balanced to allow life to form."*
Second, this argument is terrible.
The article is a good read. It basically covers how incredibly narrow the limits are concerning the laws of nature. If any one of them was just an astronomically small amount different, then the Universe would not exist as we know it, and certainly life would not form. Which leads your budding C/ID believer to ask, "what are the odds of this happening by chance?"
Why would life not form? Because the laws of nature say so? But we just established the laws of nature are not the same in this alternate universe. Its a variation on the first fallacy. "Life" has the characteristics of this universe because it exists in this universe. If there was another set of rules, life might be much more likely, much less likely, extremely different or very similar. It's not so much that life wouldn't form, but that the universe would be so radically different than it is now that NOTHING would have formed. We're talking about odds similar to what I mentioned above that gravity would be just strong enough to allow hydrogen to grow under enough pressure to fuse and create helium, but not so strong to cause the universe to collapse in on itself after the big bang.
Of course, it's easy to simply say, "Oh, there are infinite universes, one for each possibility for the laws of nature". Really? There's more evidence for God!
Which is fine with me. People can believe what they want. Where I start to have problems is when they want to start forcing others to teach their personal beliefs in Science class. How about the following:
Physical Fine Structure Constants-- The four forces in nature may each be expressed in a dimensionless fashion to allow their relative strengths as they act in nature to be expressed in a way that facilitates comparison. These are summarized in Table 2, and are seen to vary by 1041, or 41 orders of magnitude (10 with 40 additional zeros after it). Yet modest changes in any of these constants produce dramatic changes in the universe which render it unsuitable for life. Several examples will serve to illustrate this "fine tuned" nature of our universe.
The relative magnitude of the gravity force and the electromagnetic force has been found to be crucial for multiple reasons. Note from Table 2 that the electromagnetic force is 1038 times stronger than the gravity force. It is the force of gravity that draws protons together in stars causing them to fuse together with a concurrent release of energy. The electromagnetic force causes them to repel. Because the gravity force is so weak by comparison to the electromagnetic force, the rate at which stars "burn" by fusion is very slow, allowing the stars to provide a stable source of energy over a very long period of time. If this ratio of strengths had been 1032 instead of 1038 (i.e., gravity were much stronger), stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.
The frequency distribution of electromagnetic radiation produced by the sun is also critical, as it needs to be tuned to the energies of chemical bonds on earth. If the photons of radiation are too energetic (too much ultraviolet radiation), then chemical bonds are destroyed and molecules are unstable; if the photons are too weak (too much infrared radiation), then chemical reactions will be too sluggish. The radiation produced is dependent on a careful balancing of the electromagnetic force (alpha-E) and the gravity force (alpha-G), with the mathematical relationship including (alpha-E)12 , making the specification for the electromagnetic force particularly critical. On the other hand, the chemical bonding energy comes from quantum mechanical calculations that include the electromagnetic force, the mass of the electron, and Planck's constant. Thus, all of these constants have to be sized relative to each other to give a universe in which radiation is tuned to the necessary chemical reactions that are essential for life. It comes from HERE. I bring up to illustrate that there is an awful lot of science that goes into Creationism and/or ID.
The article is a good read. It basically covers how incredibly narrow the limits are concerning the laws of nature. If any one of them was just an astronomically small amount different, then the Universe would not exist as we know it, and certainly life would not form. Which leads your budding C/ID believer to ask, "what are the odds of this happening by chance?"
I'm willing to concede that there was likely a historical Jesus. But so what? There's more evidence for Mohammed and Joseph Smith, but their mere existence nor their claims or the claims of those who claimed to know them (or claimed to know people who knew them) would convince me that any of these individuals were linked in some way to the Divine. Of course Jesus is real and Divine. Just read your sig. How could Jesus have died approximately 2000 years ago AND be seen on a Moped on I-50 without some Divinity thrown in?
Individual climate scientists might not take every piece of info into account but that is the beauty of science. As a group scientists move towards the truth because many people are working on parts at once. Just because you can't get 1 person to enter a debate who knows every single part of the story and convince the world does not mean climate change is wrong. Just because you can corner a few scientists and find holes in their specific knowledge does not mean they are on the wrong path. No one is saying that climate change is not happening. Hell, change is the one thing we can count on in terms of the climate. What is debatable is WHY.
I don't expect climatologists to consider what is happening on other planets just as don't expect an astronomer to predict the weather. However, when you place the two differing studies together, you can reach previously unconsidered conclusions. For example, if all the planets and even asteroids in the solar system are warmer, then you can eliminate all the causes that are unique to one particular solar body. On the other hand, if one particular body is warming more than the others, THEN you look at that particular object to find out what makes that body unique that could be the cause.
As far as the article goes, More sunspots mean more solar radiation, less sunspots mean less solar radiation. Right, but there is also arelationship between cosmic rays and the sunspot cycle.
It has been recognised for several decades that the cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth is strongly modulated by the solar wind3 which, in turn, is strongly influenced by the sunspot cycle
We are just a passing fancy for our planet, soon to be forgotten. How arrogant of us to think we could affect the deep and wide forces that move and shape our world. Agreed. It makes me think of the idea that doing a certain dance could cause it to rain. Not everything that happens is the direct result of man's actions.
Yes, you're right, all the climate scientists are wrong, the climate isn't changing, you can have your SUV and its $20:gallon gas with the AC blasting and the windows open. Well, not all of them are wrong. Many of them dispute man made global warming. Both sides can't be wrong!
Here are two articles I found that may shed light on the whole "Sun output has no effect climate" argument. Here is one. Here is another. The second one is from CERN (PDF warning). They have some interesting ideas as to why an increase in cosmic rays can cause cooling.
A striking correlation has recently been observed between global cloud cover and the flux of incident cosmic rays. The effect of naturalv ariations in the cosmic ray flux is large, causing estimated changes in the EarthÃ(TM)s energy radiation balance that are comparable to those attributed to greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution.
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Next, you can't blame the president for high energy prices. It's the "other party" that doesn't quite understand the law of supply and demand. Notice, I said LAW of supply and demand, not theory.
So he's against torture, except during interrogations? I guess it's good to know he's against the recreational use of torture, but it's hardly a principled stand. OK, you're making stuff up here. No one has ever said that.
The CIA can use interrogation techniques that are far short of torture that they would NOT be able to do if this law were passed.
However, you are correct that spending should have been cut. At first, you could attribute it to there being a surplus the year before. It's hard to cut spending when you have a surplus. Now, there is no excuse. But above all else, I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought I would see a man who was a torture victim and POW stand up and support that very torture by HIS OWN COUNTRY. This part, you are 100% wrong. President Bush reversed course on Thursday and accepted Sen. John McCainâ(TM)s call for a law banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of foreign suspects in the war on terror. Here are McCain's own words in Feb of this year. It is unfortunate that the reluctance of officials to stand by this straightforward conclusion has produced in the Congress such frustration that we are today debating whether to apply a military field manual to non-military intelligence activities. It would be far better, I believe, for the Administration to state forthrightly what is clear in current law â" that anyone who engages in waterboarding, on behalf of any U.S. government agency, puts himself at risk of criminal prosecution and civil liability.
Here may be an explanation (it is the study I mentioned in the post above... and PDF warning): We design an experiment where subjects can reduce (âoeburnâ) other subjectsâ(TM) Money. Those who burn the money of others have to give up some of their own cash. Despite this cost, and contrary to the assumptions of economics textbooks, the majority of our subjects choose to destroy at least part of othersâ(TM) money holdings. We vary experimentally the amount that subjects have to pay to reduce other peopleâ(TM)s cash. The implied price elasticity of burning is calculated; it is mostly less than unity. There is a strong correlation between wealth, or rank, and the amounts by which subjects are burnt. In making their decisions, many burners, especially disadvantaged ones, seem to care about whether another person âdeservesâ(TM) the money he has. Desert is not simply a matter of relative payoff. To bring this back on topic, I fear that the REAL motivation behind some (not all) of th environmental concerns are part of this. How often do you hear the argument that drilling for new oil would "line the pockets of big oil CEO's"? So what? Why do I care if some big oil CEO if it will save me and everyone else $0.25 a gallon? I still end up ahead! What difference does it make if someone else ends up further ahead than I do? I understand that there may be legitimate environmental concerns, then why bring up how much money someone may make?
Anyway, the GP post is upset that even though workers will be better off, and environmental concerns are addressed, the "haves" will do better than everyone else.
I'm reminded of an experiment someone did a while back (don't care to find the link), where people were allowed to play a gambling game where you could see you winnings and everyone else's. The game was rigged of course and set up so that the player would win some, but could also see that other people won less or even lost and some people won more. At the end of the game, they were given the option to reduce the winnings of the top winners and give it back to the "house", but it would cost the player a smaller percentage of their winnings. An overwhelming percentage of people (75% or something) chose to reduce the winnings of the top winners, even though it did not benefit them at all, and even actually cost them some of their own winnings. Maybe it's human nature to want poverty over prosperity as long as everyone suffers equally.
We are talking about fractions of a second AFTER the big bang, not the current inflation that the universe is experiencing. In other words, it's not a problem now, but would have prevented EVERYTHING about 13 billion years ago.
Yea, there might be a misunderstanding, but I don't know who's it is. If the universe is expanding faster now than what it was thought it was expanding either what was thought as the initial conditions is wrong or there's an outside force, or one we just don't know of, that's forcing it to speed up.
Falcon You are correct. I don't pretend to understand the math that is involved here, but I do have a "better than average" grasp on the concepts. The concept in this case is not how fast the universe is expanding, or what could be causing the acceleration of the expansion, but the extremely extraordinarily narrow window of the speed of that original expansion that would be required to allow for matter itself to form. If it has expanded just a minute smidgen (technical term) faster or slower, then matter wouldn't have happened.
Sure, it could have happened purely by chance... that's what chance is, but it's such a small chance and such an enormous coincidence that, given our current understanding, it's overwhelmingly unlikely.
Now, I'm not saying God did it, as that's for each to make up their own mind, but I am saying that we don't understand what the driving factors are. There are possibilities and theories that attempt to explain it all. An example would be that there are infinite universes, with infinite possible laws of nature. With that theory, every conceivable universe would be created. Personally, I see more evidence for God than I do multiple universes as no one has ever claimed to have witnessed or "experienced" another universe. But, then again, that's for each of us to decide. There have been brilliant scientists who started as atheists who became theists after researching the origins of the universe. It is also just as likely that a religious scientist would go the other way and give up on God as he learns things that contradict his religious views. It's for you to decide. That's the whole point.
To get back on the topic that this thread started with, I don't want science class being taught that religion. I don't want The Book of Genesis being read in school. Nor do I want science classes claiming that everything is a coincidence and a Creator is not necessary and does not exist. I want students given the data, taught the math and left to make up their own minds. There is no lesson more important for any school or class to teach than the ability to think and form conclusions based on the knowledge at hand.
Either way, the odds that universe would exist in any recognizable, with planets, galaxies, stars and so on, are way too small to be coincidence. (source)
Here is more from the original article:
The fundamental boundary value (or initial condition) problem with the big bang is the criticality of the initial velocity. If this velocity is to fast, the matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into planets, stars, and galaxies.
Actually I don't see that as a problem. Earlier this year I read an article in I believe Sciam about how the universe is expanding faster than people thought and gave this scenario of how our heavens may look in 100 billion years or whatever, I don't recall. The galaxies fly out so far and fast people on earth will no longer see the lights from them. Meanwhile the stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, grow closer together with nothing visible outside of it. Then last week I read another article on the life span of different living species. Trees can live for thousands of years, humans and whales for 100 years or more, but some insects only live days. In a universe where the velocity is "too fast" for you may not be for life forms that only live in a nanosecond.
THEN you multiply those odds by the odds you speak of with carbon forming and such...
Just because all the life humans know are carbon based how does this rule out life based on another element?
only then do you come up with the odds for our type of life
Ah, I thing I may see, "our type of life". What if there are other types of life? Such as silicon based life that only lives a nanosecond? I don't know the answers, and I heard elsewhere lawyers aren't supposed to ask questions they don't know the answer to, but I'm not a lawyer and I am asking and seeking.
Falcon You misunderstood the whole point. It was not about how fast the current universe is expanding, or how fast we think it is expanding... Here, read the quote again: The fundamental boundary value (or initial condition) problem with the big bang is the criticality of the initial velocity. If this velocity is to fast, the matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into planets, stars, and galaxies. We are talking about fractions of a second AFTER the big bang, not the current inflation that the universe is experiencing. In other words, it's not a problem now, but would have prevented EVERYTHING about 13 billion years ago.
So what if the number of protons matches the number of electrons to 10^-37. The process that created (converted energy for) large numbers of protons could require an equivalent number of electrons to occur.
And unless you can rule out all possibilities of all alternative styles of life, your restrictive argument doesn't hold much water with me. Maybe intelligent life could develop using entangled neutrinos if the ratio of electrons to protons is unbalanced by a factor of 1^12. You don't know all of the possible conditions that could support all possible forms of intelligent life. Come back with the 'odds' once you can. I still don't think you understand the whole odds thing. If the strengths of the forces we were talking about were different by 1 over 10^37, then we wouldn't have things like planets, stars, galaxies and so on. Now you use your lottery example, but you have a flaw. Sure, someone on some street will win, and the odds of that particular person winning are pretty slim. But that's not the odds we are talking about. If you want to make a valid comparison, it would be like saying, "Unless a white male, 50 yrs of age, named Jim at 334 Maple St. in Okemos MI wins the lottery, we are dumping the whole thing." Then you have your 50 ball drawing and someone at 334 Maple St in Okemos MI gets all 50 numbers plus the power ball... and he's a white male, 50 yrs of age named Jim... on the very first, second and third drawing.
The main difference between the lottery example and the way things are is that someone has to win the lottery. If not, they draw again. The way this works is that no one had to win, but on the first and only shot, everything fell into place too perfectly. Had it not, nothing would be here.
I have lots to hide, but I know that the second they bust me for buying that dime bag of weed because they used terrorist laws to listen to my call with my dealer is the day that all surveillance ends!
From MIT: the average surface temperature of the nitrogen ice on Pluto has increased slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius over the past 14 years Also from MIT: At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming. Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase," said Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory. The 5 percent increase on the absolute temperature scale from about minus-392 degrees Fahrenheit to about minus-389 degrees Fahrenheit would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of about 22 degrees Fahrenheit. From Space.com: The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe. For comparison sake, the most extreme guesses at how much the earth has warmed in the past 100 years is 1 (ONE) degree Fahrenheit.
Feel smarter now?
One part in 10^37 is such an incredibly sensitive balance that it is hard to visualize. The following analogy might help: Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles. (In comparison, the money to pay for the U.S. federal government debt would cover one square mile less than two feet deep with dimes.) Next, pile dimes from here to the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America. Paint one dime red and mix it into the billion piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are one in 10^37. And this is only one of the parameters that is so delicately balanced to allow life to form."* Now this isn't the odds for life forming. These are the odds of the universe forming anything of substance at all. And this is just ONE piece of the equations. These odds must be multiplied by several other just-as-unlikely happenings that allowed our universe, with planets, starts and the like to exist at all.
Here is more from the original article: The fundamental boundary value (or initial condition) problem with the big bang is the criticality of the initial velocity. If this velocity is to fast, the matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into planets, stars, and galaxies. If the initial velocity is too slow, the universe expands only for a short time and then quickly collapses under the influence of gravity. Well-accepted cosmological models tell us that the initial velocity must be specified to a precision of 1 / 10^55. This requirement seems to overwhelm chance and has been the impetus for creative alternatives, most recently the new inflationary model of the big bang. However, inflation itself seems to require fine-tuning for it to occur at all and for it to yield irregularities neither to small nor to large for galaxies to form. Early on it was estimated that two components of an expansion-driving cosmological constant must cancel each other with an accuracy better than 1 part in 10^50. More recently in Scientific American (January 1999), the required accuracy is stated to be 1 part in 10^123. Furthermore, the ratio of the gravitational energy to the kinetic energy must equal to 1.00000 with a variation of 1 part in 100,000. This is an active area of research at the moment and these values may change over time. However, it appears that the essential requirements of very highly specified boundary conditions will be present in whatever model is finally confirmed for the big bang origin of the universe. THEN you multiply those odds by the odds you speak of with carbon forming and such... only then do you come up with the odds for our type of life. But you got way ahead of me there. I'm just talking about an existing universe as even those numbers are big enough for me.
One part in 10^37 is such an incredibly sensitive balance that it is hard to visualize. The following analogy might help: Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles. (In comparison, the money to pay for the U.S. federal government debt would cover one square mile less than two feet deep with dimes.) Next, pile dimes from here to the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America. Paint one dime red and mix it into the billion piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are one in 10^37. And this is only one of the parameters that is so delicately balanced to allow life to form."* Second, this argument is terrible.
Why would life not form? Because the laws of nature say so? But we just established the laws of nature are not the same in this alternate universe. Its a variation on the first fallacy. "Life" has the characteristics of this universe because it exists in this universe. If there was another set of rules, life might be much more likely, much less likely, extremely different or very similar. It's not so much that life wouldn't form, but that the universe would be so radically different than it is now that NOTHING would have formed. We're talking about odds similar to what I mentioned above that gravity would be just strong enough to allow hydrogen to grow under enough pressure to fuse and create helium, but not so strong to cause the universe to collapse in on itself after the big bang.
Of course, it's easy to simply say, "Oh, there are infinite universes, one for each possibility for the laws of nature". Really? There's more evidence for God!
The relative magnitude of the gravity force and the electromagnetic force has been found to be crucial for multiple reasons. Note from Table 2 that the electromagnetic force is 1038 times stronger than the gravity force. It is the force of gravity that draws protons together in stars causing them to fuse together with a concurrent release of energy. The electromagnetic force causes them to repel. Because the gravity force is so weak by comparison to the electromagnetic force, the rate at which stars "burn" by fusion is very slow, allowing the stars to provide a stable source of energy over a very long period of time. If this ratio of strengths had been 1032 instead of 1038 (i.e., gravity were much stronger), stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.
The frequency distribution of electromagnetic radiation produced by the sun is also critical, as it needs to be tuned to the energies of chemical bonds on earth. If the photons of radiation are too energetic (too much ultraviolet radiation), then chemical bonds are destroyed and molecules are unstable; if the photons are too weak (too much infrared radiation), then chemical reactions will be too sluggish. The radiation produced is dependent on a careful balancing of the electromagnetic force (alpha-E) and the gravity force (alpha-G), with the mathematical relationship including (alpha-E)12 , making the specification for the electromagnetic force particularly critical. On the other hand, the chemical bonding energy comes from quantum mechanical calculations that include the electromagnetic force, the mass of the electron, and Planck's constant. Thus, all of these constants have to be sized relative to each other to give a universe in which radiation is tuned to the necessary chemical reactions that are essential for life. It comes from HERE. I bring up to illustrate that there is an awful lot of science that goes into Creationism and/or ID.
The article is a good read. It basically covers how incredibly narrow the limits are concerning the laws of nature. If any one of them was just an astronomically small amount different, then the Universe would not exist as we know it, and certainly life would not form. Which leads your budding C/ID believer to ask, "what are the odds of this happening by chance?"
I don't expect climatologists to consider what is happening on other planets just as don't expect an astronomer to predict the weather. However, when you place the two differing studies together, you can reach previously unconsidered conclusions. For example, if all the planets and even asteroids in the solar system are warmer, then you can eliminate all the causes that are unique to one particular solar body. On the other hand, if one particular body is warming more than the others, THEN you look at that particular object to find out what makes that body unique that could be the cause.
You do realize that there is a difference between Cosmic Rays and Solar Radiation. Right?
As far as the article goes, More sunspots mean more solar radiation, less sunspots mean less solar radiation. Right, but there is also arelationship between cosmic rays and the sunspot cycle. It has been recognised for several decades that the cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth is strongly modulated by the solar wind3 which, in turn, is strongly influenced by the sunspot cycle We are just a passing fancy for our planet, soon to be forgotten. How arrogant of us to think we could affect the deep and wide forces that move and shape our world. Agreed. It makes me think of the idea that doing a certain dance could cause it to rain. Not everything that happens is the direct result of man's actions.
Here are two articles I found that may shed light on the whole "Sun output has no effect climate" argument. Here is one. Here is another. The second one is from CERN (PDF warning). They have some interesting ideas as to why an increase in cosmic rays can cause cooling. A striking correlation has recently been observed between global cloud cover and the flux of incident cosmic rays. The effect of naturalv ariations in the cosmic ray flux is large, causing estimated changes in the EarthÃ(TM)s energy radiation balance that are comparable to those attributed to greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution.