This is our real problem. We talk about it in terms of "belief." That's a religious term, not a scientific one. That makes the discussion a religious one. And, there's no such thing as a religious discussion, there's only holy wars.
The one I find convincing is the melting of the ice. It's a crude kind of measure, lacking in detail, but any explanation that doesn't account for that is obviously unacceptable.
The North-West passage is currently open to ice-breakers, and it is projected to be open to normal passenger liners soon. This doesn't give me many data points, but the ones it give are irrefutable.
Yesterday, the high temperature where I am was 51F. Today, it will be 57F. That indicates that within a week the high temperature should be 99F.
Sure, I don't have many data points, but the ones I have are irrefutable.
Though a bit uglier than usual, that type of behavior is fairly prevalent in the scientific community.
Amen to that brother. Just look back to Isaac Newton and what he did to his scientific rivals and you can see why I cringe everytime I hear the phrase "scientific consensus."
Scientists are people just like everyone else. They want prestige and recognition. And when the politicians (or oil companies for the other side of the coin) get involved and start throwing money at them, like it or not, they're serving a master with an agenda. And if you want to claim that serving either one of those compromises your integrity, then you have to admit that serving either does. The compensation and incentives work exactly the same. If you think a scientist will compromise themself for funding from one source, why wouldn't they do it for another?
Be very careful when politicians get involved. They're black holes that suck the truth out of any discussion.
Predictably, I think you foreigners are doing it all wrong and you'd benefit from doing things more like we do. Predictably, foreigners find this opinion annoying.
Of course, that goes without saying. Everyone thinks the "foreigners" are stupid and do everything wrong. I guess the positive thing to draw out of that is that it's great that so many people are happy with where they live.:)
There was a thread a few months ago about quality of cell phone service in the US or something, and dozens and dozens of Yanks were defending the good ol' US of A's poor numbers. People who normally HATE their cell phone providers were patriotically explaining how it really wasn't that bad, and it was all a plot to make the Fatherland look bad.
Why bother having that conversation on Slashdot of all places? I reply to you because you took the time to write a reasonable reply.
Well, as someone who spent 5 years at a wireless provider, I am less harsh to the telco's as I might otherwise be. But, you're certainly not going to hear me singing any of their praises. Despite being American, I tend to agree with the "foreigners" about our wireless/broadband services. We've got government protected monopolies that are allowed to overcharge, under deliver and not have to face any real competition. The only thing worse than when corporations and government fight against each other and divide people is when they work together and screw us.
In case you can't tell, I'm anti-corporation and anti-government. As soon as things are not personalized, when everyone basically becomes a number, then the world forgets common sense and becomes driven by hard logic centrally focused on the bottom line.
But, I'm with you. Slashdot is not the place to find a reasonable discussion regarding facts. It's amazing that so many people who claim to be of a scientific mindset only want to spout talking points shouting each other down rather than share and discuss data while keeping an open mind that is willing to be changed. Everyone has their utopia and their "opponents" are only fighting for a dystopia.
The line is generally determined by doctors, although there are cases of such-and-such expensive cancer drug not being covered by the healthcare system, and people suffering from whatever kind of cancer will organize and lobby gov't to cover the drug.
I just looked up "death panels" on the government web site, oddly enough they're not listed.
As I figured. Someone has to decide. But, the Canadian system has been around too long to have been one where those decisions aren't made.
And, as a supporter of euthanasia, I don't have an issue with the concept of "end of life" counseling. But, I don't really have much of an issue with abortion either (despite living my whole life in the "Bible belt").
My positions on most issues in the aggregate make it hard to classify me politically. I get arguments from both sides. I tend to lean libertarian (liberal for the rest of the world - only in the US do we call our equivalent of a labor party liberal), but that's most likely because they have absolutely no power here. I imagine if they actually got any power, I'd be disagreeing with them fairly often as well.
Speaking of warping science to conform to a belief, why is it that so many people are so eager to believe global warming skeptics? Methinks it is because they do not want to believe that something as innocent as driving a car could be a problem.
It's most likely because most of the loudest voices in the discussion (on both sides) are those of politicians. If you want a sure sign there's a lack of truth in a discussion, take a look at how many politicians are involved.
Also, there's a serious lack of science understanding in the general population. Most people don't even understand the basics of the scientific method, never mind something as complex as climate science. So, it's no surprise when people believe politicized junk science.
It's amazing how people just listen to the politicians instead of the scientists. Take the CO2/warming link. The data clearly shows that CO2 rise increase FOLLOWS temperature increase, not the other way around as is commonly asserted. Even John Houghton, who was co-chair of the IPCC and is a supporter of the idea of antropogenic global warming, admits "Carbon dioxide content and temperature correlate so closely during the last ice age is not evidence of carbon dioxide driving the temperature but rather the other way round... I often show that diagram in my lectures on climate change but always make the point that it gives no proof of global warming due to increased carbon dioxide." But, has that, along with the fact that the coldest temperatures in the last half billion years were also accompanied by CO2 levels 10 times what they are today, been heard by anyone in the discussion?
Politics and truth are like oil and water. As soon as something becomes a political issue, propaganda takes over. Real science doesn't captivate like a good argument. So, guess which side is winning the climate discussion. Politicians - on both sides. And the masses on both sides are following the politicians that they agree with. NO ONE seems to be listening to the scientists.
I understand that... Though, that's certainly not a typical slashdot attitude... It seems most here know exactly what the problems with others' countries are...
However, my question was not really specific to the US or any other system. Or does the Canadian system not take any costs into consideration when providing care? Would your system spend billions to treat a single individual for cancer? And, if not, where is the line and who determines it?
My stance is neither pro nor anti anything with regards to health care other than being strongly anti-bureaucracy because it wastes money that would be more effectively spent treating those that need it. I'm as much against big private insurance companies managing health care as I am the government. I just think both sides are being completely disingenuous by not admitting that regardless of who runs the system, health care will never be all you can eat. There will always be "rationing" because at some point the costs will far outweigh the benefits.
Even a completely individualized, "every man for himself" system has those decisions made. In that case, however, the decision is really made by the patient (according to their ability to pay and other considerations) and to a degree the doctors. We like that because the patient decides for themself what to do. What we don't like is that the costs are too high for most individuals to be able to afford extensive care. So, for years we've punted to bureaucracies to spread the risk across populations. But, then we get upset when they have to make those same decisions. Regardless of whether or not it's a government or private bureaucracy, it happens and no one likes someone else making those decision about "their" care.
Unfortunately, you have all the politicians jumping in talking about how their bureaucracy (public or private depending on the political persuasion) will give people the "best" care and the other one will leave them with cancer and nowhere to go. But, if everyone would actually be honest, they would have to admit that everyone will not get all the care they want or even need. And until that bit of truth is brought into the discussion, the politicians are never going to be able to create a sustainable, effective solution because a very key assumption being made with respect to what can be done is incredibly invalid.
Of course, many more politicians get elected for hiding the truth than being open about it. So, we're most likely screwed regardless.
I'm more concerned with this misconception that CO2 increase causes temperature increase. The data clearly indicates that CO2 increases AFTER the temperature. There definitely seems to be a correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, but the true direction of that relationship seems to be widely misunderstood. Most people don't even know that the coldest period in the last half-billion years had CO2 levels that were 10 times what they were today.
I've yet to hear any logical explanation as to why the climate change hysteria is diametrically opposed to the facts with respect to CO2. You seem interested in the subject. Maybe you know.
When heat enters a system temperature will not change until the phase change is complete.
Why was all this talk about the temperature changes we had experienced since the 1930's being discussed as such important data before then?
This whole thing is starting to sound too much like the creationists moving the goal posts on evolution. Every time something doesn't fit their model of the world, they just change the model to ignore the discrepancy rather than re-evaluate their potentially flawed assumptions like a real scientist would.
You think I'm joking, but for the dollars invested per capita, Cuba has the greatest health care system in the world. Look it up.
Define "greatest."
I keep hearing the term "best" thrown around all over the place on both sides of this subject. I'm pretty sure that everyone using it with this issue doesn't mean the same thing.
Also, you qualified that as dollars per capita. I'm just wondering if the problem scales linearly or not. Cuba's a pretty small nation with little population diversity. Maybe they are the "greatest" exactly because they don't try to do too much. If that's the case, I don't see that flying in the "no matter what the cost make them better" environment that is US health care.
Then why is USA ranked 37th in the world, whereas UK is ranked 18th?
Because the data has been collected in a questionable manner (i.e. countries of questionable repute answering surveys or reporting data in such as way as to get what they want internationally) meaning that the data is not uniform in content or in the manner collected. Also, the data has been analyzed without controlling for known issues that could cause discrepancies (i.e. The larger number of highway miles driven in the US vs. other nations which leads to more highway fatalities or the miserable diet of Americans leading to poorer general health).
I'm in no way saying that the US can learn from other nations with respect to many issues. However, I think talking "rankings" is utter b.s. Health care is not something that you can rank except on the narrowest of metrics. And, should you choose to do that, you MUST compare apples to apples. WHO rankings do not do that.
The insurance company doesn't care if you live or die, so long as they don't have to pay out.
Just curious if you think a government system would spend every dime necessary to extend life...
I'm not picking on a government alternative here. I'm just saying we have to be honest. No third party payer system, whether public or private, will spend infinite funds to extend life. There will always be a cost/benefit calculation made. No system is going to spend a billion dollars to extend someone's life for 10 more minutes.
Sure, that's an absurd example that everyone could agree with, but that means there is a line somewhere. The question is, where is it and who determines that?
I'm not asserting any position other than propaganda and rhetoric are hijacking the entire debate. Regardless of what your position is, if you intend to only use facts convenient to what you THINK is the correct approach rather than what the data would lead you to believe.
And, you are correct that the US has a mixed health care system like the majority of the world. ~60% of our health care expenditures are payed by government. Not admitting those facts in the debate are as bad as not admitting that big insurance company bureaucracies create tons of unnecessary costs.
All I was saying is that, despite how easily the issue is personalized, we need to separate emotion and agenda from the discussion and deal with the facts. Claiming that a government bureaucracy is a better alternative to a private sector bureaucracy is asinine. The health care issue in the US is that too many people besides doctors and patients have their hands in the pot. Regardless of who controls the bureaucracy, it will always make things more expensive and less effective.
I'm not proposing any particular approach here other than both sides stop pretending that they're not catering to THEIR special interests. If people just want to shout each other down rather than take a REAL look at how the world works and can work, then we're just going to create a whole new mess to deal with later rather than any lasting solution.
Basically you have the private sector insurance companies who spend 40-60 percent of their revenues on denying claims... The only part of your health care system that works reasonably well is Medicare. You know about Medicare, right? That government-funded insurance that pays for people who can't get insurance elsewhere?
You do realize that the medicare denial rate is twice that of private insurance, right?
Please don't let facts get in the way of a good rant, though. God forbid the rabid dogs on the left and right actually look at the real data, stop propagandizing the issues and actually try to solve the REAL problems.
Stallman refers to EMACS virgins, specifically "women who had not been introduced to EMACS" along with the advice that "relieving them of their virginity" was some sort of sacred duty for members of "The Church of EMACS".
As a vi user, I too find this terribly offensive...
This only works locally. It doesn't scale very well. When you reach the level of national politics, individual votes are heavily diluted and it's much more difficult to get enough people educated, concerned and passionate enough about an issue to get anywhere near the 75% turnover you achieved locally. Even during some of the biggest turn-overs in the history of the U.S. Congress over 80% of incumbents running win.
It's much easier to motivate people when they directly know people being impacted by bad policy.
Your libertarian comment is quite political in the truest sense, as it is the far right which has tried to paint itself as libertarian without actually being so, and the far left which has encouraged the misunderstanding to keep its own faithful. I fail to see how being anti-war, anti-empire, anti-drug war, pro-privacy, and pro-freedom are characteristics of the far right.
You don't have the best health system in the world. You have a good health system in terms of quality, and a poor one in terms of coverage and costs. You know that you already pay more in taxes towards the state health provisions in the US than I do as a UK citizen? And that you don't get the benefit of that because you or your employer have to pay for insurance on top of that?
I think the term "best" when it comes to it's usage to describe health care is rather ambiguous. What are the criteria that we are using? Death rates? Life expectancy? Those are composed of many factors that have nothing to do with medical treatment. Poor diet, murders, automotive accidents (the US gives anyone that can turn the key to start a car a license to drive - compare that to most European country requirements for education and testing), etc skew those numbers against the US. Is it quality? Like you say, we have good quality. So, that must not be it. Is it access? Is bad access to good care worse than good access to bad care?
I'm just pointing out that the whole discussion of "best" needs to be qualified, but we're trying to do it all in one list. I'm not arguing one way or other on the issue of "universal" care here anyway. What prompted me to respond was that I wanted to thank you for pointing out that we already pay a lot in taxes for health care in the US. For people that are advocating government care, they seem to be ignorant of the fact that the government already pays about 45% of health care in the US. That percentage has grown significantly over the last 25-30 years or so. I'm just wondering if people think that access to care has improved in that time or regressed. And, regardless of which view you have there, is there a correlation and possibly a causation there?
So it's OK if someone poisons your water by pouring toxic waste into the river (to save a few bucks), thereby forcing the entire populace to import their water / install expensive systems to clean it up (thousands of people multiplied by much more than you saved) ???
So it's OK if you hire armed gun-men and snipers (because you have the money) to dominate a good fishing river and place gill-nets across the river to catch 100% of the fish for personal profit even if it destroys that resource forever ???
So it's OK if your burn down the next 10 houses around you because you didn't want to have trash handled properly and you decided to put up a home-built incinerator that let fly-ash go uncontrolled.... too bad that they didn't leave their yard as bare dirt and chop down their trees for your convenience ???
Sorry, but the only 'repression' here is _NOT_ having (at least some) areas where society outweighs the individual. I can't believe your at +5 for that drivel.
All of those scenarios can be categorized as an offense against individuals, not society as a whole. In fact, those scenarios might be beneficial for society AS A WHOLE, despite the inconvenience and suffering they might cause for a limited set of individuals, and as such, in a system that only protects society as a whole, they might even be advocated by the system.
That's the problem with prioritizing societal concerns over individual ones. If you protect the rights of individuals EQUALLY and FAIRLY, society as a whole will be fine. When you place the ambiguous face of "society" as the most important thing to protect, you get totalitarian rule with no regard to human rights and freedom. Things like freedom of speech and movement become restricted "for the greater good." And, since that greater good has a face that can't be identified, it's easy for those in power to claim how it is being violated by whatever they choose to restrict. As the GP pointed out, history proves time and again that they will and they do.
I don't know where comes this blind faith in 'regulation'. Does _God_ write them?
+10 Insightful...
These people are so down on the evil people running the evil corporations, but there's MANY of them, each with relatively little influence on your life (AND you generally have a choice unless the government has granted someone a monopoly... i.e. cable & power companies). But, then, they want to give the one corporation (government is nothing more than a special artificial entity) that can use deadly force AND has a PURE monopoly than can't be challenged even more power over their lives?
That's not "out of the frying pan into the fire." It's "out of the heating lamp into the sun."
Corporations suck. But, who the hell can take an honest look at government and think it's even remotely as good. You've got corrupt, power-hungry jerk-offs running both. At least with the corporations, I can buy someone else's product or choose to do without. When it's the government, they shove it down your throat like it or not.
And don't give me any b.s. about democracy and "of the people." If you believe that, enjoy your cocktails with Santa and the Easter Bunny... and I really want to see your pics of Jesus doing keg-stands, too.
A modern airliner is actually safer than the usual small plane (Cessna etc).
Things would be safer if they required all drivers to be as skilled, trained, responsible as a typical airliner pilot.
But then most drivers would fail, and they would have transport problems. Politicians would lose lots of votes.
As someone that has and flys a small plane (Cessna), I would dispute your statement. If I lose my engine (due to a bird strike or whatever), I've got a better glide ratio, lower best glide speed and a much lower touch down speed that allows me to land at a pretty low speed (as slow as 50mph). An airliner in the same situation is going to have to keep a relatively higher speed all the way down, not to mention the amount of space required to land it safely even discounting the substantially higher touch down speed.
Of course, those are both essentially moot points because the level of maintenance required to keep both flying legally means that failure is much less likely than you would have with your average Chevy.
I think your real point is that airline pilots are generally better trained than your average small plane pilot. That's true. But, given that the NTSB says that 85% of all aircraft accidents are caused by pilot error, I'd say that is the reason for the difference in safety, not the equipment.
Just ask any airline pilot which he would rather be in with a complete loss of power, A 747 at 10,000 feet or a Cessna 150 at 10,000 feet. You only have a few minutes to deal with things in the 747 in that situation. With a 150, you've got about 20 minutes and easily 15 miles of range you can cover before you have to worry about landing.
Scientists do not claim that CO2 is "the" only cause of climate change. And please, spare me "but the media/political circus does". Even they don't claim that CO2 is the only thing ever to have affected climate.
I never said scientists did. Scientists have nothing to do with the policy proposals or induced hysteria. You ask the average Joe on the street about the whole thing and all they can tell you is CO2. And, unless you happened to miss Al Gore's (a politician I might remind you) propaganda piece which explicitly tried to highlight the CO2/temperature connection. He purposely put the graphs on different axes so people would infer CO2 lead temperature. If you see the two on the same graph, it's clear CO2 follows, not leads. That's the political/media misinformation.
Not over the next few centuries, which is the whole point.
Really? I would agree with you on the orbital variation. That's a known quantity. But, what are the predictions for solar and cloud variation? What are the predictions for volcanic events that are known to cool global temperatures as much as a degree in a single year? We just don't know those things.
It's not that hard to nail down human emissions. It's somewhat uncertain where human emissions eventually end up; we know the main players, but not the exact partitioning.
If we're uncertain about where they end up, how can we use those for modeling? I've heard some argue that the specific isotopes released by man have a different effect than the "natural" isotopes. If both that idea and your assertion are both true, I would expect some serious flaws in the models.
We may not push CO2 levels higher than what has been naturally observed, but that's not the point. Even climate changes as large as what has been naturally observed are a big deal, and we probably don't want to reproduce those changes (especially at a high rate).
The quantity nor the rate is statistically different from what has been observed. Assuming it is mankind, we're still not making anything happen that hasn't naturally occurred before.
No, there isn't. That's the whole point. Between the C12/C13 ratios and C12/C14 ratios, you can eliminate the natural sources like biomass, dissolved carbon in the oceans, etc.
We might know about the CURRENT sources that we have observed, but our data doesn't go back that far. We don't really know if we have all of the current "natural" sources identified either. That's the whole point of a lot of the new technological tools we're trying to put into place. We don't have a global survey of carbon sources with the sort of resolution to say that we know where all of the CO2 is coming from.
Burning biomass has a different isotopic signature than burning fossil fuels, unless the biomass is extremely old (like fossil biomass is). There is very little ancient biomass being burned other than fossil fuel, and we know where it is.
Sure. But, we don't know exactly where the all of the CO2 comes from. So, saying that we know where all the CO2 from ancient biomass is originating from is really just a hypothesis at this point. It's as easy to have the hypothesis that there are crude deposits near magma vents that are being encroached upon and releasing the same isotopes through a natural process. It IS possible.
Ok, let me be more blunt: anybody who argues that has been scientifically disproven.
No. They've been politically disproven. There is still plenty of study that needs to be done and is being done. But, the story of no impending catastrophe doesn't get readers or viewers for media and certainly doesn't give politicians an excuse to control people. So, the publicity is one sided (and inaccurate due to the necessary dumbing down of the complexity for average people to "understand").
Given your statements below, I don't think your knowledge of this subject warrants such bold assertions.
If you don't believe that the CO2 hysteria is media and political hype, then you are not paying attention to the common perspective on the whole thing. I'm not talking about the science. I'm talking about the people using the science wrongly to push an agenda.
In the glacial-interglacial cycle, this is true, but it's also not a surprise; it's a prediction of Milankovitch theory, which existed before any lags or leads were ever measured in the data. It also does not imply that CO2 has no effect on temperature.
I didn't say CO2 has no effect on climate. I only said it follows rather than leads the temperature change. I understand chaos theory well enough to know that almost EVERYTHING has an effect, at least in the long term.
It's both. According to the Milankovitch theory, orbital variations cause shifts in temperature. These temperature shifts cause changes in the carbon cycle, which alters CO2 levels. The altered CO2 levels in turn amplify the original orbital temperature change.
If you leave the CO2 feedback part of that process out, then you can't explain the amplitude of the glacial-interglacial cycles anymore, and it's unclear whether you can even, say, trigger a glaciation without the contribution of CO2 drawdown.
Sure. CO2 has an effect. But, it is not THE cause as the media and political class would have us believe.
Those are great references and support my argument that CO2 has an effect, but is certainly not THE cause. And, it is clearly illustrated that the coldest period in the last half billion years had a CO2 level 10 times the present level. Those references point out that there are clearly other drivers that are MUCH more significant on climate than CO2. That's not what the mass media and political class would have us believe. Orbital, solar and cloud variation are much more impactful than CO2. But, we can't write laws to deal with those things. So, we push the minor things that we believe we can control.
Human emissions don't vary smoothly, nor does the terrestrial carbon sink, which has quite a bit of interannual variability due to climatic effects on, e.g., photosynthesis and heterotrophic respiration. Just as a guess, I'd look first at the collapse of the Soviet Union (assuming there is a significant slowdown during those years, which I haven't checked).
Great point... at least partially. The natural CO2 cycle has quite a bit of interannual variability. That's why it's hard to nail down what the human factors are. And, given that the CO2 levels have been MUCH higher on the order of 1000's of percents prior to the existence of humans on the planet, it's hard to say that we are going to push things beyond what has been NATURALLY observed on Earth. Sure, there are plenty of hypothesi about the different types of carbon isotopes, but there are plenty of natural ways for those same isotopes to be released. The only thing we are doing to release them is to burn things. That happens naturally all the time.
As for human activity driving the observed increase, that's been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Nobody seriously argues that part of the story anymore; there are about six independent lines of evidence, including historic emissions data, measurements of cumulative ocean carbon and air-sea CO2 f
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Wow. The scientists are acting like politicians.
Maybe it's actually the other way around...
I sort of believe in climate change...
This is our real problem. We talk about it in terms of "belief." That's a religious term, not a scientific one. That makes the discussion a religious one. And, there's no such thing as a religious discussion, there's only holy wars.
The one I find convincing is the melting of the ice. It's a crude kind of measure, lacking in detail, but any explanation that doesn't account for that is obviously unacceptable.
The North-West passage is currently open to ice-breakers, and it is projected to be open to normal passenger liners soon. This doesn't give me many data points, but the ones it give are irrefutable.
Yesterday, the high temperature where I am was 51F. Today, it will be 57F. That indicates that within a week the high temperature should be 99F.
Sure, I don't have many data points, but the ones I have are irrefutable.
Though a bit uglier than usual, that type of behavior is fairly prevalent in the scientific community.
Amen to that brother. Just look back to Isaac Newton and what he did to his scientific rivals and you can see why I cringe everytime I hear the phrase "scientific consensus."
Scientists are people just like everyone else. They want prestige and recognition. And when the politicians (or oil companies for the other side of the coin) get involved and start throwing money at them, like it or not, they're serving a master with an agenda. And if you want to claim that serving either one of those compromises your integrity, then you have to admit that serving either does. The compensation and incentives work exactly the same. If you think a scientist will compromise themself for funding from one source, why wouldn't they do it for another?
Be very careful when politicians get involved. They're black holes that suck the truth out of any discussion.
Exactly.
Predictably, I think you foreigners are doing it all wrong and you'd benefit from doing things more like we do. Predictably, foreigners find this opinion annoying.
Of course, that goes without saying. Everyone thinks the "foreigners" are stupid and do everything wrong. I guess the positive thing to draw out of that is that it's great that so many people are happy with where they live. :)
There was a thread a few months ago about quality of cell phone service in the US or something, and dozens and dozens of Yanks were defending the good ol' US of A's poor numbers. People who normally HATE their cell phone providers were patriotically explaining how it really wasn't that bad, and it was all a plot to make the Fatherland look bad.
Why bother having that conversation on Slashdot of all places? I reply to you because you took the time to write a reasonable reply.
Well, as someone who spent 5 years at a wireless provider, I am less harsh to the telco's as I might otherwise be. But, you're certainly not going to hear me singing any of their praises. Despite being American, I tend to agree with the "foreigners" about our wireless/broadband services. We've got government protected monopolies that are allowed to overcharge, under deliver and not have to face any real competition. The only thing worse than when corporations and government fight against each other and divide people is when they work together and screw us.
In case you can't tell, I'm anti-corporation and anti-government. As soon as things are not personalized, when everyone basically becomes a number, then the world forgets common sense and becomes driven by hard logic centrally focused on the bottom line.
But, I'm with you. Slashdot is not the place to find a reasonable discussion regarding facts. It's amazing that so many people who claim to be of a scientific mindset only want to spout talking points shouting each other down rather than share and discuss data while keeping an open mind that is willing to be changed. Everyone has their utopia and their "opponents" are only fighting for a dystopia.
The line is generally determined by doctors, although there are cases of such-and-such expensive cancer drug not being covered by the healthcare system, and people suffering from whatever kind of cancer will organize and lobby gov't to cover the drug.
I just looked up "death panels" on the government web site, oddly enough they're not listed.
As I figured. Someone has to decide. But, the Canadian system has been around too long to have been one where those decisions aren't made.
And, as a supporter of euthanasia, I don't have an issue with the concept of "end of life" counseling. But, I don't really have much of an issue with abortion either (despite living my whole life in the "Bible belt").
My positions on most issues in the aggregate make it hard to classify me politically. I get arguments from both sides. I tend to lean libertarian (liberal for the rest of the world - only in the US do we call our equivalent of a labor party liberal), but that's most likely because they have absolutely no power here. I imagine if they actually got any power, I'd be disagreeing with them fairly often as well.
Speaking of warping science to conform to a belief, why is it that so many people are so eager to believe global warming skeptics? Methinks it is because they do not want to believe that something as innocent as driving a car could be a problem.
It's most likely because most of the loudest voices in the discussion (on both sides) are those of politicians. If you want a sure sign there's a lack of truth in a discussion, take a look at how many politicians are involved.
Also, there's a serious lack of science understanding in the general population. Most people don't even understand the basics of the scientific method, never mind something as complex as climate science. So, it's no surprise when people believe politicized junk science.
It's amazing how people just listen to the politicians instead of the scientists. Take the CO2/warming link. The data clearly shows that CO2 rise increase FOLLOWS temperature increase, not the other way around as is commonly asserted. Even John Houghton, who was co-chair of the IPCC and is a supporter of the idea of antropogenic global warming, admits "Carbon dioxide content and temperature correlate so closely during the last ice age is not evidence of carbon dioxide driving the temperature but rather the other way round... I often show that diagram in my lectures on climate change but always make the point that it gives no proof of global warming due to increased carbon dioxide." But, has that, along with the fact that the coldest temperatures in the last half billion years were also accompanied by CO2 levels 10 times what they are today, been heard by anyone in the discussion?
Politics and truth are like oil and water. As soon as something becomes a political issue, propaganda takes over. Real science doesn't captivate like a good argument. So, guess which side is winning the climate discussion. Politicians - on both sides. And the masses on both sides are following the politicians that they agree with. NO ONE seems to be listening to the scientists.
I understand that... Though, that's certainly not a typical slashdot attitude... It seems most here know exactly what the problems with others' countries are...
However, my question was not really specific to the US or any other system. Or does the Canadian system not take any costs into consideration when providing care? Would your system spend billions to treat a single individual for cancer? And, if not, where is the line and who determines it?
My stance is neither pro nor anti anything with regards to health care other than being strongly anti-bureaucracy because it wastes money that would be more effectively spent treating those that need it. I'm as much against big private insurance companies managing health care as I am the government. I just think both sides are being completely disingenuous by not admitting that regardless of who runs the system, health care will never be all you can eat. There will always be "rationing" because at some point the costs will far outweigh the benefits.
Even a completely individualized, "every man for himself" system has those decisions made. In that case, however, the decision is really made by the patient (according to their ability to pay and other considerations) and to a degree the doctors. We like that because the patient decides for themself what to do. What we don't like is that the costs are too high for most individuals to be able to afford extensive care. So, for years we've punted to bureaucracies to spread the risk across populations. But, then we get upset when they have to make those same decisions. Regardless of whether or not it's a government or private bureaucracy, it happens and no one likes someone else making those decision about "their" care.
Unfortunately, you have all the politicians jumping in talking about how their bureaucracy (public or private depending on the political persuasion) will give people the "best" care and the other one will leave them with cancer and nowhere to go. But, if everyone would actually be honest, they would have to admit that everyone will not get all the care they want or even need. And until that bit of truth is brought into the discussion, the politicians are never going to be able to create a sustainable, effective solution because a very key assumption being made with respect to what can be done is incredibly invalid.
Of course, many more politicians get elected for hiding the truth than being open about it. So, we're most likely screwed regardless.
I'm more concerned with this misconception that CO2 increase causes temperature increase. The data clearly indicates that CO2 increases AFTER the temperature. There definitely seems to be a correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, but the true direction of that relationship seems to be widely misunderstood. Most people don't even know that the coldest period in the last half-billion years had CO2 levels that were 10 times what they were today.
I've yet to hear any logical explanation as to why the climate change hysteria is diametrically opposed to the facts with respect to CO2. You seem interested in the subject. Maybe you know.
When heat enters a system temperature will not change until the phase change is complete.
Why was all this talk about the temperature changes we had experienced since the 1930's being discussed as such important data before then?
This whole thing is starting to sound too much like the creationists moving the goal posts on evolution. Every time something doesn't fit their model of the world, they just change the model to ignore the discrepancy rather than re-evaluate their potentially flawed assumptions like a real scientist would.
You think I'm joking, but for the dollars invested per capita, Cuba has the greatest health care system in the world. Look it up.
Define "greatest."
I keep hearing the term "best" thrown around all over the place on both sides of this subject. I'm pretty sure that everyone using it with this issue doesn't mean the same thing.
Also, you qualified that as dollars per capita. I'm just wondering if the problem scales linearly or not. Cuba's a pretty small nation with little population diversity. Maybe they are the "greatest" exactly because they don't try to do too much. If that's the case, I don't see that flying in the "no matter what the cost make them better" environment that is US health care.
Then why is USA ranked 37th in the world, whereas UK is ranked 18th?
Because the data has been collected in a questionable manner (i.e. countries of questionable repute answering surveys or reporting data in such as way as to get what they want internationally) meaning that the data is not uniform in content or in the manner collected. Also, the data has been analyzed without controlling for known issues that could cause discrepancies (i.e. The larger number of highway miles driven in the US vs. other nations which leads to more highway fatalities or the miserable diet of Americans leading to poorer general health).
I'm in no way saying that the US can learn from other nations with respect to many issues. However, I think talking "rankings" is utter b.s. Health care is not something that you can rank except on the narrowest of metrics. And, should you choose to do that, you MUST compare apples to apples. WHO rankings do not do that.
The insurance company doesn't care if you live or die, so long as they don't have to pay out.
Just curious if you think a government system would spend every dime necessary to extend life...
I'm not picking on a government alternative here. I'm just saying we have to be honest. No third party payer system, whether public or private, will spend infinite funds to extend life. There will always be a cost/benefit calculation made. No system is going to spend a billion dollars to extend someone's life for 10 more minutes.
Sure, that's an absurd example that everyone could agree with, but that means there is a line somewhere. The question is, where is it and who determines that?
I'm not asserting any position other than propaganda and rhetoric are hijacking the entire debate. Regardless of what your position is, if you intend to only use facts convenient to what you THINK is the correct approach rather than what the data would lead you to believe.
And, you are correct that the US has a mixed health care system like the majority of the world. ~60% of our health care expenditures are payed by government. Not admitting those facts in the debate are as bad as not admitting that big insurance company bureaucracies create tons of unnecessary costs.
All I was saying is that, despite how easily the issue is personalized, we need to separate emotion and agenda from the discussion and deal with the facts. Claiming that a government bureaucracy is a better alternative to a private sector bureaucracy is asinine. The health care issue in the US is that too many people besides doctors and patients have their hands in the pot. Regardless of who controls the bureaucracy, it will always make things more expensive and less effective.
I'm not proposing any particular approach here other than both sides stop pretending that they're not catering to THEIR special interests. If people just want to shout each other down rather than take a REAL look at how the world works and can work, then we're just going to create a whole new mess to deal with later rather than any lasting solution.
Basically you have the private sector insurance companies who spend 40-60 percent of their revenues on denying claims... The only part of your health care system that works reasonably well is Medicare. You know about Medicare, right? That government-funded insurance that pays for people who can't get insurance elsewhere?
You do realize that the medicare denial rate is twice that of private insurance, right?
Please don't let facts get in the way of a good rant, though. God forbid the rabid dogs on the left and right actually look at the real data, stop propagandizing the issues and actually try to solve the REAL problems.
2BR02B
As a vi user, I too find this terribly offensive...
This only works locally. It doesn't scale very well. When you reach the level of national politics, individual votes are heavily diluted and it's much more difficult to get enough people educated, concerned and passionate enough about an issue to get anywhere near the 75% turnover you achieved locally. Even during some of the biggest turn-overs in the history of the U.S. Congress over 80% of incumbents running win.
It's much easier to motivate people when they directly know people being impacted by bad policy.
Your libertarian comment is quite political in the truest sense, as it is the far right which has tried to paint itself as libertarian without actually being so, and the far left which has encouraged the misunderstanding to keep its own faithful. I fail to see how being anti-war, anti-empire, anti-drug war, pro-privacy, and pro-freedom are characteristics of the far right.
Amen brother. Libertarians are liberals in the truest and most classical sense. Only in America would we call Democrats liberal. They're not. Liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity. Within liberalism, there are various streams of thought which compete over the use of the term "liberal" and may propose very different policies, but they are generally united by their support for constitutional liberalism, which encompasses support for: freedom of thought and speech, limitations on the power of governments, the rule of law, an individual's right to private property, and a transparent system of government .
That doesn't sound like the Democrat party to me. I'm a liberal. They're not.
You don't have the best health system in the world. You have a good health system in terms of quality, and a poor one in terms of coverage and costs. You know that you already pay more in taxes towards the state health provisions in the US than I do as a UK citizen? And that you don't get the benefit of that because you or your employer have to pay for insurance on top of that?
I think the term "best" when it comes to it's usage to describe health care is rather ambiguous. What are the criteria that we are using? Death rates? Life expectancy? Those are composed of many factors that have nothing to do with medical treatment. Poor diet, murders, automotive accidents (the US gives anyone that can turn the key to start a car a license to drive - compare that to most European country requirements for education and testing), etc skew those numbers against the US. Is it quality? Like you say, we have good quality. So, that must not be it. Is it access? Is bad access to good care worse than good access to bad care?
I'm just pointing out that the whole discussion of "best" needs to be qualified, but we're trying to do it all in one list. I'm not arguing one way or other on the issue of "universal" care here anyway. What prompted me to respond was that I wanted to thank you for pointing out that we already pay a lot in taxes for health care in the US. For people that are advocating government care, they seem to be ignorant of the fact that the government already pays about 45% of health care in the US. That percentage has grown significantly over the last 25-30 years or so. I'm just wondering if people think that access to care has improved in that time or regressed. And, regardless of which view you have there, is there a correlation and possibly a causation there?
Just food for thought...
So it's OK if someone poisons your water by pouring toxic waste into the river (to save a few bucks), thereby forcing the entire populace to import their water / install expensive systems to clean it up (thousands of people multiplied by much more than you saved) ???
So it's OK if you hire armed gun-men and snipers (because you have the money) to dominate a good fishing river and place gill-nets across the river to catch 100% of the fish for personal profit even if it destroys that resource forever ???
So it's OK if your burn down the next 10 houses around you because you didn't want to have trash handled properly and you decided to put up a home-built incinerator that let fly-ash go uncontrolled.... too bad that they didn't leave their yard as bare dirt and chop down their trees for your convenience ???
Sorry, but the only 'repression' here is _NOT_ having (at least some) areas where society outweighs the individual. I can't believe your at +5 for that drivel.
All of those scenarios can be categorized as an offense against individuals, not society as a whole. In fact, those scenarios might be beneficial for society AS A WHOLE, despite the inconvenience and suffering they might cause for a limited set of individuals, and as such, in a system that only protects society as a whole, they might even be advocated by the system.
That's the problem with prioritizing societal concerns over individual ones. If you protect the rights of individuals EQUALLY and FAIRLY, society as a whole will be fine. When you place the ambiguous face of "society" as the most important thing to protect, you get totalitarian rule with no regard to human rights and freedom. Things like freedom of speech and movement become restricted "for the greater good." And, since that greater good has a face that can't be identified, it's easy for those in power to claim how it is being violated by whatever they choose to restrict. As the GP pointed out, history proves time and again that they will and they do.
I don't know where comes this blind faith in 'regulation'. Does _God_ write them?
+10 Insightful...
These people are so down on the evil people running the evil corporations, but there's MANY of them, each with relatively little influence on your life (AND you generally have a choice unless the government has granted someone a monopoly... i.e. cable & power companies). But, then, they want to give the one corporation (government is nothing more than a special artificial entity) that can use deadly force AND has a PURE monopoly than can't be challenged even more power over their lives?
That's not "out of the frying pan into the fire." It's "out of the heating lamp into the sun."
Corporations suck. But, who the hell can take an honest look at government and think it's even remotely as good. You've got corrupt, power-hungry jerk-offs running both. At least with the corporations, I can buy someone else's product or choose to do without. When it's the government, they shove it down your throat like it or not.
And don't give me any b.s. about democracy and "of the people." If you believe that, enjoy your cocktails with Santa and the Easter Bunny... and I really want to see your pics of Jesus doing keg-stands, too.
One more for your list...
We no longer have much time left to change.
- Al Gore, 2005
A modern airliner is actually safer than the usual small plane (Cessna etc). Things would be safer if they required all drivers to be as skilled, trained, responsible as a typical airliner pilot. But then most drivers would fail, and they would have transport problems. Politicians would lose lots of votes.
As someone that has and flys a small plane (Cessna), I would dispute your statement. If I lose my engine (due to a bird strike or whatever), I've got a better glide ratio, lower best glide speed and a much lower touch down speed that allows me to land at a pretty low speed (as slow as 50mph). An airliner in the same situation is going to have to keep a relatively higher speed all the way down, not to mention the amount of space required to land it safely even discounting the substantially higher touch down speed.
Of course, those are both essentially moot points because the level of maintenance required to keep both flying legally means that failure is much less likely than you would have with your average Chevy.
I think your real point is that airline pilots are generally better trained than your average small plane pilot. That's true. But, given that the NTSB says that 85% of all aircraft accidents are caused by pilot error, I'd say that is the reason for the difference in safety, not the equipment.
Just ask any airline pilot which he would rather be in with a complete loss of power, A 747 at 10,000 feet or a Cessna 150 at 10,000 feet. You only have a few minutes to deal with things in the 747 in that situation. With a 150, you've got about 20 minutes and easily 15 miles of range you can cover before you have to worry about landing.
Scientists do not claim that CO2 is "the" only cause of climate change. And please, spare me "but the media/political circus does". Even they don't claim that CO2 is the only thing ever to have affected climate.
I never said scientists did. Scientists have nothing to do with the policy proposals or induced hysteria. You ask the average Joe on the street about the whole thing and all they can tell you is CO2. And, unless you happened to miss Al Gore's (a politician I might remind you) propaganda piece which explicitly tried to highlight the CO2/temperature connection. He purposely put the graphs on different axes so people would infer CO2 lead temperature. If you see the two on the same graph, it's clear CO2 follows, not leads. That's the political/media misinformation.
Not over the next few centuries, which is the whole point.
Really? I would agree with you on the orbital variation. That's a known quantity. But, what are the predictions for solar and cloud variation? What are the predictions for volcanic events that are known to cool global temperatures as much as a degree in a single year? We just don't know those things.
It's not that hard to nail down human emissions. It's somewhat uncertain where human emissions eventually end up; we know the main players, but not the exact partitioning.
If we're uncertain about where they end up, how can we use those for modeling? I've heard some argue that the specific isotopes released by man have a different effect than the "natural" isotopes. If both that idea and your assertion are both true, I would expect some serious flaws in the models.
We may not push CO2 levels higher than what has been naturally observed, but that's not the point. Even climate changes as large as what has been naturally observed are a big deal, and we probably don't want to reproduce those changes (especially at a high rate).
The quantity nor the rate is statistically different from what has been observed. Assuming it is mankind, we're still not making anything happen that hasn't naturally occurred before.
No, there isn't. That's the whole point. Between the C12/C13 ratios and C12/C14 ratios, you can eliminate the natural sources like biomass, dissolved carbon in the oceans, etc.
We might know about the CURRENT sources that we have observed, but our data doesn't go back that far. We don't really know if we have all of the current "natural" sources identified either. That's the whole point of a lot of the new technological tools we're trying to put into place. We don't have a global survey of carbon sources with the sort of resolution to say that we know where all of the CO2 is coming from.
Burning biomass has a different isotopic signature than burning fossil fuels, unless the biomass is extremely old (like fossil biomass is). There is very little ancient biomass being burned other than fossil fuel, and we know where it is.
Sure. But, we don't know exactly where the all of the CO2 comes from. So, saying that we know where all the CO2 from ancient biomass is originating from is really just a hypothesis at this point. It's as easy to have the hypothesis that there are crude deposits near magma vents that are being encroached upon and releasing the same isotopes through a natural process. It IS possible.
Ok, let me be more blunt: anybody who argues that has been scientifically disproven.
No. They've been politically disproven. There is still plenty of study that needs to be done and is being done. But, the story of no impending catastrophe doesn't get readers or viewers for media and certainly doesn't give politicians an excuse to control people. So, the publicity is one sided (and inaccurate due to the necessary dumbing down of the complexity for average people to "understand").
Given your statements below, I don't think your knowledge of this subject warrants such bold assertions.
If you don't believe that the CO2 hysteria is media and political hype, then you are not paying attention to the common perspective on the whole thing. I'm not talking about the science. I'm talking about the people using the science wrongly to push an agenda.
In the glacial-interglacial cycle, this is true, but it's also not a surprise; it's a prediction of Milankovitch theory, which existed before any lags or leads were ever measured in the data. It also does not imply that CO2 has no effect on temperature.
I didn't say CO2 has no effect on climate. I only said it follows rather than leads the temperature change. I understand chaos theory well enough to know that almost EVERYTHING has an effect, at least in the long term.
It's both. According to the Milankovitch theory, orbital variations cause shifts in temperature. These temperature shifts cause changes in the carbon cycle, which alters CO2 levels. The altered CO2 levels in turn amplify the original orbital temperature change.
If you leave the CO2 feedback part of that process out, then you can't explain the amplitude of the glacial-interglacial cycles anymore, and it's unclear whether you can even, say, trigger a glaciation without the contribution of CO2 drawdown.
Sure. CO2 has an effect. But, it is not THE cause as the media and political class would have us believe.
You could start here, here, or here.
Those are great references and support my argument that CO2 has an effect, but is certainly not THE cause. And, it is clearly illustrated that the coldest period in the last half billion years had a CO2 level 10 times the present level. Those references point out that there are clearly other drivers that are MUCH more significant on climate than CO2. That's not what the mass media and political class would have us believe. Orbital, solar and cloud variation are much more impactful than CO2. But, we can't write laws to deal with those things. So, we push the minor things that we believe we can control.
Human emissions don't vary smoothly, nor does the terrestrial carbon sink, which has quite a bit of interannual variability due to climatic effects on, e.g., photosynthesis and heterotrophic respiration. Just as a guess, I'd look first at the collapse of the Soviet Union (assuming there is a significant slowdown during those years, which I haven't checked).
Great point... at least partially. The natural CO2 cycle has quite a bit of interannual variability. That's why it's hard to nail down what the human factors are. And, given that the CO2 levels have been MUCH higher on the order of 1000's of percents prior to the existence of humans on the planet, it's hard to say that we are going to push things beyond what has been NATURALLY observed on Earth. Sure, there are plenty of hypothesi about the different types of carbon isotopes, but there are plenty of natural ways for those same isotopes to be released. The only thing we are doing to release them is to burn things. That happens naturally all the time.
As for human activity driving the observed increase, that's been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Nobody seriously argues that part of the story anymore; there are about six independent lines of evidence, including historic emissions data, measurements of cumulative ocean carbon and air-sea CO2 f