I'm not just looking at one years strange weather and plucking a theory out of the air to explain it.
There's an unbroken chain of proven scientific fact that leads from increasing CO2 levels, to increased ocean temperatures, to increased incidence and severity of hurricanes.
If you want to refute the CO2 climate change theory, then you have to either...
1. Show that the weather isn't actually changing. (good luck, the statistics for global warming are very powerful - and this year's on track for another record)
or
2. Accept that it's happening, but produce some coherent argument for why the known greenhouse properties of CO2 are not the cause.
You've done neither, instead you persist in the "my granddad smoked a pack a day and never got cancer" water-muddying that the tobacco lobby was infamous for.
Then, as now, the only people who believed it were the addicts who really, really wanted to believe.
Thank you for so neatly illustrating the truth of my statement
Various attempts to deny the science in this are depressingly like the tobacco industry trying to deny the link between smoking and cancer.
Throwing in a bunch of unconnected factoids (Africa is the driest place on earth? Africa is fscking big, and has a very diverse range of climates) in an attempt to muddy the water, and avoid the actual cause-and-effect argument, is exactly what the tobacco lobby did for decades.
Then Health Researcher: Tobacco is a proven carcinogen, and smoking it is bad for your health Big Tobacco: That's lab results in rats, you have no proof it happens in humans
HR: We have statistics proving that smokers have greatly increased risk of many diseases, exactly as you'd expect from our lab studies on rats BT: That's just statistics, corelation doesn't prove causation, my granddad smoked a pack a day and lived to be 86, people were getting cancer in Europe before tobacco was brought back from the Americas.... blah blah blah...
Now Climate Researcher: Our laboratory tests prove CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas, increasing levels of CO2 will cause global warming Big Carbon: That's laboratory tests, there's no proof it's causing real changes in the climate
CR: We have statistics showing increased temperatures globally, increased incidence and severity of extreme weather events, etc... BC: that's just statistics, corelation doesn't prove causation, people were getting killed in storms decades ago... blah blah blah...
Ocean temperatures have been rising, as predicted by climate change models. Hurricane frequency has been increasing, as predicted by climate change models. Hurricane intensity has been increasing, as predicted by climate change models.
There is no part of this chain of causality that isn't proven scientific fact.
Various attempts to deny the science in this are depressingly like the tobacco industry trying to deny the link between smoking and cancer.
'Twas 12 years ago, so any on-the-ground info I gave you would be hopelessly out of date by now.
General advice --------------
1. Travel light.
2. Learn Spanish. It's not like the movies where everyone speaks English with a stage-mexican accent.
(Yes, Brazil is Portuguese speaking, but Spanish will still be a big help)
3. Travel light.
4. Don't take anything you're not prepared to have stolen.
5. Travel light.
6. Be careful, but don't let paranoia spoil your trip.
I usually web-surf from work, and the naughty language filters are on the most maiden-auntish setting.
My boss has received automated warning emails from 'big brother', which has him listed as a gay pornographer because he visits sites with words like 'homogeneous' and 'sexadecimal'.
1. The Herald Sun is... how should I put this... not renowned for its high standards of journalistic integrity.
2. A hunter shoots a 'mythical beast', takes a photograph of the carcass (but not a very good photo, it's hard to tell WTF it is he's shot) and then only bothers to bring back the tail? Oh Puh-lease !
3. I've been hiking in places which really have big cats (national parks in South America) and the paw-prints and 'traces' (puma sh#t) are everywhere. If there was a population of big cats in Gippsland, we'd know about it.
There's nothing in his methodology that gives him the right to make that claim.
From TFA, all of the tracks in his test suite had the same artist and genre.
Now, the various theories I've heard about iPod/iTunes non-randomness involve it using the artist and/or genre to play sequences of 'related' songs. The test the author ran was explicitly designed to exclude that possibility, so what basis does he have for the 'trick of the mind' claim?
If I has $1 for every time some christian has said to me that all atheists must be amoral, because "without religion, there's no basis for morality" I could retire in luxury.
And yet, it turns out that patrons at a Christian CD shop are a thieving bunch of pirates.
There's a Christian bookshop nearby, sells mostly bibles and bible-study aids. They used to have a little trestle table out the front of the shop, with a display of the kind of thing you could buy inside, but they don't do it any more, as too much of the display stock was being stolen !
Meanwhile the nearby Science bookshop has very little trouble with thieves....
Unfortunately, a few months before my little accident, there was a story in the aussie press about a guy who accidentally encountered some child porn on the web, reported the web-site to the authorities, and had his complaint taken as a 'confession' to the crime of downloading and viewing child porn.
IIRC he ended up being aquitted, but still, his story has made me very cautious about over-zealous law enforcement droids.
A few years ago, I mis-typed the URL for a search engine, and ended up at a porn site that displayed images that I won't describe here, but I'm fairly sure they're illegal in my country. What's worse, it was one of those sites that opens up 2 new windows every time you shut one down, re-directs your browser home page, etc etc.
I was at work, and in no mood explain to my workmates why I had such images on screen, so I powered off the PC, disconnected the network plug, re-started the PC and cleaned things up while off the net.
Should I be charged with 'possessing child porn' ?
We're talking about a time when flowering plants were a relatively recent thing.
Todays bees may be highly adapted to feeding from flowers, but it's likely that those ancient bees were more versatile.
Perhaps they were able to fall back on some older feeding habits that weren't so easily disrupted by the loss of sunlight, tree sap? carrion feeding? Does anyone know what bees fed on before flowers existed?
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you fail to address the cause-and-effect.
I'm not just looking at one years strange weather and plucking a theory out of the air to explain it.
There's an unbroken chain of proven scientific fact that leads from increasing CO2 levels, to increased ocean temperatures, to increased incidence and severity of hurricanes.
If you want to refute the CO2 climate change theory, then you have to either...
1. Show that the weather isn't actually changing. (good luck, the statistics for global warming are very powerful - and this year's on track for another record)
or
2. Accept that it's happening, but produce some coherent argument for why the known greenhouse properties of CO2 are not the cause.
You've done neither, instead you persist in the "my granddad smoked a pack a day and never got cancer" water-muddying that the tobacco lobby was infamous for.
Then, as now, the only people who believed it were the addicts who really, really wanted to believe.
Thank you for so neatly illustrating the truth of my statement
... blah blah blah...
Various attempts to deny the science in this are depressingly like the tobacco industry trying to deny the link between smoking and cancer.
Throwing in a bunch of unconnected factoids (Africa is the driest place on earth? Africa is fscking big, and has a very diverse range of climates) in an attempt to muddy the water, and avoid the actual cause-and-effect argument, is exactly what the tobacco lobby did for decades.
Then
Health Researcher: Tobacco is a proven carcinogen, and smoking it is bad for your health
Big Tobacco: That's lab results in rats, you have no proof it happens in humans
HR: We have statistics proving that smokers have greatly increased risk of many diseases, exactly as you'd expect from our lab studies on rats
BT: That's just statistics, corelation doesn't prove causation, my granddad smoked a pack a day and lived to be 86, people were getting cancer in Europe before tobacco was brought back from the Americas.... blah blah blah...
Now
Climate Researcher: Our laboratory tests prove CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas, increasing levels of CO2 will cause global warming
Big Carbon: That's laboratory tests, there's no proof it's causing real changes in the climate
CR: We have statistics showing increased temperatures globally, increased incidence and severity of extreme weather events, etc...
BC: that's just statistics, corelation doesn't prove causation, people were getting killed in storms decades ago
Hurricane formation and intensity is very closely linked with ocean temperatures, for details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricanes#Formation.
Ocean temperatures have been rising, as predicted by climate change models.
Hurricane frequency has been increasing, as predicted by climate change models.
Hurricane intensity has been increasing, as predicted by climate change models.
There is no part of this chain of causality that isn't proven scientific fact.
Various attempts to deny the science in this are depressingly like the tobacco industry trying to deny the link between smoking and cancer.
... because we're going to need that money to pay for all the storm damage we've been getting lately...
'Twas 12 years ago, so any on-the-ground info I gave you would be hopelessly out of date by now.
General advice
--------------
1. Travel light.
2. Learn Spanish. It's not like the movies where everyone speaks English with a stage-mexican accent.
(Yes, Brazil is Portuguese speaking, but Spanish will still be a big help)
3. Travel light.
4. Don't take anything you're not prepared to have stolen.
5. Travel light.
6. Be careful, but don't let paranoia spoil your trip.
7. Travel light.
8. There is no rule number 8.
9. Travel light.
Force of habit.
I usually web-surf from work, and the naughty language filters are on the most maiden-auntish setting.
My boss has received automated warning emails from 'big brother', which has him listed as a gay pornographer because he visits sites with words like 'homogeneous' and 'sexadecimal'.
1. The Herald Sun is ... how should I put this... not renowned for its high standards of journalistic integrity.
2. A hunter shoots a 'mythical beast', takes a photograph of the carcass (but not a very good photo, it's hard to tell WTF it is he's shot) and then only bothers to bring back the tail?
Oh Puh-lease !
3. I've been hiking in places which really have big cats (national parks in South America) and the paw-prints and 'traces' (puma sh#t) are everywhere. If there was a population of big cats in Gippsland, we'd know about it.
Thanxs four thatt, eye'll fyx et.
That the decision to go Linux was made by his predecessor.
Looks like 'new manager' syndrome to me...
There's nothing in his methodology that gives him the right to make that claim.
From TFA, all of the tracks in his test suite had the same artist and genre.
Now, the various theories I've heard about iPod/iTunes non-randomness involve it using the artist and/or genre to play sequences of 'related' songs. The test the author ran was explicitly designed to exclude that possibility, so what basis does he have for the 'trick of the mind' claim?
If I has $1 for every time some christian has said to me that all atheists must be amoral, because "without religion, there's no basis for morality" I could retire in luxury.
And yet, it turns out that patrons at a Christian CD shop are a thieving bunch of pirates.
There's a Christian bookshop nearby, sells mostly bibles and bible-study aids. They used to have a little trestle table out the front of the shop, with a display of the kind of thing you could buy inside, but they don't do it any more, as too much of the display stock was being stolen !
Meanwhile the nearby Science bookshop has very little trouble with thieves....
I've done 3 IQ tests, 2 scored about the same, one was quite a bit less, I was having a bad day.
Now, can you think of any reason why a proportion of post-pubescent females might be having a 'bad day' ?
all those faded drapes ?
In a sane world, things would be as you describe.
Unfortunately, a few months before my little accident, there was a story in the aussie press about a guy who accidentally encountered some child porn on the web, reported the web-site to the authorities, and had his complaint taken as a 'confession' to the crime of downloading and viewing child porn.
IIRC he ended up being aquitted, but still, his story has made me very cautious about over-zealous law enforcement droids.
A few years ago, I mis-typed the URL for a search engine, and ended up at a porn site that displayed images that I won't describe here, but I'm fairly sure they're illegal in my country. What's worse, it was one of those sites that opens up 2 new windows every time you shut one down, re-directs your browser home page, etc etc.
I was at work, and in no mood explain to my workmates why I had such images on screen, so I powered off the PC, disconnected the network plug, re-started the PC and cleaned things up while off the net.
Should I be charged with 'possessing child porn' ?
... to the opinions of people who use words like 'mouses' ?
I just tried this with the calculator on my iMac (OS X 10.3.9), and got 9318.14
Um, no.
A more accurate summary of the above would bee....
"Buy into ITAA and let Miller tell the unpopular truth while you keep telling the popular lies"
I'd have to say that any attempt to get Glaswegians to eat healthily is doomed to failure. /me wanders off to eat a deep-fried Mars bar.
I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.
20 minutes to copy a 17 meg file??
What have you done to that mac?
On my home network, I can copy to my old G3/400 iMac across a slow (11 megabit) wireless link at 50 meg a minute. A local copy takes a few seconds.
... is a sure-fire way of transferring a few billion $ of taxpayers money into their own bank accounts.
I don't know if all you mac-heads remembered, but this guy used OFF THE SHELF components.
Actually no, he used a pre-release version of a motherboard that the manufacturers let him have because they wanted publicity.
Gary Larson (of 'The Far Side' fame) got an insect named after him, and last I heard he's still alive.
We're talking about a time when flowering plants were a relatively recent thing.
Todays bees may be highly adapted to feeding from flowers, but it's likely that those ancient bees were more versatile.
Perhaps they were able to fall back on some older feeding habits that weren't so easily disrupted by the loss of sunlight, tree sap? carrion feeding? Does anyone know what bees fed on before flowers existed?