They misrepresent the issue badly and it goes downhill from there. That article simply proves that academics have no clue either, and fail to apply critical thinking to the positions which are communicated to them.
How is Wharton wrong? Let's see:
- I work in DC, for a trade association, and around here it is called the Law of Unintended Consequences. It's a law because anything, including inaction, is guaranteed to have some unintended consequences. If avoiding unintended consequences was the bar for Congressional action nothing would ever get done. It is a content-free, all-purpose argument used to stall progress on any issue of your choice (witness: global warming).
- Congress has been making laws about telecommunications since at least 1934. It's a little late to argue that they shouldn't do anything. In fact the current mess is a direct result of the 1996 Telecomm Act and the Supreme Court's interpretation of it as announced last June. So let's not pretend that the Internet was free of regulation until now. In fact it has been heavily regulated from the very beginning, by Congress. It's a far more accurate view to say that Congress is considering unfucking Internet regulation, as opposed to saying that they are fucking it for the first time.
- One way the Internet was regulated was through the concept of "common carrier" which dates back to the 19th century and the development of the railroads. ISPs until recently were required to be neutral because their signals were all carried over telephone lines (the dial up era), which are subject to common carrier regs. The introduction of the cable modem raised the question of whether that infrastructure was common carrier, and the question of common carrier on cable networks was what the Supreme Court decided last June. They decided it does not apply, which would seem to allow cable networks to do whatever the fuck they want on their pipes.
- The current fuss is due to the ILECs (old telephone companies) demanding parity with the cable companies. They are asking Congress to re-write the 1996 Telecomm Act to give telephone companies the same freedom as cable companies. As a result anything the FCC says (their "4 assurances" included) is not worth two shits because the FCC can only implement the laws as written by Congress. They can promise you the moon today but if Congress gives it away then tough shit. DO NOT think that access to content is safe. If the cable and telephone companies get their way in the re-write, they will have the power to do whatever they want, including slow down or even block whatever content they feel like. Assurances from the FCC made now have no bearing on the issue, because the problem is in Congress, who overrides the FCC.
- The question of prioritizing new types of data, and companies like Akamai, are not related to the concept of net neutrality. Those are red herrings put up by the ISPs to distract and confuse. Net neutrality is about being content neutral not technology neutral. Net neutrality provisions, if written correctly, would allow the development of new services and routing technologies, but they would have to be based on technical factors, not content or originating IP. These proposals are out on the table but are ignored by the big ISPs in favor of manipulation, lying and distortion in an attempt to grab absolute power over what you can see and do on the Internet.
But, if somebody notices me using their access point, and comes out to tell me that it isn't allowed, or they call the cops and have them tell me it isn't allowed, that is different. I can longer assume that I have implicit permission to use that access point.
The question is whether the person who owns the access point has the legal authority to deny permission. If they do not, then no matter what they say you can still use the access point. For instance if you are grilling some burgers and the smell wafts into the street, you do not have the legal authority to tell me to move away and stop smelling it. You can't tell me to stop looking at your house from the street. In fact you can't even stop me from taking a picture of your house from the street. If your hose is running into the gutter, you can't stop me from washing my feet in the water.
Or rather, you can tell me all you want but it will not have any legal weight, and it won't be illegal for me to keep on doing it. It's not about whether you've given me permission, it is about my rights as a citizen on public land.
At that point, arresting the belligerent son of a bitch is probably perfectly justified.
Maybe emotionally, but thankfully that's not the basis for most of our laws.
As for your last paragraph, it is an interesting way of looking at it but again the question is whether it is the law. I do not believe that it is at this time. Wi Fi uses unregulated spectrum and devices must accept "interference" and cross traffic. Whether they are interoperable is not necessarily a legal factor. By analogy, it is not illegal for my family to use a channel and code on our Motorola Talkabout radios, even if it is the channel and code your family is trying to use at the same time, even if you own them and are using them on your property and we are out in the street. You bring up bandwidth but the real issue is access to the bandwidth. If you run a CAT5 cable out into the street, light it up and leave it there, am I breaking the law by plugging into it? The legal onus would seem to be on you to protect your service if you do not want it used. It's not like it is hard to protect WAPs from being accessed by the public.
Although long on analysis and thinking. I'll point out one single mistake as an example:
Mt St Helens, Mt Pinatubo and such released heat, particulates and "air pollution" within weeks that humans produce in years, so such events have impacts just as much as human activity.
This is wrong by about a factor of 10--human activity currently puts far more gases into the atmosphere per year than any volcano in recorded history. This is very possible to measure both by direct measurement of the gas output of the volcano, and by regular and distributed isotopic and mass balance analysis of the atmosphere.
Your post simply boils down to this: you realize that the climate is extremely complex and you can't imagine how it's possible to model something so complex. Unfortunately you don't seem to have any information or experience with the current state of the science, not to mention its progression over the past 30 years. We have much more data, and much better tools for analysis, than scientists in the 1970s, leading to much better understanding of the climate. And it gets better every year. While the complexity of the climate remains constant, our ability to gather and analyse data improves continuously--increasing the reliability of our models and conclusions.
They are changing their terminology simply because the general public did not get what they were saying. People hear "warming" and they think of spring and butterflies--sounds nice doesn't it?
But what it means in terms of climate is related to the true scientific meaning of the term temperature--a measure of the total energy in a system. "Warming" simply means that more and more energy is being stored by the system. Think of a fly wheel being spun up faster and faster.
EVERYONE agrees that the earth is not universally warming up (some areas are, and others are getting cooler)
Yeah, actually this has been understood from the very beginning. It's not exactly a revelation. When a system stores more energy, the oscillations of the system are like to become greater. Imagine that the flywheel is not well-balanced. The more energy you put into spinning it, the bigger the oscillations will be (both up and down). Now imagine trillions of those flywheels in one machine and you get an idea of the chaotic nature of what we're talking about. Scientists might not be able to predict when it will buck in a certain way, but they can predict an overall increase in activity.
they aren't even convinced anymore that the AVERAGE gloabl temperature will continue to steadily rise.
The annual mean temp rise steadily? Not steadily, no. But it looks like the mean delta over time is going to stay positive for a while.
What they DO agree upon is that the climate is CHANGING--they point to evidence of changing weather patterns and more "extreme weather"--we'll get more Katrina's in the Gulf of Mexico and huge, freezing blizzards in maritime Canada and expanding deserts in Africa.
Everything you just mentioned is driven by stored heat in the atmosphere and oceans. Change can't just happen, it has to be driven by something. In the climate that something is heat.
The general consensus is still that CO2 from human activity exacerbates the problem--it's just that scientists now cover their butts with more general terms like "climate change" because truthfully, NOBODY has a handle on what exactly is going to happen.
That's just not true. There are a ton of open-ended questions but you can build models based on the available data and produce approximations--think of the flywheel machine. Like all science you must qualify the precision of your results and not stretch beyond it (that's true when being critical as well). Luckily the system under study is enormous so even very imprecise results can indicate trends.
Also, you need to understand the physics of the reactions involved. It's not enough to say that CO2 is related to climate change, we need a cause and effect relationship. And there is one--a strong one actually--the "greenhouse effect."
which is significant becasue high-profile research organisations really hate to admit they don't know something
Where do you get that? The whole raison d'etre of high-profile research institutions is to ask the hard questions and seek answers. Their entire existence is based around what they don't know.
I stated a fact--there are proofs out there and if you're in the field you'll know how to find them. That is just a fact and it shouldn't be belittling unless you think less of people who are not scientists working in the field of climate research. I didn't "address your argument" because when it comes to climate science you didn't make any argument, you just spouted off some opinions without a) citing previous papers, b) quantitatively demonstrating why their arguments are incorrect, or c) proposing an alternate theory. And even if you had I'm not prepared to do that either, so the best I can do point you in the direction of people who are.
I'm not that interested in global warming as a cause to fight for, so I'm not a great person for you to debate. My crusade is against those who continue to misunderstand the way science works. If you believe the science is wrong and you want to engage, there is a clear structure for doing so. Random unsupported questions are pretty meaningless.
As for the power of the models to predict, yes, it's true, Hansen's seminal 1992 paper predicted the temperature effect of Pinatubo prior to it actually being measured. In addition he predicted increases in global mean temperature in the near term--also being observed since 1992. If you don't think so you're welcome to review his paper and the latest data (it's all publicly available), and publish a paper of your own.
And I'm not interested in a different view, I'm interested in the correct view. We're not debating gay marriage or flag burning. There's only one correct view, and the scientific method is the way it will be found. Realclimate is run by working, publishing scientists. Climateaudit is not.
BTW simply pointing out the complexity and difficulty of a task does not constitute a scientific argument. Everyone knows making real scientific progress is hard.
From the side of economics and policy. When economists and policymakers talk about the "cost" of fighting global warming, what they are actually calculating and referring to are the burdens placed on existing industries, as they exist today. They have a much harder time with two other aspects of the economy, though: very long-term costs (such as environmentally-driven health factors), and innovation that creates or radically transforms new industries. The former is just too difficult to estimate with any reliability, and the latter represents a "wall" of future change through which current knowledge and analysis cannot penetrate.
As such it is important to remain skeptical of the claims of the burdens related to fighting global warming. Regulatory and environmental constraints can harm existing industries, but they can also spur the development of new technologies and new industries, and thereby spur overall economic growth.
The real economic question is one of the pace of change. Large public companies concerned with quarterly earnings and stock price have a deep interest in managing the pace and nature of change, and they spend a lot of money in Washington and the states and the media in an attempt to do so. It is very difficult for large companies to change their business model; often impossible. They will expend huge capital to prevent or delay change that would require them to do so. Whereas disruptive, smaller companies--the great American entrepreneurs--prefer to move quickly in the market, innovating and growing as fast as they can.
Some corporations manage change very well. You can probably name some of them right off the top of your head--they're the ones who were advertising their "green" technologies on TV a year or two ago. Toyota, Honda, GE, BP, etc. There is proof around us, right now, that moving to a more energy-efficient society is economically beneficial. The companies leading the way are experiencing growth.
The left often gets caught up in the global social and scientific arguments--the "best" reasons for doing something. And, there is an underlying element of conservatism to much environmentalism--a desire for natural things to remain the way they are, or a desire for a return to the "good old days" of living in harmony with nature. Like most conservatism it is based as much on wishful thinking and emotion as it is on clear logic.
As a result they miss the tremendous economic argument FOR beginning a response to global warming. And they often miss the glaring precedents for government action. A great one is the mandated move to digital TV over the air. Here is a situation where the government identified a precious resource and regulated to enforce its conservation and more efficient use. Is anyone expecting this to cripple the TV industries? No of course not--everyone is going to have to buy new TV equipment (broadcast and consumer), and it represents an opportunity to design upsells--DVRs and HDTV. It's a classic example of government regulation spurring economic growth through innovation and transformation.
I don't have the proof in front of me, and frankly, I don't see how it's my responsibility to find it for you. It's in several published papers--if you're in the field you'll know how to find them. The models that are projecting increased temperatures--and pointing a finger at CO2 as an important forcing in that trend--are capable of simulating the temperature trends of the 20th century. In fact one even correctly predicted the affect of an eruption--confirmed by Pinatubo in 1991.
Of course if you were in the field you'd also know that there are many more forcings than just CO2 that affect the global mean temp. You'd also know that a chaotic systems don't respond linearly. You'd probably also know that although there have been cool years and hot years since the beginning of the 20th century, the overall delta to now is clearly positive. And presumably you'd understand that global trends are not local trends, therefore local anecdotes like the 1969 hurricane season do not prove or disprove global mean phenomena.
If you're not in the field, I recommend realclimate.org.
"Iran would be crazy NOT to develop nuclear weapons, assuming they look after their own best interests."
It takes years to develop a nuclear weapon; the U.S. has shown that it can attack and defeat an Iran-sized military in months.
I'm a U.S. citizen and did not support the invasion of Iraq because I thought it was clear they did not have a sizable WMD program (the UN inspectors found NOTHING for years) and so did not pose an immediate threat to the U.S.
A nuclear-armed Iran is different. If I knew Iran was on the verge of developing an atomic bomb for the express purpose of threatening the U.S., I would fully support war against them. And be assured that the U.S. would win that war faster than Iran could threaten the U.S. with nukes.
"We need a HUGE carrot or a gigantic stick to stop them."
We have both but they are not interested. Like a kid fascinated with his dad's gun safe, they are fixated on nuclear capability beyond logical reason.
"Is there anyone left on Earth who trusts anything the US Government has to say? You're more likely to get the truth from a damp sock. And usually more intelligent reasoning."
Libya has given up their nuclear ambitions in return for assurances and lifted sanctions from the U.S. By your reasoning they should have been going full-bore with a nukes program. But instead they sat down at the bargaining table and worked out an agreement.
The fact is many nations have aborted their nuclear ambitions through talks with the U.S. Brazil and Argentina are two that come to mind off the top of my head. Why? Because having nuclear weapons does not actually solve any problems, and it creates a whole new host of them. Libya came to understand this. Heck we now know that Saddam himself came to understand this--he dismantled his WMD programs in the late 90's.
Iran will hopefully come to understand this too. Because if they have nuclear weapons it does not avert a showdown with the U.S. over the future of the Middle East, it simply raises the stakes to much more dangerous level. You could think of Iran like a bullied kid who thinks bringing a gun to school will solve his problems. We all know it does not, in fact it multiplies them.
Your description of the U.S. fits perfectly with a certain image of the U.S. that is promulgated outside its borders, typically by those with little personal experience in the country. Let's see if this fits with your image of the U.S.--hospitals never refuse treatment to anyone. Did you know that? If you are sick or injured you will receive treatment. The only difference is that in the U.S., the ensuing bill has the name of a private company on it and reflects the treatment you received, while in the Canada, your bill is standardized, comes once a year, and says "CRA" on it.
"For the sake of ideology it seems, folks in the US are willing to stand by and watch people die..."
To those of us actually living in the U.S., this type of statement is so wrong it's laughable. Try this--provide me with some stats on how many people in the U.S. died last year because they were refused treatment for lack of payment.
That's where the abuse of science occurred. I totally agree with you that given an accurate understanding of her medical condition, the question of how to proceed is an ethic and moral question.
However many, including Sen. Frist, deliberately obscurred an accurate understanding of her medical condition by continuing to promote the idea that she had higher brain functions and/or could someday recover from her condition. That is why she is one of the examples above.
In fact in that way all the examples are similar: given a scientific understanding of a set of facts, the question of what we should do next is a human question and therefore has moral and ethical implications to it. The problem is that certain groups deliberately attempt to mis-inform the public about the science certain situations, in order to affect the eventual decisions. That's manipulative and wrong, and in the end, ineffectual. You can fool the masses for a while, but you can't fool mother nature.
The Baby Boom is getting ready to retire, which will reduce the size of the available American workforce by about 60 million over 10 years. You could bring in more workers but the public sentiment right now is against any immigration, let alone the massive immigration that would be needed. So companies outsource--they go find the workers since the workers can't come find them. The only other alternative is to shrink and die.
I've not heard such double-speak in a while, and so ineffective. No one is buying the bullshit, not Americans, not Google, not Rex Banner, not anyone.
Considering that Islam is one of the most popular and most fractured religions in the world, can you tell me how anyone can speak critically and frankly about the religion as whole? The only way it works is through stereotyping, assumptions, and straw men.
If you would like to speak critically about Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaida, the government of Saudi Arabia, the President of Iran, etc., be my guest. I will read happily. But that's not really about Islam is it? That is about specific people and groups. Once you try to extend your thoughts to encompass all of Islam as a whole--that's when the cross the line into hate speech. It would be like me being "critical and frank" about the religion of Christianity based on the predilection of certain Catholic priests for young boys. That's a foul ball and so is the crap that Google pulled.
Sure you can communicate around the world at 20MHz, but you can communicate around the world at many frequencies--provided you have enough power behind the signal.
There's no reason that this service couldn't be laid out exactly like the cell network, with the cell size being controlled by signal power. This is how footprints are controlled now--the operators must set their transmit power to attentuate to a certain level beyond the footprint for which they hold a license. The longer a signal carries (lower the frequency), the lower the transmit power must be set.
Also keep in mind the geographic obstacles to full coverage. In HAM if you don't reach exactly where you want, oh well. But if you are offering a "blanket" commercial service, you will need multiple towers to back-fill signal around physical obstructions like buildings, hills, etc. Even a 2Hz signal can't go through a mountain range.
"The Man Behind Hitler" airs today--the story of the Goebbels, Hitler's communications genius. The name of the series is "The American Experience," which these days seems horribly appropriate...
EVERYTHING is nanoparticulate in nature, including you.
Yes, clearly we are all made up of atoms and molecules, however only certain of those are free agents; most are bonded together into larger pieces.
With respect to the current discussion, we are not talking about cell-sized nanotech; we're talking about particulates the size of the compounds that pass in and out of cells. Many of these compounds, when produced in a free state outside the body, are regulated by the government already--we call them drugs.
Until recently, manufactured materials did not use particle sizes that were so small, so we did not have to worry about them the same way we worried about drugs. That has changed, and the regulations must change too. Compounds that are harmless at one particle size might be highly dangerous at another, because as you go down in size, some particles begin to exhibit new biochemical effects. These can either be because it fits through barriers that used to stop it, or because the surface shape of the particle enables additional reactivity.
Just because these particles are being chopped up and misced better does not by any means imply that they are unhealthy. Your skin does a pretty good job protecting you from nanoparticulate oils and debris from bacteria. Just because there is better organization at the nano scale does not mean that the nano-particles will cause any sort of damage.
Again this is just not true; there are plenty of compounds that are absorbed through the skin--ever hear of the nicotine or birth control patches? These powerful chemicals are directly absorbed though unbroken skin, and, coincedentally, regulated by the government. The skin of the respiratory or digestive tracks offer even less of a barrier. Particle size and morphology controls what gets through most barriers in the body--skin, cell wall, blood/brain, etc.
By placing a label on these products, consumers will irrationally be prejudiced against them. You should not do that to such a broad and beneficial industry. Mostly, these consumer groups do not understand the basic science. They just have a general technophobia and want to project that onto everyone else's lives.
This is absolutely ridiculous; even in the absence of any regulation, the free market requires accurate information to solve problems. Hiding the nature of products or their possible consequences is NOT a "free market" approach. Accurate information is the minimum required for the invisible hand to work. That can be accomplished by pre-emptive regulated communication, or it can be accomplished by the public and press after any possible negative consequences have already harmed a sizable number of people. As a potential consumer (and test subject) the former approach seems better to me.
Like anything, there should be health tests, but they should be data backed (as these are not). We can't assume that all these products are guilty until proven innocent.
As which are not? I don't get what you're referring to. The FDA is a research-driven organization, interested in accurate data. It has its flaws but so does any human enterprise--lack of perfection is hardly a good reason to completely dismiss something. And accurate communication of known risks is not a verdict of "guilty." Risks either exist or not; talking about them doesn't affect the biochemistry.
He says that Microsoft is too easily distracted by companies who are not competitors. Not competitors right now is more like it. 20 years ago Bell Atlantic and Cox Communications weren't competitors either, neither were Sony and Apple. Microsoft obviously sees something in Google that makes them think they WILL be a direct competitor in the future, even if they are only an oblique competitor now.
I can make a pretty good guess as to what that is--Google provides rich software as a service and they make money doing it. Microsoft has known for almost a decade now that the continual growth in networks will enable software to be provided as a service. And the continued increase in the acceptance of open source means that the perceived value of software as a product will continue to decrease...how much could the Office product be worth if 90% of the most-used functionality is available for $0.00? Meanwhile the greater sophistication and reliability of software means that replacement cycles are slowing down, and the ever-more-common use of updates and patches reinforces the service aspect to software.
When software is available as a service, the business model changes dramatically--it's not (just) a product sale anymore. So what does it become? On-demand, pay as needed? Monthly or annual subscription? Advertising supported? Google has gone with the latter, and they are making money with software services--effectively establishing themselves as threats to a future Microsoft direction.
For every recorded song there are 2 copyrights--the copyright to the music and the copyright to the individual recorded performance. It is very common for contracts with record labels to assign copyright for the unique recorded performance to the label. The artist still owns the music and is free to re-record that song or play it live for more money, but the version on the album belongs to the label. For that reason I think it's disengenuous to imply that only sucker bands "give up ownership of their music" for a "massive advance." It is more complicated than that. My brother's bands have put out several albums through labels and in each case there was no advance other than the recording and distribution costs. Their songs sell through iTunes and I can assure you that they don't make 70 cents per song sold. I'm pretty sure that in each case the performance copyright was assigned and the music copyright retained. They receive a set royalty percentage every time a copy of an album or song is purchased. But they do not have to seek the label's permission to perform the songs live.
...of assuming that because I point out the flaws of a president of one party I therefore consider presidents of the other party above reproach. Single-party rule is dangerous no matter what the party, and illegal is illegal--whether through a "deliberate program" or isolated infractions. So go ahead and quote signing statements all day if you want; my opinion of them will be based on their respective substance, not the political affiliation of the people who wrote them. You however seem fixated on the latter.
You ironically emphasize one part of the Constitution over another. Congress also cannot pass laws that supplant the Constitution so how could the Constitution bind the Executive branch to a law if it is in violation of the Constitution? If such a conflict exists then it becomes the role of the Judicial branch to resolve it.
The executive branch is not authorized to act legislatively AT ALL, whether affirmatively or negatively, whether within or without the bounds of the Consitutional power of legislation. That power is reserved solely for the Congress. Raising the limits of Congressional power in this discussion is a pure red herring--the topic is the limits on executive powers.
Signing statements that contravene legislative language are simply illegal--as illegal as the line-time veto which Clinton wielded and which was struck down. However the Judicial branch can only rule on the cases that come before them, which leads to my last point, that common political affiliation makes the necessary legal challenges much less likely to occur.
A court need not rule on an action for it to be illegal; if I shoot someone and never get caught or judged, it was still an illegal act. Don't think that just because the Supreme Court hasn't said it is illegal, it is therefore legal.
These are the same high-speed access ISPs who would want to charge Apple for "preferred speed" for providing content to consumers on their network. ISPs like BellSouth or SBC.
But with BitTorrent distribution it doesn't matter much if traffic originating from apple.com is slowed on the network, because the bulk of the actual file data is coming from hundreds of other servers, some of which probably from within the ISP's own netblock. Apple's Web page might load a bit more slowly but their heavy content (iTMS) would still download fast. Apple would be free to thumb their nose at the ISP's "preferred speed" extortion attempts.
Slashdot Mirror
They misrepresent the issue badly and it goes downhill from there. That article simply proves that academics have no clue either, and fail to apply critical thinking to the positions which are communicated to them.
How is Wharton wrong? Let's see:
- I work in DC, for a trade association, and around here it is called the Law of Unintended Consequences. It's a law because anything, including inaction, is guaranteed to have some unintended consequences. If avoiding unintended consequences was the bar for Congressional action nothing would ever get done. It is a content-free, all-purpose argument used to stall progress on any issue of your choice (witness: global warming).
- Congress has been making laws about telecommunications since at least 1934. It's a little late to argue that they shouldn't do anything. In fact the current mess is a direct result of the 1996 Telecomm Act and the Supreme Court's interpretation of it as announced last June. So let's not pretend that the Internet was free of regulation until now. In fact it has been heavily regulated from the very beginning, by Congress. It's a far more accurate view to say that Congress is considering unfucking Internet regulation, as opposed to saying that they are fucking it for the first time.
- One way the Internet was regulated was through the concept of "common carrier" which dates back to the 19th century and the development of the railroads. ISPs until recently were required to be neutral because their signals were all carried over telephone lines (the dial up era), which are subject to common carrier regs. The introduction of the cable modem raised the question of whether that infrastructure was common carrier, and the question of common carrier on cable networks was what the Supreme Court decided last June. They decided it does not apply, which would seem to allow cable networks to do whatever the fuck they want on their pipes.
- The current fuss is due to the ILECs (old telephone companies) demanding parity with the cable companies. They are asking Congress to re-write the 1996 Telecomm Act to give telephone companies the same freedom as cable companies. As a result anything the FCC says (their "4 assurances" included) is not worth two shits because the FCC can only implement the laws as written by Congress. They can promise you the moon today but if Congress gives it away then tough shit. DO NOT think that access to content is safe. If the cable and telephone companies get their way in the re-write, they will have the power to do whatever they want, including slow down or even block whatever content they feel like. Assurances from the FCC made now have no bearing on the issue, because the problem is in Congress, who overrides the FCC.
- The question of prioritizing new types of data, and companies like Akamai, are not related to the concept of net neutrality. Those are red herrings put up by the ISPs to distract and confuse. Net neutrality is about being content neutral not technology neutral. Net neutrality provisions, if written correctly, would allow the development of new services and routing technologies, but they would have to be based on technical factors, not content or originating IP. These proposals are out on the table but are ignored by the big ISPs in favor of manipulation, lying and distortion in an attempt to grab absolute power over what you can see and do on the Internet.
And guilty of waxing arrogant on a subject you obviously know very little about.
5 /02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-contr oversy/
Lest I be similarly accused, I'll just link to the actual experts.
May I suggest the "Dummies guide to the latest "Hockey Stick" controversy" by real actual working publishing scientists.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
But, if somebody notices me using their access point, and comes out to tell me that it isn't allowed, or they call the cops and have them tell me it isn't allowed, that is different. I can longer assume that I have implicit permission to use that access point.
The question is whether the person who owns the access point has the legal authority to deny permission. If they do not, then no matter what they say you can still use the access point. For instance if you are grilling some burgers and the smell wafts into the street, you do not have the legal authority to tell me to move away and stop smelling it. You can't tell me to stop looking at your house from the street. In fact you can't even stop me from taking a picture of your house from the street. If your hose is running into the gutter, you can't stop me from washing my feet in the water.
Or rather, you can tell me all you want but it will not have any legal weight, and it won't be illegal for me to keep on doing it. It's not about whether you've given me permission, it is about my rights as a citizen on public land.
At that point, arresting the belligerent son of a bitch is probably perfectly justified.
Maybe emotionally, but thankfully that's not the basis for most of our laws.
As for your last paragraph, it is an interesting way of looking at it but again the question is whether it is the law. I do not believe that it is at this time. Wi Fi uses unregulated spectrum and devices must accept "interference" and cross traffic. Whether they are interoperable is not necessarily a legal factor. By analogy, it is not illegal for my family to use a channel and code on our Motorola Talkabout radios, even if it is the channel and code your family is trying to use at the same time, even if you own them and are using them on your property and we are out in the street. You bring up bandwidth but the real issue is access to the bandwidth. If you run a CAT5 cable out into the street, light it up and leave it there, am I breaking the law by plugging into it? The legal onus would seem to be on you to protect your service if you do not want it used. It's not like it is hard to protect WAPs from being accessed by the public.
Although long on analysis and thinking. I'll point out one single mistake as an example:
Mt St Helens, Mt Pinatubo and such released heat, particulates and "air pollution" within weeks that humans produce in years, so such events have impacts just as much as human activity.
This is wrong by about a factor of 10--human activity currently puts far more gases into the atmosphere per year than any volcano in recorded history. This is very possible to measure both by direct measurement of the gas output of the volcano, and by regular and distributed isotopic and mass balance analysis of the atmosphere.
Your post simply boils down to this: you realize that the climate is extremely complex and you can't imagine how it's possible to model something so complex. Unfortunately you don't seem to have any information or experience with the current state of the science, not to mention its progression over the past 30 years. We have much more data, and much better tools for analysis, than scientists in the 1970s, leading to much better understanding of the climate. And it gets better every year. While the complexity of the climate remains constant, our ability to gather and analyse data improves continuously--increasing the reliability of our models and conclusions.
They are changing their terminology simply because the general public did not get what they were saying. People hear "warming" and they think of spring and butterflies--sounds nice doesn't it?
But what it means in terms of climate is related to the true scientific meaning of the term temperature--a measure of the total energy in a system. "Warming" simply means that more and more energy is being stored by the system. Think of a fly wheel being spun up faster and faster.
EVERYONE agrees that the earth is not universally warming up (some areas are, and others are getting cooler)
Yeah, actually this has been understood from the very beginning. It's not exactly a revelation. When a system stores more energy, the oscillations of the system are like to become greater. Imagine that the flywheel is not well-balanced. The more energy you put into spinning it, the bigger the oscillations will be (both up and down). Now imagine trillions of those flywheels in one machine and you get an idea of the chaotic nature of what we're talking about. Scientists might not be able to predict when it will buck in a certain way, but they can predict an overall increase in activity.
they aren't even convinced anymore that the AVERAGE gloabl temperature will continue to steadily rise.
The annual mean temp rise steadily? Not steadily, no. But it looks like the mean delta over time is going to stay positive for a while.
What they DO agree upon is that the climate is CHANGING--they point to evidence of changing weather patterns and more "extreme weather"--we'll get more Katrina's in the Gulf of Mexico and huge, freezing blizzards in maritime Canada and expanding deserts in Africa.
Everything you just mentioned is driven by stored heat in the atmosphere and oceans. Change can't just happen, it has to be driven by something. In the climate that something is heat.
The general consensus is still that CO2 from human activity exacerbates the problem--it's just that scientists now cover their butts with more general terms like "climate change" because truthfully, NOBODY has a handle on what exactly is going to happen.
That's just not true. There are a ton of open-ended questions but you can build models based on the available data and produce approximations--think of the flywheel machine. Like all science you must qualify the precision of your results and not stretch beyond it (that's true when being critical as well). Luckily the system under study is enormous so even very imprecise results can indicate trends.
Also, you need to understand the physics of the reactions involved. It's not enough to say that CO2 is related to climate change, we need a cause and effect relationship. And there is one--a strong one actually--the "greenhouse effect."
which is significant becasue high-profile research organisations really hate to admit they don't know something
Where do you get that? The whole raison d'etre of high-profile research institutions is to ask the hard questions and seek answers. Their entire existence is based around what they don't know.
I stated a fact--there are proofs out there and if you're in the field you'll know how to find them. That is just a fact and it shouldn't be belittling unless you think less of people who are not scientists working in the field of climate research. I didn't "address your argument" because when it comes to climate science you didn't make any argument, you just spouted off some opinions without a) citing previous papers, b) quantitatively demonstrating why their arguments are incorrect, or c) proposing an alternate theory. And even if you had I'm not prepared to do that either, so the best I can do point you in the direction of people who are.
I'm not that interested in global warming as a cause to fight for, so I'm not a great person for you to debate. My crusade is against those who continue to misunderstand the way science works. If you believe the science is wrong and you want to engage, there is a clear structure for doing so. Random unsupported questions are pretty meaningless.
As for the power of the models to predict, yes, it's true, Hansen's seminal 1992 paper predicted the temperature effect of Pinatubo prior to it actually being measured. In addition he predicted increases in global mean temperature in the near term--also being observed since 1992. If you don't think so you're welcome to review his paper and the latest data (it's all publicly available), and publish a paper of your own.
And I'm not interested in a different view, I'm interested in the correct view. We're not debating gay marriage or flag burning. There's only one correct view, and the scientific method is the way it will be found. Realclimate is run by working, publishing scientists. Climateaudit is not.
BTW simply pointing out the complexity and difficulty of a task does not constitute a scientific argument. Everyone knows making real scientific progress is hard.
From the side of economics and policy. When economists and policymakers talk about the "cost" of fighting global warming, what they are actually calculating and referring to are the burdens placed on existing industries, as they exist today. They have a much harder time with two other aspects of the economy, though: very long-term costs (such as environmentally-driven health factors), and innovation that creates or radically transforms new industries. The former is just too difficult to estimate with any reliability, and the latter represents a "wall" of future change through which current knowledge and analysis cannot penetrate.
As such it is important to remain skeptical of the claims of the burdens related to fighting global warming. Regulatory and environmental constraints can harm existing industries, but they can also spur the development of new technologies and new industries, and thereby spur overall economic growth.
The real economic question is one of the pace of change. Large public companies concerned with quarterly earnings and stock price have a deep interest in managing the pace and nature of change, and they spend a lot of money in Washington and the states and the media in an attempt to do so. It is very difficult for large companies to change their business model; often impossible. They will expend huge capital to prevent or delay change that would require them to do so. Whereas disruptive, smaller companies--the great American entrepreneurs--prefer to move quickly in the market, innovating and growing as fast as they can.
Some corporations manage change very well. You can probably name some of them right off the top of your head--they're the ones who were advertising their "green" technologies on TV a year or two ago. Toyota, Honda, GE, BP, etc. There is proof around us, right now, that moving to a more energy-efficient society is economically beneficial. The companies leading the way are experiencing growth.
The left often gets caught up in the global social and scientific arguments--the "best" reasons for doing something. And, there is an underlying element of conservatism to much environmentalism--a desire for natural things to remain the way they are, or a desire for a return to the "good old days" of living in harmony with nature. Like most conservatism it is based as much on wishful thinking and emotion as it is on clear logic.
As a result they miss the tremendous economic argument FOR beginning a response to global warming. And they often miss the glaring precedents for government action. A great one is the mandated move to digital TV over the air. Here is a situation where the government identified a precious resource and regulated to enforce its conservation and more efficient use. Is anyone expecting this to cripple the TV industries? No of course not--everyone is going to have to buy new TV equipment (broadcast and consumer), and it represents an opportunity to design upsells--DVRs and HDTV. It's a classic example of government regulation spurring economic growth through innovation and transformation.
I don't have the proof in front of me, and frankly, I don't see how it's my responsibility to find it for you. It's in several published papers--if you're in the field you'll know how to find them. The models that are projecting increased temperatures--and pointing a finger at CO2 as an important forcing in that trend--are capable of simulating the temperature trends of the 20th century. In fact one even correctly predicted the affect of an eruption--confirmed by Pinatubo in 1991.
Of course if you were in the field you'd also know that there are many more forcings than just CO2 that affect the global mean temp. You'd also know that a chaotic systems don't respond linearly. You'd probably also know that although there have been cool years and hot years since the beginning of the 20th century, the overall delta to now is clearly positive. And presumably you'd understand that global trends are not local trends, therefore local anecdotes like the 1969 hurricane season do not prove or disprove global mean phenomena.
If you're not in the field, I recommend realclimate.org.
"Iran would be crazy NOT to develop nuclear weapons, assuming they look after their own best interests."
It takes years to develop a nuclear weapon; the U.S. has shown that it can attack and defeat an Iran-sized military in months.
I'm a U.S. citizen and did not support the invasion of Iraq because I thought it was clear they did not have a sizable WMD program (the UN inspectors found NOTHING for years) and so did not pose an immediate threat to the U.S.
A nuclear-armed Iran is different. If I knew Iran was on the verge of developing an atomic bomb for the express purpose of threatening the U.S., I would fully support war against them. And be assured that the U.S. would win that war faster than Iran could threaten the U.S. with nukes.
"We need a HUGE carrot or a gigantic stick to stop them."
We have both but they are not interested. Like a kid fascinated with his dad's gun safe, they are fixated on nuclear capability beyond logical reason.
"Is there anyone left on Earth who trusts anything the US Government has to say? You're more likely to get the truth from a damp sock. And usually more intelligent reasoning."
Libya has given up their nuclear ambitions in return for assurances and lifted sanctions from the U.S. By your reasoning they should have been going full-bore with a nukes program. But instead they sat down at the bargaining table and worked out an agreement.
The fact is many nations have aborted their nuclear ambitions through talks with the U.S. Brazil and Argentina are two that come to mind off the top of my head. Why? Because having nuclear weapons does not actually solve any problems, and it creates a whole new host of them. Libya came to understand this. Heck we now know that Saddam himself came to understand this--he dismantled his WMD programs in the late 90's.
Iran will hopefully come to understand this too. Because if they have nuclear weapons it does not avert a showdown with the U.S. over the future of the Middle East, it simply raises the stakes to much more dangerous level. You could think of Iran like a bullied kid who thinks bringing a gun to school will solve his problems. We all know it does not, in fact it multiplies them.
Your description of the U.S. fits perfectly with a certain image of the U.S. that is promulgated outside its borders, typically by those with little personal experience in the country. Let's see if this fits with your image of the U.S.--hospitals never refuse treatment to anyone. Did you know that? If you are sick or injured you will receive treatment. The only difference is that in the U.S., the ensuing bill has the name of a private company on it and reflects the treatment you received, while in the Canada, your bill is standardized, comes once a year, and says "CRA" on it.
"For the sake of ideology it seems, folks in the US are willing to stand by and watch people die..."
To those of us actually living in the U.S., this type of statement is so wrong it's laughable. Try this--provide me with some stats on how many people in the U.S. died last year because they were refused treatment for lack of payment.
Smilla Jasperson was not available for comment.
That's where the abuse of science occurred. I totally agree with you that given an accurate understanding of her medical condition, the question of how to proceed is an ethic and moral question.
However many, including Sen. Frist, deliberately obscurred an accurate understanding of her medical condition by continuing to promote the idea that she had higher brain functions and/or could someday recover from her condition. That is why she is one of the examples above.
In fact in that way all the examples are similar: given a scientific understanding of a set of facts, the question of what we should do next is a human question and therefore has moral and ethical implications to it. The problem is that certain groups deliberately attempt to mis-inform the public about the science certain situations, in order to affect the eventual decisions. That's manipulative and wrong, and in the end, ineffectual. You can fool the masses for a while, but you can't fool mother nature.
The Baby Boom is getting ready to retire, which will reduce the size of the available American workforce by about 60 million over 10 years. You could bring in more workers but the public sentiment right now is against any immigration, let alone the massive immigration that would be needed. So companies outsource--they go find the workers since the workers can't come find them. The only other alternative is to shrink and die.
I've not heard such double-speak in a while, and so ineffective. No one is buying the bullshit, not Americans, not Google, not Rex Banner, not anyone.
Considering that Islam is one of the most popular and most fractured religions in the world, can you tell me how anyone can speak critically and frankly about the religion as whole? The only way it works is through stereotyping, assumptions, and straw men.
If you would like to speak critically about Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaida, the government of Saudi Arabia, the President of Iran, etc., be my guest. I will read happily. But that's not really about Islam is it? That is about specific people and groups. Once you try to extend your thoughts to encompass all of Islam as a whole--that's when the cross the line into hate speech. It would be like me being "critical and frank" about the religion of Christianity based on the predilection of certain Catholic priests for young boys. That's a foul ball and so is the crap that Google pulled.
Sure you can communicate around the world at 20MHz, but you can communicate around the world at many frequencies--provided you have enough power behind the signal.
There's no reason that this service couldn't be laid out exactly like the cell network, with the cell size being controlled by signal power. This is how footprints are controlled now--the operators must set their transmit power to attentuate to a certain level beyond the footprint for which they hold a license. The longer a signal carries (lower the frequency), the lower the transmit power must be set.
Also keep in mind the geographic obstacles to full coverage. In HAM if you don't reach exactly where you want, oh well. But if you are offering a "blanket" commercial service, you will need multiple towers to back-fill signal around physical obstructions like buildings, hills, etc. Even a 2Hz signal can't go through a mountain range.
"The Man Behind Hitler" airs today--the story of the Goebbels, Hitler's communications genius. The name of the series is "The American Experience," which these days seems horribly appropriate...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goebbels/index.html
EVERYTHING is nanoparticulate in nature, including you.
Yes, clearly we are all made up of atoms and molecules, however only certain of those are free agents; most are bonded together into larger pieces.
With respect to the current discussion, we are not talking about cell-sized nanotech; we're talking about particulates the size of the compounds that pass in and out of cells. Many of these compounds, when produced in a free state outside the body, are regulated by the government already--we call them drugs.
Until recently, manufactured materials did not use particle sizes that were so small, so we did not have to worry about them the same way we worried about drugs. That has changed, and the regulations must change too. Compounds that are harmless at one particle size might be highly dangerous at another, because as you go down in size, some particles begin to exhibit new biochemical effects. These can either be because it fits through barriers that used to stop it, or because the surface shape of the particle enables additional reactivity.
Just because these particles are being chopped up and misced better does not by any means imply that they are unhealthy. Your skin does a pretty good job protecting you from nanoparticulate oils and debris from bacteria. Just because there is better organization at the nano scale does not mean that the nano-particles will cause any sort of damage.
Again this is just not true; there are plenty of compounds that are absorbed through the skin--ever hear of the nicotine or birth control patches? These powerful chemicals are directly absorbed though unbroken skin, and, coincedentally, regulated by the government. The skin of the respiratory or digestive tracks offer even less of a barrier. Particle size and morphology controls what gets through most barriers in the body--skin, cell wall, blood/brain, etc.
By placing a label on these products, consumers will irrationally be prejudiced against them. You should not do that to such a broad and beneficial industry. Mostly, these consumer groups do not understand the basic science. They just have a general technophobia and want to project that onto everyone else's lives.
This is absolutely ridiculous; even in the absence of any regulation, the free market requires accurate information to solve problems. Hiding the nature of products or their possible consequences is NOT a "free market" approach. Accurate information is the minimum required for the invisible hand to work. That can be accomplished by pre-emptive regulated communication, or it can be accomplished by the public and press after any possible negative consequences have already harmed a sizable number of people. As a potential consumer (and test subject) the former approach seems better to me.
Like anything, there should be health tests, but they should be data backed (as these are not). We can't assume that all these products are guilty until proven innocent.
As which are not? I don't get what you're referring to. The FDA is a research-driven organization, interested in accurate data. It has its flaws but so does any human enterprise--lack of perfection is hardly a good reason to completely dismiss something. And accurate communication of known risks is not a verdict of "guilty." Risks either exist or not; talking about them doesn't affect the biochemistry.
I've been screaming this for nearly a decade.
All that screaming...maybe that's why no one listened to you?
I know it is. In fact that was my point.
He says that Microsoft is too easily distracted by companies who are not competitors. Not competitors right now is more like it. 20 years ago Bell Atlantic and Cox Communications weren't competitors either, neither were Sony and Apple. Microsoft obviously sees something in Google that makes them think they WILL be a direct competitor in the future, even if they are only an oblique competitor now.
I can make a pretty good guess as to what that is--Google provides rich software as a service and they make money doing it. Microsoft has known for almost a decade now that the continual growth in networks will enable software to be provided as a service. And the continued increase in the acceptance of open source means that the perceived value of software as a product will continue to decrease...how much could the Office product be worth if 90% of the most-used functionality is available for $0.00? Meanwhile the greater sophistication and reliability of software means that replacement cycles are slowing down, and the ever-more-common use of updates and patches reinforces the service aspect to software.
When software is available as a service, the business model changes dramatically--it's not (just) a product sale anymore. So what does it become? On-demand, pay as needed? Monthly or annual subscription? Advertising supported? Google has gone with the latter, and they are making money with software services--effectively establishing themselves as threats to a future Microsoft direction.
For every recorded song there are 2 copyrights--the copyright to the music and the copyright to the individual recorded performance. It is very common for contracts with record labels to assign copyright for the unique recorded performance to the label. The artist still owns the music and is free to re-record that song or play it live for more money, but the version on the album belongs to the label. For that reason I think it's disengenuous to imply that only sucker bands "give up ownership of their music" for a "massive advance." It is more complicated than that. My brother's bands have put out several albums through labels and in each case there was no advance other than the recording and distribution costs. Their songs sell through iTunes and I can assure you that they don't make 70 cents per song sold. I'm pretty sure that in each case the performance copyright was assigned and the music copyright retained. They receive a set royalty percentage every time a copy of an album or song is purchased. But they do not have to seek the label's permission to perform the songs live.
...of assuming that because I point out the flaws of a president of one party I therefore consider presidents of the other party above reproach. Single-party rule is dangerous no matter what the party, and illegal is illegal--whether through a "deliberate program" or isolated infractions. So go ahead and quote signing statements all day if you want; my opinion of them will be based on their respective substance, not the political affiliation of the people who wrote them. You however seem fixated on the latter.
You ironically emphasize one part of the Constitution over another. Congress also cannot pass laws that supplant the Constitution so how could the Constitution bind the Executive branch to a law if it is in violation of the Constitution? If such a conflict exists then it becomes the role of the Judicial branch to resolve it.
The executive branch is not authorized to act legislatively AT ALL, whether affirmatively or negatively, whether within or without the bounds of the Consitutional power of legislation. That power is reserved solely for the Congress. Raising the limits of Congressional power in this discussion is a pure red herring--the topic is the limits on executive powers.
Signing statements that contravene legislative language are simply illegal--as illegal as the line-time veto which Clinton wielded and which was struck down. However the Judicial branch can only rule on the cases that come before them, which leads to my last point, that common political affiliation makes the necessary legal challenges much less likely to occur.
A court need not rule on an action for it to be illegal; if I shoot someone and never get caught or judged, it was still an illegal act. Don't think that just because the Supreme Court hasn't said it is illegal, it is therefore legal.
These are the same high-speed access ISPs who would want to charge Apple for "preferred speed" for providing content to consumers on their network. ISPs like BellSouth or SBC.
But with BitTorrent distribution it doesn't matter much if traffic originating from apple.com is slowed on the network, because the bulk of the actual file data is coming from hundreds of other servers, some of which probably from within the ISP's own netblock. Apple's Web page might load a bit more slowly but their heavy content (iTMS) would still download fast. Apple would be free to thumb their nose at the ISP's "preferred speed" extortion attempts.