And you could also point out that the guy in India can't do what you can. If you manage to make that point clear to your boss, demand a raise while you're at it.
I think you're misunderstanding what they are doing. They are not studying in-the-wild worms. They are trying to build theoretical models of botnets and how they propagate through networks--this is the equivalent of computer simulations of viral epidemics. You don't need to simulate what the virus does in a person to study how it spreads through a population.
Long Answer: All of your rhetorical questions are beside the point (in terms of the current law--if you're simply criticizing the law, then they are more relevant). The law doesn't distinguish between distributing a whole copy or part of a copy--because every part of the work is copyrighted, the amount you distribute has nothing to do with whether or not you've distributed copyrighted material.
Is this a good law? Not really. But I think copyright law is borked from top to bottom, and that this is a minor flaw compared to the bigger issues.
If it is as complicated and debatable as you claim surely there is a lot of room for warming to, in fact, improve agricultural yields. Seems quite likely, in fact, if we consider historical vegetation growth to be any indication.
Change is not bad, but disruptive change can be difficult.
Climate change will very likely increase yields in some areas, and decrease them in others. Whether on the whole this is a total gain or loss I don't know. BUT if the decrease takes place in current agricultural zones there will be massive disruption. Disruption of food production means famine. Famine means death.
Even if in the long term (say, decades) agricultural resources can be reallocated to new, improved arable lands in temperate zones, there will still be short term starvation.
My primary point is that we simply need to be prepared for the changes that are taking place (regardless of what caused them). Regardless of whether we want to cut emissions (which is an entirely separate issue), we should be studying and preparing for potential disruption to our food supplies.
History is littered with the corpses of societies felled by ecological disruption and mismanagement. None of those destroyed humanity. But they all killed a lot of people. It's not something we should blithely ignore.
Ah, now I see you weren't going for satire. Unfortunate.
You have such a potty mouth. Your mother should have taught you to behave better.
Yes, warm climates are better than cold. But too warm, and the plants simply die. Too dry and they die. Too much salt and they die.
That climate changes in equatorial regions threaten to severely damage agriculture in those areas is well documented. Of course, this does not make it true, but it does make it something to be concerned about, and most importantly, something we should prepare for.
When we have evidence that an influenza pandemic is coming what do we do? We stockpile Tamiflu and vaccines. Not because the pandemic WILL happen, but because it is better to be prepared.
When we have evidence that global agriculture will be severely disrupted (even if, in the long term, agricultural resources can be reallocated to compensate), we should be preparing for it.
There's no evidence whatsoever that the climate is changing in a way that would damage our yields on a global scale
You've made far too strong a blanket statement here. There is significant evidence that current major agricultural regions will be adversely impacted by changing rainfall and rising temperatures (again, that is IF the projections are true, which they may very well not be). There is some evidence to suggest that new agricultural regions will open up in the process (if those same projections are still true).
However, even if total arable land increased (which some studies suggest is likely as areas like Siberia and Northern Canada thaw), the short term (short term here could mean decades) disruption until agricultural resources could be reallocated could still cause widespread famine.
There's a lot of quite convincing evidence on the contrary, feel free to google for biomass increase over the last couple decades.
Yes, but what kind of biomass? Not all biomass is equal in the eyes of human sustenance, and not all forms of biomass react the same way to changing CO2 and temperature.
Apart from evidence, I urge everyone to use basic logic, for a start. CO2 + heat = greenhouse. It's a fricking greenhouse effect, is it not? The crops grow best fricking where? What do you build to increase your yield from a square mile?:P
This is silly. "Basic logic" as you call it, seems to be short hand for "simplistic preconceived notions." Maybe you were going for satire, and +5 Funny? In which case, you may ignore me.
Greenhouses are used in places where it is too cold to grow a certain crop outdoors. You would never use a greenhouse in an area where it is already warm enough to grow that crop.
Large portions of Africa and South America are already at the limits of the temperature that some crops can grow there. If the temperature rises enough, yields will fall sharply. Increasing desertification in the sahel will further damage yields. Salt water flooding in low-lying areas of south east Asia will damage rice yields. The reasons to be concerned about the threat to agriculture (even if, as I said before, enough arable land is opened up in temperate climates to compensate in the long term) are well documented.
I'm not part of the eco movement. Not by a long shot.
If you read my posts (referring to the greater body of my collected/. rantings, and I'm not implying that I expect you to because honestly, why would you (or anyone)?) you'd see that I have consistently maintained the same position.
I could have spent 30 min explaining my view on epistemology, what I consider to be an acceptable standard of proof, etc. I didn't because it would have been a waste of time:
. But don't be a fool. Question everything. Make sure "right" thing is indeed the right thing. Make sure again. That's the spirit of science. Newton's laws of mechanics is what it is today because it survived so many tests.
This is the cliff notes version of what I would have written. That you felt the need to tell me it only further convinces me that interacting with other humans is a waste of time, because they never fail to misunderstand each other. But that is a whole other thing I could spend more time than necessary on.
My advice, in line with yours, is to apply it to the boxes that you stick on people when you are talking to them (advice I should take myself, I try, but no one is perfect, and it certainly seems to run contrary to human nature). People do not fit into the neat boxes we like to imagine they do. Just because they said one thing doesn't mean they think the unrelated thing you (or I) assume they do.
You seem to be making a case that the earth is overpopulated. And, by extension, we are poisoning ourselves with our waste products. If so, I'll have to point out that this is indeed a natural process. Check out any laboratory with cultures of bacteria.
IF the worst case climate change scenarios are true, then yes that is how I would describe it. And yes, it is a common natural phenomenon. It is still not in our best interest for that to happen. HOWEVER I am not convinced that the worst case scenarios are true--I'm not convinced they aren't true either--I'm fully skeptical on the matter, I just don't know (and no, I don't reflexively trust simplistic surveys of experts--and I unfortunately don't have time to review the extensive literature on the subject, so I will remain skeptical either way).
Meanwhile - I have to point out that the GP's post seems to have gone over your head, or at least you dismiss his reasoning. The earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past. In fact, the earth has warmed and cooled within recent prehistory. That heating and cooling has taken place despite man's presence, and there is limited and tainted evidence to support the idea that man is causing global warming.
I'm not dismissing it at all. I think it is a valid point (I'm also not certain he was addressing it that seriously). But I think it is a mistake to generalize past history where the human population was less than 1 part in 1 thousand, and more importantly division of labour was minimal, to the present.
10,000 years ago nearly every living human was engaged in procuring the necessities of life for themselves.
5,000 years ago we invented civilization--some people grow food, others build houses, others sell used cars. Civilization inherently rests on the presumption that a subset of the population can provide enough food for the entire population.
I'm NOT saying that climate change will make that impossible, but I am saying that the threat is that it MIGHT do so, and that the mere fact that mankind survived climate change in the past doesn't mean that we can support nearly 7 billion people in the future if the climate changes in ways that damage agricultural yields.
Please understand, I'm very (philosophically) skeptical on the matter. I'm not committing to one conclusion or the other (because, frankly, there is not enough data in my hands (key phrase that, in my hands) to prove anything). I am simply explaining the possibilities, the reason (that I think) one should be concerned about them, and cautioning AGAINST jumping to either conclusion without doing the proper, scientific (epistemologically speaking) due diligence.
There are multiple places where man has left artifacts that are now being uncovered by melting glaciers. One story in South America shows that previously cultivated land is being exposed. (Sorry, it's late, I'm lazy, google it yourself if you're really interested)
The fact that there are more people today than at any time in history or prehistory may or may not have an impact on global warming. Fossil fuels probably have an impact, but it probably isn't as great an impact as the alarmists would like us to believe.
First thing: The physics of the greenhouse effect are not disputable (not accusing you of not knowing this, I'm simply placing it into the record of our discussion). If you increase the portion of carbon dioxide in a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide the mixture's opacity in the infra-red rises. This is experimentally, and theoretically (from quantum mechanics) verifiable.
Rising atmospheric opacity makes it harder for the incoming heat from the sun to escape out into space. ONE WAY to restore the energy input/output balance is to raise the surface temperature of the atmosphere. It is however, NOT the only way, and that is where there is ample room for discussion, debate and
Your knee-jerk reaction, suspecting alterior motive, is the reason why I call you a zealot.
Suspecting ulterior motive....
The whole point of the line you quoted was my acknowledging the exact opposite of what you're accusing me of claiming--that the OP may very well be a reasonable person who did not imply what I saw in his post...he may have just been humorously musing on the juxtaposition, as he put it. In fact, I think this is probably what happened.
I don't think 'suspecting' means what you think it means. Unless you meant to say I suspected he DIDN'T have an ulterior motive, which would be closer to reality.
The strawman I'm referring to is the idea that just because the climate has changed in the past (which it obviously has, including drastic changes in recent history having nothing to do with the industrial revolution--the Little Ice Age in the 12th-13th centuries, surprisingly cold years in the 19th century in Europe, etc.) means that climate change in the future is no danger. On reflection, this isn't really a strawman argument (though it does sometimes function as a component of one, but that isn't relevant). But it is a fallacy. I was explaining why it was a fallacy.
As I said in the opening line of my original post, I suspected the OP didn't mean to imply that. But there are people who think that, so I felt that it would be beneficial to the overall discussion to explain why it is a fallacy.
Where did I go crazy? Where did I call him a denier? Where am I a zealot? Please point out the zealotry.
The whole point of the line you quoted was my acknowledging the exact opposite of what you're accusing me of claiming--that the OP may very well be a reasonable person who did not imply what I saw in his post.
My concern however was that other people would see the implication and think it was a valid point (again, a point the OP may very well never have even thought of, he may have just been humorously musing on the juxtaposition, as he put it. In fact, I think this is probably what happened.)
The only one name calling here is you, since you seem to think that I am a "global-warming zealot," when nothing could be further from the truth. I could spend the next thirty minutes of my time explaining my actual opinion on the matter, but it isn't relevant to my point which is: Pot, meet kettle.
(Okay, that was a bit of name-calling by me, but I'm only being cheeky, not vindictive--the thought popped into my head and talking kitchenware amuses me. May it amuse you too.)
Oh to be so naive. Having large portions of your electorate wiped out is so much more politically convenient than having them alive. Unites the survivors under your banner quite nicely.
He already couldn't tell the difference between m and MP as units, so please don't confuse him further. I don't want to have to clean his exploded head off the internet.
I don't know if you intended the strawman or not, but allow me to debunk it anyway.
Yes, humans have lived in warmer climates with less glaciers, and colder climates with more glaciers.
There were also a hell of a lot less of them.
The danger of global warming/climate change has never been a threat to the overall existence of humanity (aside from ranting hyperbolic morons). It is however a threat to the maintenance of modern civilization if it causes enough damage to agricultural yields (whether or not it will do this is debatable, and very very complicated).
Moreover, with Bittorrent, there is no distinction. Downloaders are uploaders (unless you set your client not to upload, but expect angry torrenters with pitchforks outside your window for being a leech).
Slashdot Mirror
In Soviet Russia Mafia gets whacked by You!
And you could also point out that the guy in India can't do what you can. If you manage to make that point clear to your boss, demand a raise while you're at it.
Your boss is a shithead. I'd jump ship at the first good offer.
Because the mods can't tell whether or not he's satirising the point? The last bit makes for mixed messages you must admit.
They're just ripping off the Economist who had a whole series on this more than a year ago. Typical journalistic plagiarism, nothing to see here.
I think you're misunderstanding what they are doing. They are not studying in-the-wild worms. They are trying to build theoretical models of botnets and how they propagate through networks--this is the equivalent of computer simulations of viral epidemics. You don't need to simulate what the virus does in a person to study how it spreads through a population.
Short Answer: Yes.
Long Answer: All of your rhetorical questions are beside the point (in terms of the current law--if you're simply criticizing the law, then they are more relevant). The law doesn't distinguish between distributing a whole copy or part of a copy--because every part of the work is copyrighted, the amount you distribute has nothing to do with whether or not you've distributed copyrighted material.
Is this a good law? Not really. But I think copyright law is borked from top to bottom, and that this is a minor flaw compared to the bigger issues.
So, in summary, change is bad.
If it is as complicated and debatable as you claim surely there is a lot of room for warming to, in fact, improve agricultural yields. Seems quite likely, in fact, if we consider historical vegetation growth to be any indication.
Change is not bad, but disruptive change can be difficult.
Climate change will very likely increase yields in some areas, and decrease them in others. Whether on the whole this is a total gain or loss I don't know. BUT if the decrease takes place in current agricultural zones there will be massive disruption. Disruption of food production means famine. Famine means death.
Even if in the long term (say, decades) agricultural resources can be reallocated to new, improved arable lands in temperate zones, there will still be short term starvation.
My primary point is that we simply need to be prepared for the changes that are taking place (regardless of what caused them). Regardless of whether we want to cut emissions (which is an entirely separate issue), we should be studying and preparing for potential disruption to our food supplies.
History is littered with the corpses of societies felled by ecological disruption and mismanagement. None of those destroyed humanity. But they all killed a lot of people. It's not something we should blithely ignore.
Nah, that only matters if too many of them figure it out.
Ah, now I see you weren't going for satire. Unfortunate.
You have such a potty mouth. Your mother should have taught you to behave better.
Yes, warm climates are better than cold. But too warm, and the plants simply die. Too dry and they die. Too much salt and they die.
That climate changes in equatorial regions threaten to severely damage agriculture in those areas is well documented. Of course, this does not make it true, but it does make it something to be concerned about, and most importantly, something we should prepare for.
When we have evidence that an influenza pandemic is coming what do we do? We stockpile Tamiflu and vaccines. Not because the pandemic WILL happen, but because it is better to be prepared.
When we have evidence that global agriculture will be severely disrupted (even if, in the long term, agricultural resources can be reallocated to compensate), we should be preparing for it.
There's no evidence whatsoever that the climate is changing in a way that would damage our yields on a global scale
You've made far too strong a blanket statement here. There is significant evidence that current major agricultural regions will be adversely impacted by changing rainfall and rising temperatures (again, that is IF the projections are true, which they may very well not be). There is some evidence to suggest that new agricultural regions will open up in the process (if those same projections are still true).
However, even if total arable land increased (which some studies suggest is likely as areas like Siberia and Northern Canada thaw), the short term (short term here could mean decades) disruption until agricultural resources could be reallocated could still cause widespread famine.
There's a lot of quite convincing evidence on the contrary, feel free to google for biomass increase over the last couple decades.
Yes, but what kind of biomass? Not all biomass is equal in the eyes of human sustenance, and not all forms of biomass react the same way to changing CO2 and temperature.
Apart from evidence, I urge everyone to use basic logic, for a start. CO2 + heat = greenhouse. It's a fricking greenhouse effect, is it not? The crops grow best fricking where? What do you build to increase your yield from a square mile? :P
This is silly. "Basic logic" as you call it, seems to be short hand for "simplistic preconceived notions." Maybe you were going for satire, and +5 Funny? In which case, you may ignore me.
Greenhouses are used in places where it is too cold to grow a certain crop outdoors. You would never use a greenhouse in an area where it is already warm enough to grow that crop.
Large portions of Africa and South America are already at the limits of the temperature that some crops can grow there. If the temperature rises enough, yields will fall sharply. Increasing desertification in the sahel will further damage yields. Salt water flooding in low-lying areas of south east Asia will damage rice yields. The reasons to be concerned about the threat to agriculture (even if, as I said before, enough arable land is opened up in temperate climates to compensate in the long term) are well documented.
I'm not part of the eco movement. Not by a long shot.
If you read my posts (referring to the greater body of my collected /. rantings, and I'm not implying that I expect you to because honestly, why would you (or anyone)?) you'd see that I have consistently maintained the same position.
I could have spent 30 min explaining my view on epistemology, what I consider to be an acceptable standard of proof, etc. I didn't because it would have been a waste of time:
. But don't be a fool. Question everything. Make sure "right" thing is indeed the right thing. Make sure again. That's the spirit of science. Newton's laws of mechanics is what it is today because it survived so many tests.
This is the cliff notes version of what I would have written. That you felt the need to tell me it only further convinces me that interacting with other humans is a waste of time, because they never fail to misunderstand each other. But that is a whole other thing I could spend more time than necessary on.
My advice, in line with yours, is to apply it to the boxes that you stick on people when you are talking to them (advice I should take myself, I try, but no one is perfect, and it certainly seems to run contrary to human nature). People do not fit into the neat boxes we like to imagine they do. Just because they said one thing doesn't mean they think the unrelated thing you (or I) assume they do.
Hmm...this is like asking me to choose between being lynched or executed.
You seem to be making a case that the earth is overpopulated. And, by extension, we are poisoning ourselves with our waste products. If so, I'll have to point out that this is indeed a natural process. Check out any laboratory with cultures of bacteria.
IF the worst case climate change scenarios are true, then yes that is how I would describe it. And yes, it is a common natural phenomenon. It is still not in our best interest for that to happen. HOWEVER I am not convinced that the worst case scenarios are true--I'm not convinced they aren't true either--I'm fully skeptical on the matter, I just don't know (and no, I don't reflexively trust simplistic surveys of experts--and I unfortunately don't have time to review the extensive literature on the subject, so I will remain skeptical either way).
Meanwhile - I have to point out that the GP's post seems to have gone over your head, or at least you dismiss his reasoning. The earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past. In fact, the earth has warmed and cooled within recent prehistory. That heating and cooling has taken place despite man's presence, and there is limited and tainted evidence to support the idea that man is causing global warming.
I'm not dismissing it at all. I think it is a valid point (I'm also not certain he was addressing it that seriously). But I think it is a mistake to generalize past history where the human population was less than 1 part in 1 thousand, and more importantly division of labour was minimal, to the present.
10,000 years ago nearly every living human was engaged in procuring the necessities of life for themselves.
5,000 years ago we invented civilization--some people grow food, others build houses, others sell used cars. Civilization inherently rests on the presumption that a subset of the population can provide enough food for the entire population.
I'm NOT saying that climate change will make that impossible, but I am saying that the threat is that it MIGHT do so, and that the mere fact that mankind survived climate change in the past doesn't mean that we can support nearly 7 billion people in the future if the climate changes in ways that damage agricultural yields.
Please understand, I'm very (philosophically) skeptical on the matter. I'm not committing to one conclusion or the other (because, frankly, there is not enough data in my hands (key phrase that, in my hands) to prove anything). I am simply explaining the possibilities, the reason (that I think) one should be concerned about them, and cautioning AGAINST jumping to either conclusion without doing the proper, scientific (epistemologically speaking) due diligence.
There are multiple places where man has left artifacts that are now being uncovered by melting glaciers. One story in South America shows that previously cultivated land is being exposed. (Sorry, it's late, I'm lazy, google it yourself if you're really interested)
The fact that there are more people today than at any time in history or prehistory may or may not have an impact on global warming. Fossil fuels probably have an impact, but it probably isn't as great an impact as the alarmists would like us to believe.
First thing: The physics of the greenhouse effect are not disputable (not accusing you of not knowing this, I'm simply placing it into the record of our discussion). If you increase the portion of carbon dioxide in a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide the mixture's opacity in the infra-red rises. This is experimentally, and theoretically (from quantum mechanics) verifiable.
Rising atmospheric opacity makes it harder for the incoming heat from the sun to escape out into space. ONE WAY to restore the energy input/output balance is to raise the surface temperature of the atmosphere. It is however, NOT the only way, and that is where there is ample room for discussion, debate and
Your knee-jerk reaction, suspecting alterior motive, is the reason why I call you a zealot.
Suspecting ulterior motive....
The whole point of the line you quoted was my acknowledging the exact opposite of what you're accusing me of claiming--that the OP may very well be a reasonable person who did not imply what I saw in his post...he may have just been humorously musing on the juxtaposition, as he put it. In fact, I think this is probably what happened.
I don't think 'suspecting' means what you think it means. Unless you meant to say I suspected he DIDN'T have an ulterior motive, which would be closer to reality.
The strawman I'm referring to is the idea that just because the climate has changed in the past (which it obviously has, including drastic changes in recent history having nothing to do with the industrial revolution--the Little Ice Age in the 12th-13th centuries, surprisingly cold years in the 19th century in Europe, etc.) means that climate change in the future is no danger. On reflection, this isn't really a strawman argument (though it does sometimes function as a component of one, but that isn't relevant). But it is a fallacy. I was explaining why it was a fallacy.
As I said in the opening line of my original post, I suspected the OP didn't mean to imply that. But there are people who think that, so I felt that it would be beneficial to the overall discussion to explain why it is a fallacy.
Where did I go crazy? Where did I call him a denier? Where am I a zealot? Please point out the zealotry.
The whole point of the line you quoted was my acknowledging the exact opposite of what you're accusing me of claiming--that the OP may very well be a reasonable person who did not imply what I saw in his post.
My concern however was that other people would see the implication and think it was a valid point (again, a point the OP may very well never have even thought of, he may have just been humorously musing on the juxtaposition, as he put it. In fact, I think this is probably what happened.)
The only one name calling here is you, since you seem to think that I am a "global-warming zealot," when nothing could be further from the truth. I could spend the next thirty minutes of my time explaining my actual opinion on the matter, but it isn't relevant to my point which is: Pot, meet kettle.
(Okay, that was a bit of name-calling by me, but I'm only being cheeky, not vindictive--the thought popped into my head and talking kitchenware amuses me. May it amuse you too.)
Oh to be so naive. Having large portions of your electorate wiped out is so much more politically convenient than having them alive. Unites the survivors under your banner quite nicely.
You've obviously had to deal with a bureacracy. I wish I could live in that fantasy land.
He already couldn't tell the difference between m and MP as units, so please don't confuse him further. I don't want to have to clean his exploded head off the internet.
With a 15 m resolution, each pixel is 15^2 m^2 ->225 m^2 wide
This sentence makes no sense. I think I might know what you mean, but you failed to construct an accurate linguistic expression of it.
With a 15m resolution each pixel is 15m wide (or 15(2)^1/2 if you want to use the diagonal), with an area of 225m^2.
Well, not anymore....
You can thank me for that any time now...
I don't know if you intended the strawman or not, but allow me to debunk it anyway.
Yes, humans have lived in warmer climates with less glaciers, and colder climates with more glaciers.
There were also a hell of a lot less of them.
The danger of global warming/climate change has never been a threat to the overall existence of humanity (aside from ranting hyperbolic morons). It is however a threat to the maintenance of modern civilization if it causes enough damage to agricultural yields (whether or not it will do this is debatable, and very very complicated).
Moreover, with Bittorrent, there is no distinction. Downloaders are uploaders (unless you set your client not to upload, but expect angry torrenters with pitchforks outside your window for being a leech).
But then it will be the bridge to death, destruction, and gnashing of teeth.
*Heavy Sigh*
Any time reality starts imitating made for cable movies is a good time to break out the hemlock tea.