I know you pulled those figures out of your hat, but let's consider. If the cost of energy increases by 25%, that means the cost of everything increases by 10-25% (depending on what fraction of a widget is labor versus what fraction is materials). Everything.
How do you arive at that quote? To go up 25% on a 25% energy increase, all of the cost of a product would have to be energy. But energy is actually very cheap in out society. The most expensive part of nearly everything is labour cost. Raw materials is another biggy, and, depending on how you calculate, refinancing of investments (factories, machines,...). I'd be suprised if even a doubling of energy prices would create even 5% inflation.
Why do you say that? Does he hurl vitriolic condemnations at people who disagree with him? Does he try to shout them down, or demand that their funding be cut off?
No (well, to my knowledge), but he denies not just the anthropogenic cause of global warming, but apparently also that humans are responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2 (as certain as anything in science, both from simple carbon mass flow analysis and from looking at isotopic ratios), and that there is a greenhouse effect at all (something accepted by even the most contrarian "normal" scientists), using a completely bogus argument that displays no understanding of atmospheric science at all. See this National Post article. Now the National Post has been very wrong about scientists opinion before, but the National Geographic article we discuss seems, to a large part, substantiate it in this case.
...read page two of that article. Abdussamatov is a nutcase, and neither recent overall warming of Mars nor any attribution to increased solar output are serious scientifc propositions.
Futhermore 16 million over that time frame is not a lot of money. Not for real science of this scale.
Yes, that's the point. They don't do real science at the Oregon Institute, or the George C. Marshall Institute, or the Cooler Heads Coalition. At best, they present one-sided and misleading summaries of certain topics. At worst, they invent nonsense and try to sell it off as science.
I see no problem with adverts on Wikipedia so long as its obvious they're advertisments and corporate sponsorship does not affect the content.
Even very small and unobtrusive adverts would earn them an awful lot of revenue which can really only be a good thing.
This is a very slippery slope. Once WikiMedia outgrows the generosity of the community, there is no easy way back. If the foundation has hundreds of paid officiers, in the long term their primary interest will not be to make the best possible encyclopedia, but to safe their own jobs. If Wikipedia funds a lot of other projects, there is even more reason for them to keep up the revenue by following the interest of the advertisers as opposed to just creating the best possible free encyclopedia.
From another point of view, I assume I spend maybe 100 hours per year working on Wikipedia. Even at my salary level (as opposed to my consulting rate), paying for this would be quite a chunk of money. Multiply it by 3 million of editors, and the "huge" advertising revenue suddenly is not that huge anymore. Even losing a small fraction of good editors over advertising would be a net loss.
Overall, I'm not thrilled with the illumination performance of CF bulbs.
I used to hate them, especially for the weird light they gave off while warming up. However, when I moved to a new flat about a year ago and had to get new lights anyways, I gave them another chance. Quality (and price, of course) here in Germany varies wildly between different types and brands. Cheap ones "look funny", as e.g. the image in the NYT article, and are easy to damage due to the filigrane open coils. They also give out a fairly harsh white light. But I am very satisfied with the Phillips Softtone. They turn on nearly instantly, need about 30 seconds to come to full brightness, and then give off a light that is (to me) indistinguishable from normal incandescent bulbs. They also look more or less like normal bulbs, with the coils hidden by an opaque white glass dome, and I can get them at equivalent brightness levels (i.e. I can get a 20 Watt CF bulb that is as bright as a 100 Watt incandescent bulb). I have one go dead so far (after only a few weeks, must have been a factory dud), but it was exchanged without any trouble under the 6 year maker's warrantee.
The only other lights im using now are some halogen spotlights for reading lamps and a conventional fluorescent lamp in the bathroom fixture. Overall, the change does make a very measurable difference to my electricity bill. Don't let one bad experience keep you from trying.
You're obviously unfamiliar with the contents of Talk.Origins. It has very little to do with accepted evolution theory, it's about fringe science and dogmatic atheism.
Well, actually it is an award-winnig website that rarely discusses atheism, but full of articles describing main-stram biology (including evolution), geology and cosmology, usually in an accessible form. But apart from that, you are perfectly right...
For over twenty years we were assaulted as Americans...
Your list is somewhat misleading. Some of the attacks are not against Americans, but only hit them by accident. Some are against military targets. The attack in San Salvador, e.g., was at a time when the US were (illegally) funding and supporting the Contras in Nicaragua from El Salvador. That is not an excuse, but to claim that these attacks are all unprovoked and against Americans "as Americans" is clearly wrong. Many of the attackers have different reasons, from the profane (crime for money) to fairly understandable ones like defense or retaliation against previous aggression.
But even adding up all the dead on your list gives us less than 4000 over 23 years (the 9/11 victim number now is below 3000). Now, any of them is one to many. But we should keep things in perspective. The war in Iraq has, in just 3 years, cost the life of 3000 coalition soldiers, most of them Americans. According to epidemological studies published in the reputable scientific journal Lancet, between 390000 and 940000 Iraqis have died as the direct result of this war. Even very conservative estimates counting only confirmed direct kills by coalition forces put the number of Iraqi dead at around 50000.
For another perspective: Traffic accidents kill about 40000 Americans every year. The rate of death by traffic accident thus is 400 times higher than the rate of death by "terror attacks" (even assuming a generous definition of these). Do we spend 400 times more on road safety than on the War on Terror?
Piltdown Man was not accepted as totally valid, although it made it into a few textbooks. Pluto's alleged warming is based on a grand total of two datapoints (each corresponding to it crossing in front of a star and its atmosphere distorting the light in different manners, with the density of the atmosphere (sampled along one line!) assumed to correspond to the temperature), and would be not really surprising, given that Pluto has passed its closest point to the sun only recently, and should still warm up if it has any thermal inertia. Triton's warming likewise is attested via a comparison of 15 year old data with recent earth-bound observations. We know nothing about it's climate cycle. The Saturn article does not mention any warming, just a storm. The Jupiter article does not mention any warming, just a storm that causes regional climate change. The "global" warming on Mars is a 3 Martian year local trend, influenced by the frequency of dust storms. Mars is very hard to compare with Earth anyways, as its orbit is much more eccentric and hence orbital cycles have a much higher influence.
Can you be specific, or do you believe that denouncing the publisher suffices?
That depends. For knowing that the study is unreliable, looking at the publisher is enough. In science, only publications that have gone through formal peer review and have been accepted for publication by a recognized journal or conference have serious weight. And US think tanks are not known to earn any serious acclaim from the scientific community.
For knowing that the study sucks, yes, I can give several specific examples.
The classical Crichton Gambit: Claims that the arctic is warming on average are countered by isolated counterexamples. As a side note, notice how the less-then-20 year data from the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet (now there is a typcial locations!) suddenly is significant, when global warming deniers usually claim that 150 years of instrument record and 2000 years of detailed global temperature reconstruction are not.
The "the multi-decade cold trend in the mid-20th century" (actually, about 1945-1980) is well understood and results primarily from sulfur aerosol emissions. There is nothing natural about that...
While the Arctic and the Antarctic are both cold, they are climatically extremely different (the Antarctic is solid land surrounded by an ocean, the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by solid land). The comparison is pure hand-waving.
The diagram, allegedly sourced to this paper is not actually from this paper, but apparently compiled from a table in the paper using some weird algorithm. Given that the table acknowledges large uncertainties, but the diagram does not, its a misrepresentation of the data. Moreover, the WWF publication is based on a 2001 study (with data probably collected even earlier), while the extreme reduction in sea ice is very recent.
The US Senate asked independent statisticians to investigate. They found that the graph was meretricious,
The US Senate did do no such thing. Senator Joe Barton, long term climate change denier, asked statistician Wegman (not a climate scientists) on behalf of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Rather than doing an independent investigation, he cribbed the arguments of two Canadians, an economist and a mining industry specialist. Big surprise...
Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences, which produced a much more balanced report. Of course, since that is real science, its a bit harder to find convenient sound bites there...
From what I understand, ice ages are a naturally occurring phenomena, where are we in the ice age cycle?
We are in an interglacial (period of reduced glaciation) of the current ice age (ice ages are defined by permanent glaciation at the poles). Our best current estimate is that (absent anthropgenic forcings) temperature should be more or less stable for the next several thousand years (most likely estimate probably is about 18000, but estimates go up to 40000), and then drop a bit, bringing back more extensive glaciation (a full scale ice age).
Except that of Hansen's 3 scenarios, Scenario C is the one that said "we stop putting any extra CO2 in the atmosphere by 2000" and Scenario A was "We keep on doing what we're doing now (dumping huge amounts of carbon in the atmosphere)."
For the world we live in, Scenario A is the appropriate one to compare to the actual data.
Actually, scenario A assumed an exponential growth in CO2 emissions, scenario B assumed near linear growth, and scenario C assumed near linear growth up until 2000 and than flattening. Thanks to all the heavy industry of the Eastern Block countries going offline in this time frame, we are fairly close to emmision scenario B (predicted as the most likely even back in 1988!), and Hansen's predictions are spot on.
Funny, that you would imply that the study is unreliable just because you don't like governor du Pont for some reason.
I have no idea who du Pont is. However, the study is unreliable because it is not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but by a conservative think tank. It sucks because it consists of non-sequiturs, strawmen, and out-of-context quotes. Of course, given that it is an extremely shallow and misleading piece of "work", it would never have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal...
Be honest. Your ID number must make you at least sixty.
Well, in my defense, after having just learned about this new-fangled Internet thing, and having declared the WWW dead ("Nobody will ever use this! It's sucky slow! Who wants to see pictures of a volcano on Hawaii?"), I found Slashdot much inferior to Usenet, and did not bother with getting registered for quite a while when it was introduced. I probably would have gotten one of the double digit ones, otherwise...
But seriously now. I bought the id of some old geezer on Ebay. Went for quite a bit, but well worth it. I don't think any of the first 1000 is still alive. Most of them died of Malaria when digging the trenches for the first Internet pipes. That Gore guy really made them sweat....
...require a click to go from the intro to the advert, another click from the advert to the company, yet another click to go from the generic company site to the job in question, then require a laundry list of specific (instead of general skills) and give no hint of the salary. "Competitive" my ass...
Extra credits for advertising to the open source crowd, but defining experience as "having significantly contributed to a commercial application" (Apache lead developers need not apply;-) and throwing more buzzwords around than a flock of venture capitalists...
So what's the solution? Big artificial carbon converters.[...] Even if we were to get all the energy for that equation by burning coal or oil, we'd still be able to keep the carbon in the atmosphere at acceptable levels[...]To make that happen we need three things. [...]
...the first of which would be a revision of the laws of thermodynamics. You cannot crack CO2 using energy from burning coal (or, in practice, even oil) and come out ahead. Using solar, why not plant a tree? It uses solar energy, and much better than any man-made machine I'm aware of.
What did they offer. That's late propoganda in response to the contrast having already been pointed out.
Well, in the case of Germany, we offered the generic stuff: food, medical supplies, tents, blankets,... , in addition to several high-powered portable water pumps, with personel to distribute aid and operate the equipment. What else would you have expected in such a situation?
Not so, I just went to configure a Dell with a similar config to the cheapest of the new MBPs
At least two non-trivial items in your list are not matching. First, the Apple comes with faster RAM, and a 1 GB SO-DIMM, so adding more is easy. Secondly, the Radeon X1600 in the Apple not only is better, it also comes with 128 MB of dedicated video memory. Then add in the small stuff (iSight, FireWire, illuminated keyboard, better battery and power supply), and the price looks fair to me.
Of course, for me the important thing is that the Apple gives me a decent UNIX and free developer tools.
[...] How about writing the "full manual" AND a "quick start", and a "for dummies", and ???, etc. As much as it takes, depending on how important the item your are writing about is. [...] I know "the law" is all about dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s, but if you do the legalese first, then preface multiple, redundant, intended-to-clarify, clauses, how does that detract from the primary goal?
There are two cases here. Either the extra clauses are only for illumination and have no legal force. Then they can similarly lead to confusion. Consider a piece of code with various different and possibly conflicting pieces of comment. Or, indeed, consider the Linux kernel source, ''Unix for Dummies'', and any of W. Richard Stevens' books. One correct comment is fine, but many different ones suck...
The other possibility is that the extra clauses do have legal force. So you run into the problem of inconsistency and different interpretations all over again, only with more choices to start from.
The best step would be to simplify the laws so much that the background noise goes away (says someone from a country that produces 70% of all the tax law interpretation literature in the world...).
Slashdot Mirror
For a slightly scarier version, try Vernor Vinge's use of focus in A Fire Upon the Deep.
...read page two of that article. Abdussamatov is a nutcase, and neither recent overall warming of Mars nor any attribution to increased solar output are serious scientifc propositions.
From another point of view, I assume I spend maybe 100 hours per year working on Wikipedia. Even at my salary level (as opposed to my consulting rate), paying for this would be quite a chunk of money. Multiply it by 3 million of editors, and the "huge" advertising revenue suddenly is not that huge anymore. Even losing a small fraction of good editors over advertising would be a net loss.
The only other lights im using now are some halogen spotlights for reading lamps and a conventional fluorescent lamp in the bathroom fixture. Overall, the change does make a very measurable difference to my electricity bill. Don't let one bad experience keep you from trying.
But even adding up all the dead on your list gives us less than 4000 over 23 years (the 9/11 victim number now is below 3000). Now, any of them is one to many. But we should keep things in perspective. The war in Iraq has, in just 3 years, cost the life of 3000 coalition soldiers, most of them Americans. According to epidemological studies published in the reputable scientific journal Lancet, between 390000 and 940000 Iraqis have died as the direct result of this war. Even very conservative estimates counting only confirmed direct kills by coalition forces put the number of Iraqi dead at around 50000.
For another perspective: Traffic accidents kill about 40000 Americans every year. The rate of death by traffic accident thus is 400 times higher than the rate of death by "terror attacks" (even assuming a generous definition of these). Do we spend 400 times more on road safety than on the War on Terror?
Anything more I can help out with?
For knowing that the study sucks, yes, I can give several specific examples.
Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences, which produced a much more balanced report. Of course, since that is real science, its a bit harder to find convenient sound bites there...
But seriously now. I bought the id of some old geezer on Ebay. Went for quite a bit, but well worth it. I don't think any of the first 1000 is still alive. Most of them died of Malaria when digging the trenches for the first Internet pipes. That Gore guy really made them sweat....
Extra credits for advertising to the open source crowd, but defining experience as "having significantly contributed to a commercial application" (Apache lead developers need not apply ;-) and throwing more buzzwords around than a flock of venture capitalists...
Of course, for me the important thing is that the Apple gives me a decent UNIX and free developer tools.
The other possibility is that the extra clauses do have legal force. So you run into the problem of inconsistency and different interpretations all over again, only with more choices to start from.
The best step would be to simplify the laws so much that the background noise goes away (says someone from a country that produces 70% of all the tax law interpretation literature in the world...).