That is not what the bill does (read it here). [...]Nothing to see here.
What can be seen is “(5) The Administrator shall carry out this subsection in a manner that does not exceed $1,000,000 per fiscal year, to be derived from amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated."
In words, that is One Million Dollars, or, with overheads, maybe around 5 qualified employees. How much vetting of science and handling of NDAs do you think 5 people can do? Assuming you get someone qualified for such a mind-numbing job...
What you quoted is only about works *created* by US government employees. It does not apply to works CITED by US government employees.
No, it applies to data used by government employees.
No, it does not. "It", i.e. the copyright clause cited upstream, refers to work created by US government employees. But only a small part of science is done by US government employees.
If the EPA rules based on results from the literature, it should be able to independently reproduce it, either by conducting its own observations or using the data from that paper. If the EPA can do neither, it should not be allowed to act.
Sure, it should be able to do that. If that possibility becomes a requirement, it means that either EPA would need funding on about the order of magnitude of all the universities and institutes that produce science relevant to its job. Who do you think will provide that funding? A Republican congress?
You seem to think that if Prof. Beaker publishes a paper in the scientific literature reaching some conclusion or other and the EPA cites it, that should be enough for the EPA to take away people's houses, land, and other property, without any recourse or any ability to check his data.
You seem to have no idea abut how science or the EPA work. If Prof. Beaker publishes an unexpected result with large implications, a lot of other scientist will try to refute, refine, or reaffirm that result, without the EPA ever stepping in.
That is not acceptable, and that is precisely why we need this bill.
Your view that we should take whatever result is in the scientific literature as truth, without the ability to verify it independently, is unscientific and proto-fascist. It's unacceptable.
This is not "Big Science" out to get you and control your life - science is an enterprise with many many independent researchers and opinions. It is not perfect, but pretty always self-correcting. Requiring actual reproduction instead of reproducibility from an agency that is not given the resources to perform this reproduction just means that EPA cannot use science anymore - which is just what some lawmakers have in mind.
If somebody called me a "resource", my professionalism would also be less than stellar.
If you do not want to be known as a "useful resource" you have no place on any team. Branch out on your own. You'll do better for yourself, and the team you would have been on wouldn't suffer from your need to be known as a "special snowflake"
I'd rather been known as a useful employee, or a useful expert, or even a useful human.
considering the scale of this project I am surprised the cost is only US$272 million, has technology to do this advanced that far or are the Norwegians just very efficient. hell a lot of large buildings cost considerable more than this
Maybe they are good at doing this stuff, but maybe they use the by now "normal" process for public works: You lowball the cost to get the project going and then argue with the sunk money that you need to finish it at 3 times the expected price. If the tunnel is worth 272 million, it should still be worth 272 million to finish it after the first 200 million have been spent. After all, the money is gone, but the tunnel will still be the same, and half a tunnel has very limited use cases. Lather and repeat...
Whenever the surface of a sphere is represented as a plane in two dimensions, there must be distortions. The school has chosen its preferred distortion, Afrocentrism (Africa is the center of the map, which is projected in such a fashion as to maximize Africa's size).
That is wrong (as stated in the article). The Gall-Peters projection is area-preserving, i.e. it shows all continents in their true (relative) area. It also preserves the relative orientation with respect to North/South/East/West. The price it pays is distortion of linear measurements East/West vs. North/South (the farther out you get from 45 degrees, the flatter and wider areas become, and the closer you get to the equator, the higher and narrower they get). The areas least distorted include Europe and the Northern US. The Wikipedia article contains a nice visualisation of the distortions.
You can whine about "Afrocentrism", but Africa just happens to straddle both the equator and the null meridian. The second is an arbitrary choice, but no other choice would change the relative size of the continents (or any defined area).
There is some moronic stuff studied with federal funds. For example:
Why some people see Jesus’ face on toast ($3.5 million)
Do drunk birds slur when they sing? ($5 million)
Does cocaine make honey bees dance? ($243,000)
What type of music do monkeys and chimpanzees prefer to listen to? ($1 million)
Why is yawning contagious? ($1 million)
Where does it hurt most to be stung by a bee? ($1 million)
Why does walking with coffee cause it to spill? ($172,000)
Are cheerleaders more attractive in a squad? ($1.1 million).
Who will be America’s next top model? ($2.9 million)
What makes goldfish feel sexy? ($3.9 million)
With trillions in debt, uncertain future for entitlement programs, diseases we cannot treat, and financial gridlock, this seems like low hanging fruit to cut to save money.
Just because Senator Flake thinks his constituents are stupid enough to fall for the flaky misrepresentations does not mean the research described is "moronic". Unless you think understanding the effect of a drugs on organisms is not important (numbers 2, 3), or the operation of the image processing system is all understood and/or irrelevant, of course (number 1), or how pain reception works, or how resonances affect fluids (maybe coffee in a cup, but maybe water in a reservoir during an earthquake).
It sure as hech doesn't get enough sun at _night_ so this is clearly political boondoggle... pure pork barrel.
If you carefully (or even at all) read the blurb, you will find the magic phrase "53MWh Tesla Powerpack station". This is a big big battery coupled to the solar array and buffering electrical energy. When full, it can provide abut 2MW for 24 hours - or 4MW for 12h. Given that the 13 MW of solar generation are the best case, and that part of the energy goes to recharging the battery, the system can basically provide that 4MW (or a bit more or a bit less - I don't have the actual efficieny numbers in my head) continuously.
Pumps are very inefficient. I wonder why they wouldn't just use the excess energy to drive a motor/generator to pull an empty sphere towards the bottom with a cable and then generate energy in reverse as it rises up?
Conventional pumped storage systems have about 75-80% round trip efficiency, which is not that bad. One reason for the loss is evaporation from the upper reservoir, which would not be a problem for this system, so round trip efficiency in the 80+% range is realistic. That is not to bad if you have free electricity to begin with.
I thought now the EPA and other government agencies were banned from reporting on climate change and NASA has been essentially told it isn't getting any money to research it that the problem has magically gone away?! It seems odd that Trumps alternative truth wouldn't actually be the truth...
This was research funded by the German Federal Government, not the US Federal Government. We have not, so far, elected Trump or anyone of a similar disposition to a major government position.
When I get time, I'd like to use satellite photos of the arctic into a time lapse video, play it, then ask "Now, what was it you were saying about climate change being a scam?"
And presumably the other side simply pulls out this 2008 Al Gore video where he predicts that the arctic would be ice-free in 5 years:
And if someone actually listens to your video of Gore, he or she will hopefully notice that Gore does not predict anything like that at all - he cites two different researchers, one who says "by 2030", and the other who says "75% chance for the next 5-7 years". The first one is still very much on track. The second one lost his bet - if via the 25% chance or because his modelling was wrong is anyones guess.
Here's a more up-to-date graphic: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plo...
Not sure why yours shows less than 4 million square km in 2012, and the up-to-date one shows over 14 million square km currently. Maybe it's multi-year ice? I know the summer extent of ice in the arctic dips down to about 4Mkm^2 during summer...
Arctic sea ice always retreats in summer and regrows in winter. The original graph showed development of the yearly minimum extend (which typically happens in September). September 2012 was the record low for arctic sea ice extend so far, going down to 3.3 million square kilometres (although all the last years have been below two standard deviations). At the moment, we are shortly before yearly arctic sea ice maximum - that's why we have 14 million square km. This is a record low for this time of the year. Indeed, day over day, sea ice extend has been at record low for the last few month, compared to the same day in other years. There is an excellent interactive map at the NSIDC.
I am starting my phd soon and when I do will have access to a discount office. There is no way in sweet hell I would use libre to write my thesis!
Well, a cheap office is nice for writing a thesis in. But writing a thesis in any technical field with MS Office (or Libre Office, or Apple Pages) is just masochism. That's what LaTeX is is made for.
Why isn't it? CO2 isn't pollution. It's the central ingredient in biosphere productivity.
And you can't drown in water - it's a central ingredient for life. Salt can't be bad for you, since without it you die. And so on. As Paracelsus said, sola dosis facit venenum.
I don't know where you live but it's not winter in Antarctica:
Well, good that you mention that. We were, however, talking about the arctic, where it is the middle of winter right now. In the antarctic, the situation is differently - every southern summer essentially all of the sea ice melts, and the winter maximum is the important indicator to track. This is because we have the arctic ocean, mostly surrounded by land (which limits sea ice growth in winter, as the ice mostly runs out of sea to grow on), and the antarctic continent (which stops sea ice melting in summer, as the sea runs out of ice to melt).
Yes, it may be shrinking a little, but the sampling period is extremely short, compared to our planet's age. This can or cannot be caused by humans. But hey, anyway humans won't survive Earth, which is scheduled to disappear anyway in the next 5 billion years... Unless we disseminate elsewhere in our universe, we're doomed.
How can you link to a text that says "could be ice-free in summers" and claim it says "there would be no ice (full stop). The ice cap is not "shrinking a little", it's shrinking massively. "Currently" it's the middle of winter, when the sea ice is always expanding to nearly the same level (basically, it covers the arctic until it runs out of ocean). In the arctic ocean, the summer minimum is the most important measurement. That said, the arctic ice has been at or near record low for the entire winter, and for good measure in this year antarctic sea ice also is unusually low. The newly formed first-year ice is so thin that it melts very quickly in the summer, probably giving us another record low, and leading to more heating, as the sunlight is absorbed by the water, not reflected by the ice.
You have a point about the 5 billion years, but most of us have a somewhat shorter perspective - and even those with the long perspective may want to give us enough time to escape this doomed planet before things get really ugly.
No, you aren't an expert, and yes, a handgun does give me a decent chance.
An AK is not body armor, if he is busy shooting someone else, he isn't shooting me, and don't overestimate the accuracy of an AK, they are pretty bad in general.
Under 50 yards, I'm almost as accurate with my.45 as I am with an AK, and he won't see it coming.
Well, in Germany about 95% drivers are better than the median. I suspect the same is true for US gun owners. But in a life-and-death situation I prefer to assume that the opponent is, on average, at least as competent as I am, and 50/50 is not odds I like to play often....
If your solution to the guy with the AK-47 is to ban guns, then you are in fact worse than the problem.
But I'm sure you won't see it...
Assuming I'm for European style gun control, and you knew it, would you seriously object to calling the cops on the shooter? Indeed, would you deny that the shooter is there to avoid giving arguments to gun right opponents?
The fact of the matter is, the climate is changing because the climate is never and has never been static..
That argument is true, but completely facetious. Compare People are dying because people have never not been dying. There is no reason to do anything about that guy with the AK-47 taking potshots on the street, or to do anything about the lead in the drinking water, or to ensure that there is no botox in your tomato cans.
Yes, climate has always changed, and species have always died off. But not at the speed it currently does and they currently do. I'd much rather not be part of one of the species dying out. You sound like a guy in a life boat who insists on getting fresh water by drilling a well...
The most obvious difference is Trump still favors the individual (and individual liberties) whereas fascism is founded on the premise of a single national identity and almost no individual identity.
Right. I nearly forgot his slogan. "Make American Individuals Great Again", right? And his wall is not separating Mexico from the US, but just Mexican individuals from US individuals. And he is creating not "American jobs", but jobs for individual Americans. Just as he is not applying a blanket ban on entry against people from certain nations, but carefully targets this to individuals.
If he is not a full-blown facist, it's not for lack of inclination, it's because he does not know history well enough to understand the pattern.
Slashdot Mirror
That is not what the bill does (read it here). [...]Nothing to see here.
What can be seen is “(5) The Administrator shall carry out this subsection in a manner that does not exceed $1,000,000 per fiscal year, to be derived from amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated." In words, that is One Million Dollars, or, with overheads, maybe around 5 qualified employees. How much vetting of science and handling of NDAs do you think 5 people can do? Assuming you get someone qualified for such a mind-numbing job...
No, it applies to data used by government employees.
No, it does not. "It", i.e. the copyright clause cited upstream, refers to work created by US government employees. But only a small part of science is done by US government employees.
If the EPA rules based on results from the literature, it should be able to independently reproduce it, either by conducting its own observations or using the data from that paper. If the EPA can do neither, it should not be allowed to act.
Sure, it should be able to do that. If that possibility becomes a requirement, it means that either EPA would need funding on about the order of magnitude of all the universities and institutes that produce science relevant to its job. Who do you think will provide that funding? A Republican congress?
You seem to think that if Prof. Beaker publishes a paper in the scientific literature reaching some conclusion or other and the EPA cites it, that should be enough for the EPA to take away people's houses, land, and other property, without any recourse or any ability to check his data.
You seem to have no idea abut how science or the EPA work. If Prof. Beaker publishes an unexpected result with large implications, a lot of other scientist will try to refute, refine, or reaffirm that result, without the EPA ever stepping in.
That is not acceptable, and that is precisely why we need this bill.
Your view that we should take whatever result is in the scientific literature as truth, without the ability to verify it independently, is unscientific and proto-fascist. It's unacceptable.
This is not "Big Science" out to get you and control your life - science is an enterprise with many many independent researchers and opinions. It is not perfect, but pretty always self-correcting. Requiring actual reproduction instead of reproducibility from an agency that is not given the resources to perform this reproduction just means that EPA cannot use science anymore - which is just what some lawmakers have in mind.
If somebody called me a "resource", my professionalism would also be less than stellar.
If you do not want to be known as a "useful resource" you have no place on any team. Branch out on your own. You'll do better for yourself, and the team you would have been on wouldn't suffer from your need to be known as a "special snowflake"
I'd rather been known as a useful employee, or a useful expert, or even a useful human.
If somebody called me a "resource", my professionalism would also be less than stellar.
considering the scale of this project I am surprised the cost is only US$272 million, has technology to do this advanced that far or are the Norwegians just very efficient. hell a lot of large buildings cost considerable more than this
Maybe they are good at doing this stuff, but maybe they use the by now "normal" process for public works: You lowball the cost to get the project going and then argue with the sunk money that you need to finish it at 3 times the expected price. If the tunnel is worth 272 million, it should still be worth 272 million to finish it after the first 200 million have been spent. After all, the money is gone, but the tunnel will still be the same, and half a tunnel has very limited use cases. Lather and repeat...
Compare the F-35 development or Germany's Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
Whenever the surface of a sphere is represented as a plane in two dimensions, there must be distortions. The school has chosen its preferred distortion, Afrocentrism (Africa is the center of the map, which is projected in such a fashion as to maximize Africa's size).
That is wrong (as stated in the article). The Gall-Peters projection is area-preserving, i.e. it shows all continents in their true (relative) area. It also preserves the relative orientation with respect to North/South/East/West. The price it pays is distortion of linear measurements East/West vs. North/South (the farther out you get from 45 degrees, the flatter and wider areas become, and the closer you get to the equator, the higher and narrower they get). The areas least distorted include Europe and the Northern US. The Wikipedia article contains a nice visualisation of the distortions.
You can whine about "Afrocentrism", but Africa just happens to straddle both the equator and the null meridian. The second is an arbitrary choice, but no other choice would change the relative size of the continents (or any defined area).
In the new map proportions seem to be off again: Asia should be roughly 50% larger than Africa, it certainly is not.
Are you sure about that? looks about right to me. You are aware that the Arabian peninsula and the Levante are part of Asia, not Africa, right?
There is some moronic stuff studied with federal funds. For example: Why some people see Jesus’ face on toast ($3.5 million) Do drunk birds slur when they sing? ($5 million) Does cocaine make honey bees dance? ($243,000) What type of music do monkeys and chimpanzees prefer to listen to? ($1 million) Why is yawning contagious? ($1 million) Where does it hurt most to be stung by a bee? ($1 million) Why does walking with coffee cause it to spill? ($172,000) Are cheerleaders more attractive in a squad? ($1.1 million). Who will be America’s next top model? ($2.9 million) What makes goldfish feel sexy? ($3.9 million)
http://www.flake.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=AB366D8A-118F-4A01-B20E-47A0EC459A9F
With trillions in debt, uncertain future for entitlement programs, diseases we cannot treat, and financial gridlock, this seems like low hanging fruit to cut to save money.
Just because Senator Flake thinks his constituents are stupid enough to fall for the flaky misrepresentations does not mean the research described is "moronic". Unless you think understanding the effect of a drugs on organisms is not important (numbers 2, 3), or the operation of the image processing system is all understood and/or irrelevant, of course (number 1), or how pain reception works, or how resonances affect fluids (maybe coffee in a cup, but maybe water in a reservoir during an earthquake).
It sure as hech doesn't get enough sun at _night_ so this is clearly political boondoggle... pure pork barrel.
If you carefully (or even at all) read the blurb, you will find the magic phrase "53MWh Tesla Powerpack station". This is a big big battery coupled to the solar array and buffering electrical energy. When full, it can provide abut 2MW for 24 hours - or 4MW for 12h. Given that the 13 MW of solar generation are the best case, and that part of the energy goes to recharging the battery, the system can basically provide that 4MW (or a bit more or a bit less - I don't have the actual efficieny numbers in my head) continuously.
I cannot resist. "In Soviet Russia, TV watches you." More seriously, it looks like 1984 was a documentary...
I think you should learn some German history.
Yes, I was implicitly assuming "in the context of the FRG".
Pumps are very inefficient. I wonder why they wouldn't just use the excess energy to drive a motor/generator to pull an empty sphere towards the bottom with a cable and then generate energy in reverse as it rises up?
Conventional pumped storage systems have about 75-80% round trip efficiency, which is not that bad. One reason for the loss is evaporation from the upper reservoir, which would not be a problem for this system, so round trip efficiency in the 80+% range is realistic. That is not to bad if you have free electricity to begin with.
I thought now the EPA and other government agencies were banned from reporting on climate change and NASA has been essentially told it isn't getting any money to research it that the problem has magically gone away?! It seems odd that Trumps alternative truth wouldn't actually be the truth...
This was research funded by the German Federal Government, not the US Federal Government. We have not, so far, elected Trump or anyone of a similar disposition to a major government position.
When I get time, I'd like to use satellite photos of the arctic into a time lapse video, play it, then ask "Now, what was it you were saying about climate change being a scam?"
And presumably the other side simply pulls out this 2008 Al Gore video where he predicts that the arctic would be ice-free in 5 years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And if someone actually listens to your video of Gore, he or she will hopefully notice that Gore does not predict anything like that at all - he cites two different researchers, one who says "by 2030", and the other who says "75% chance for the next 5-7 years". The first one is still very much on track. The second one lost his bet - if via the 25% chance or because his modelling was wrong is anyones guess.
Here's a more up-to-date graphic: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plo... Not sure why yours shows less than 4 million square km in 2012, and the up-to-date one shows over 14 million square km currently. Maybe it's multi-year ice? I know the summer extent of ice in the arctic dips down to about 4Mkm^2 during summer...
Arctic sea ice always retreats in summer and regrows in winter. The original graph showed development of the yearly minimum extend (which typically happens in September). September 2012 was the record low for arctic sea ice extend so far, going down to 3.3 million square kilometres (although all the last years have been below two standard deviations). At the moment, we are shortly before yearly arctic sea ice maximum - that's why we have 14 million square km. This is a record low for this time of the year. Indeed, day over day, sea ice extend has been at record low for the last few month, compared to the same day in other years. There is an excellent interactive map at the NSIDC.
I am starting my phd soon and when I do will have access to a discount office. There is no way in sweet hell I would use libre to write my thesis!
Well, a cheap office is nice for writing a thesis in. But writing a thesis in any technical field with MS Office (or Libre Office, or Apple Pages) is just masochism. That's what LaTeX is is made for.
Why isn't it? CO2 isn't pollution. It's the central ingredient in biosphere productivity.
And you can't drown in water - it's a central ingredient for life. Salt can't be bad for you, since without it you die. And so on. As Paracelsus said, sola dosis facit venenum.
I don't know where you live but it's not winter in Antarctica:
Well, good that you mention that. We were, however, talking about the arctic, where it is the middle of winter right now. In the antarctic, the situation is differently - every southern summer essentially all of the sea ice melts, and the winter maximum is the important indicator to track. This is because we have the arctic ocean, mostly surrounded by land (which limits sea ice growth in winter, as the ice mostly runs out of sea to grow on), and the antarctic continent (which stops sea ice melting in summer, as the sea runs out of ice to melt).
I always find this funny that so many studies say "The Arctic is warming and there should be no more ice cap by 2050". I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013, and look at this graph. The arctic ice cap is currently a little over 13 million square km.
Yes, it may be shrinking a little, but the sampling period is extremely short, compared to our planet's age. This can or cannot be caused by humans. But hey, anyway humans won't survive Earth, which is scheduled to disappear anyway in the next 5 billion years... Unless we disseminate elsewhere in our universe, we're doomed.
How can you link to a text that says "could be ice-free in summers" and claim it says "there would be no ice (full stop). The ice cap is not "shrinking a little", it's shrinking massively. "Currently" it's the middle of winter, when the sea ice is always expanding to nearly the same level (basically, it covers the arctic until it runs out of ocean). In the arctic ocean, the summer minimum is the most important measurement. That said, the arctic ice has been at or near record low for the entire winter, and for good measure in this year antarctic sea ice also is unusually low. The newly formed first-year ice is so thin that it melts very quickly in the summer, probably giving us another record low, and leading to more heating, as the sunlight is absorbed by the water, not reflected by the ice.
You have a point about the 5 billion years, but most of us have a somewhat shorter perspective - and even those with the long perspective may want to give us enough time to escape this doomed planet before things get really ugly.
No, you aren't an expert, and yes, a handgun does give me a decent chance.
An AK is not body armor, if he is busy shooting someone else, he isn't shooting me, and don't overestimate the accuracy of an AK, they are pretty bad in general.
Under 50 yards, I'm almost as accurate with my .45 as I am with an AK, and he won't see it coming.
Well, in Germany about 95% drivers are better than the median. I suspect the same is true for US gun owners. But in a life-and-death situation I prefer to assume that the opponent is, on average, at least as competent as I am, and 50/50 is not odds I like to play often....
No, of course not, but then I'd shoot the guy first.
Well, I'm no expert, but do you always carry an assault rifle yourself? Or do you think a handgun gives you a decent chance against an AK-47?
If your solution to the guy with the AK-47 is to ban guns, then you are in fact worse than the problem.
But I'm sure you won't see it...
Assuming I'm for European style gun control, and you knew it, would you seriously object to calling the cops on the shooter? Indeed, would you deny that the shooter is there to avoid giving arguments to gun right opponents?
The fact of the matter is, the climate is changing because the climate is never and has never been static..
That argument is true, but completely facetious. Compare People are dying because people have never not been dying. There is no reason to do anything about that guy with the AK-47 taking potshots on the street, or to do anything about the lead in the drinking water, or to ensure that there is no botox in your tomato cans.
Yes, climate has always changed, and species have always died off. But not at the speed it currently does and they currently do. I'd much rather not be part of one of the species dying out. You sound like a guy in a life boat who insists on getting fresh water by drilling a well...
The most obvious difference is Trump still favors the individual (and individual liberties) whereas fascism is founded on the premise of a single national identity and almost no individual identity.
Right. I nearly forgot his slogan. "Make American Individuals Great Again", right? And his wall is not separating Mexico from the US, but just Mexican individuals from US individuals. And he is creating not "American jobs", but jobs for individual Americans. Just as he is not applying a blanket ban on entry against people from certain nations, but carefully targets this to individuals.
If he is not a full-blown facist, it's not for lack of inclination, it's because he does not know history well enough to understand the pattern.
"By stupid rednecks, sure."
So you believe that pretty much everyone in the IC is a redneck. Got it, thanks.
How does internal combustion enter into the discussion?