[blockquote]
This is a common mistake and is only good for very low power stuff. In picking a wire size people often think going from 120 volts to 12 volts only involves the math of supplying a wire 10X larger to handle the current without overheating. In a 120 volt application, you are permitted a 5% voltage drop. This isn't much as 5% of 120 volts is only about 6 volts. No big deal when running a 1200 watt portable hair dryer. If you simply size the wire to now do the same thing on 12 volts, you no longer have a 5% voltage drop. At the same current you still have a 6 volt drop with the 10X larger wire but you now lost 50% of your power in the wire. Take a hint from the pro.. Use an inverter. The 10% the inverter lost is made up by the 45% not lost in the wire. Do the math. Engineer the project.
[/blockquote]
Using wire 10x the size would work fine because its resistance would be one 1/10 that of the original line. The resulting drop in power would still be 5%. The problem will be running cables as thick as your thumb and making the connections. There's also the cost (something line $10/foot for the cable and who know what for 150 amp connectors).
No. There is are practical reasons for using higher voltages for high power appliances.
By the way, a small scale solution could be to run specific circuits off lead acid batteries (e.g. 12V lighting or a computer with a 12V input power supply), which is primarily charged by by the renewable source, with a backup from the grid triggered when the battery drops below a set value. I'd ask around at RV suppliers who sell small scale solar systems to see what they have.
It's unlikely, under any meaningful measure, that Linux is exactly as vulnerable as any other operating system
My dad was in the navy many years ago and talked about about the effort they spent preventing rust on the ship. They had zero tolerance for rust, saying that a little rust is equivalent to being a little pregnant. So I ask you: Is there really such a thing as a "little" root exploit?
The fact that hijacked linux systems are serving up malware and controlling botnets is proof that the probability of infection is unacceptably high for linux. How is a vulnerable linux system less vulnerable than windows? Let's work together to educate mistaken linux users, instead of belittling each other with phrases like "zero meaning". Especially since it is clear to me that we are in agreement regarding the big picture. M'kay?
Don't kid yourself. Linux is potentially as vulnerable as other operating systems. Reports say that rootkitted linux machines serve as botnet controllers. Keeping linux machines patched for security is necessary, too.
On the contrary, most biologists believe we are in the beginning of a period of primarily anthropogenic mass extinction, called the Holocene extinction event. Whether or not we choose to say this effect was achieved "easily", it is already substantial.
The reason radios modulate sine waves is that all other waveforms contain harmonics (signals in bands that are a multiple of the fundamental). This is also the reason we don't use amplitude modulation to transmit digital information (AM using a square wave will be full of harmonics of the data signal).
[Hit Submit instead of preview - here's the final version]
You are right about 2.4 GHz devices interfering with each other. That's about it.
First: Wi-Fi devices may be assigned "static channels", but these are not minimally wide frequency bands as you imply. In fact, the channels are 30Mhz wide and contain spread spectrum signals. Channel 1 overlaps channels 2 through 5 enough to cause interference.
Second: Digital modulation techniques need not "bleed over" significantly past the bandwidth required to carry the information (i.e. potentially less than analog transmission of the same information). For example, psk31 is a digital mode with a bandwidth of about 31Hz.
Third: Modulated signals are necessarily not sine waves. Especially signals designed to look like noise (n.b. Wi-Fi is meant to look like noise across 30MHz of spectrum). You will see changes in frequency or phase (I'm not certain which). If individual cycles of the 2.4GHz waveform you saw looked rough then you made a mistake sampling the signal. Visible distortion of a single wave so far out of bad it would not affect any 2.4GHz devices.
You are right about 2.4 GHz devices interfering with each other. That's about it.
First: Wi-Fi devices may be assigned "static channels", but these are not minimally wide frequency bands as you imply. In fact, the channels are 30Mhz wide and contain spread spectrum signals. Channel 1 ovelaps channels 2 through 5 enough to cause interference.
Second: Modulated signals are necessarily not sine waves. Digital modulation techniques need not "bleed over" significantly past the bandwidth required to carry the information (i.e. potentially less than analog transmission of the same information). For example, psk31 is a digital mode with a bandwidth of about 31Hz.
Third: You should not expect a signal designed to look like noise to be a clean sine wave. Wi-Fi is meant to look like noise across 30MHz of spectrum. You will see changes in frequency or phase (I'm not certain of the specific modulation techniques). If individual cycles of the 2.4GHz waveform you saw looked rough then you made a mistake sampling the signal. Visible distortion of a single wave will be so far out of bad it would not affect any 2.4GHz devices (except maybe if broadcast at high enough power to overload the front end or affect intermediate circuits).
BTW, my license says "Extra".
What does Best Buy have to lose? Their trademark. It is called trademark dilution.
I'm no fan of best buy. Sending scary letters to quash news of this is reprehensible. Still, a trademark that is not actively enforced can be lost. That's how business works in the land of the free.
Sorry but cracked linux boxes are already part of some botnets. Switching to something other than Windows would surely help, but wouldn't solve all our botnet problems.
playing games on a PC (which is an insanely expensive hobby)
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you have never tried yacht racing, which really is an expensive hobby. I play games on a computer which cost under US$2000 three years ago. New games are stressing the system, so I'll have to upgrade to a faster CPU and graphics card (another $600) this year. Including games, that works out to less than I spend on my bicycle.
Games cost $60, less if you are willing to wait, often for a hundred hours of play time. No travel expenses. No special clothes required. Hell, gamers don't even need to buy deodorant. Ever priced a round of golf at a good course? How about membership at the club so you can play there?
I know... if you want to compete with the best players or impress your friends you may choose to buy lots of bleeding edge hardware. My point is you don't have to do so if you just want to play games.
Do you often try something again and again, expecting different results?
But hey, if you don't have what it takes to type "emacs key" on Google's search page and press "I'm feeling lucky", then honestly I'd have to recommend Apple's TextEdit application for you. I understand that it is easy to get lost in emacs info hell, but it is just as easy to find helpful tutorials. Printing out a cheat sheet for common key bindings will get you started without even that.
Next time you try running emacs in terminal-mode - and it runs quite well that way - take a minute to read the instructions on the splash screen. You'll find out how to access Emacs' help features, exit the program, and use the menus. Better still, install the version announced here and you'll get a real windowed (Carbon) OS X application, with menus accessible by mouse. What could be easier?
By the way, I built emacs 22 from source since I did not find an OS X build. Yhe build is This is essentially "configure; make; make install", but requires reading mac/INSTALL to find the option needed for OS X and you have to use sudo for the "make install". If that's too much trouble, then Emacs probably isn't for you.
Emacs is big, but you can learn to edit files with it in a matter of minutes. It comes with a good manual, a tutorial, and extensive (and powerful) self-documentation features. Don't be put off because you heard it was hard to learn - that advice is probably the largest impediment for people who actually want to learn Emacs. Of course, learning *all* of emacs is pointless for most of us, so don't think you have read every section. Especially at first.
You will also find lots of LISP resources bundled with Emacs, and a handy *scratch* buffer where you can evaluate LISP code with the press of a (control-) key.
As for your keyboard layout: I googled "dvorak emacs" and the first link I clicked has a nice looking customization file for emacs. Pick one that looks good and try it.
It is sad that I almost feel obliged to answer Emacs detractors. All I am going to say is, if you don't like like Emacs, why on Earth are you reading this???
Because I am already loathe to load any software that includes copy protection crapware on my computer. If I could, I would load and run my games in separate virtual machines. That way, I wouldn't worry about rogue ring 0 device drivers and who know what else affecting my system.
Of course that same copy protection junk will probably choke when run in a virtual environment. C'est la guerre!
BTW, is it still paranoia if they are really trying to get me?
Hear, Hear!
I expect most "chocolate" candy bars to be junk, so I was excited to find apparently high-end chocolates - Ghirardelli's Intense Dark and Hershey's Cacao Reserve - on sale at my local 7-11. I bought one bar that claimed to be dark chocolate and found it to be inedible (and yes, I read the label and decided to try it despite the inclusion of milk fat). Blech.
It looks to me like this is all about marketing, rather than chocolate, and my opinion of both companies has dropped.
Tiling a plane isn't mathematics, it's engineering.
My, my, my. Only someone unschooled in computable theory could make such a claim. Remember that Wang tiles are equivalent to Turing machines. Of course the article also mentions Pentrose tilings. No wonder you posted as AC!
Maybe not, but I walked into a busy Apple store yesterday with a failing MacBook Pro battery, explained that it had a bulge, and walked out with a free replacement 15 minutes later. Makes me feel a little better about paying premium prices. BTW, they required me to show them the laptop.
I refuse to donate to any organization whose board members use my blood, sweat, and misery to jet-set around the world, hobnobbing with celebrities.
I used to be on the board of a nonprofit, and I have a question for you: Would you volunteer to show up to tedious board meetings several times a year at your own expense (travel, lodging, lost time at work and with family), and then sit in a meeting room for a couple of days spending most of the time on tedious topics?
I did. At least I could afford it. Some of our board members didn't have much money, but they found ways to get there and a spot on a floor or couch to sleep on. What made it worthwhile was the good work the organization did, plus the opportunity to spend time with some very cool, like-minded people.
Now I don't know squat about how Wikimedia is run, but if it is like many small non-profits, board members are expected to contribute. Generously. Our board was accused of wasting donations on travel even though we paid our own way. Forgive me if I am sensitive to this issue, but you haven't come close to demonstrating that Wikimedia is using its funds improperly. My experience was that the people who argued as you do had no clue about the organization.
What gives with Los Alamos? Instead of coddling their bullpen of 2000 watt minds they seem insistent on beating them into submission.
I have to agree. Having worked in a highly secure yet reasonably managed environment, the respect accorded to staff members made me feel more secure than any level of invasive physical or psychological measures could. Treating people like criminals can encourage them to act that way.
By the way, I recently found this site of polygraph criticisms.
"Losing mass at a significant rate" is sensationalist journalism at best..
NASA chose that phrase in their
March 2006 news release. They calculated the net loss of antarctic ice is 152(+/-80) cubic kilometers annually. If the results are valid - the were published in Science magazine - I have no problem calling that rate "significant".
By the way, your reference was written two years prior to this gravitational study. From the NASA news release: "Measuring variations in Antarctica's ice sheet mass is difficult because of its size and complexity. GRACE is able to overcome these issues, surveying the entire ice sheet, and tracking the balance between mass changes in the interior and coastal areas."
Unfortunately, the overall picture science is giving us tends to supports the hypothesis that ice is rapidly melting on a global scale. Rapid, in contrast to the stability of the past several thousand years. Mt. Shasta's Whitney glacier excepted.
Parent makes an interesting point in mentioning the drop in arctic sea levels. This is puzzling and appears to contradict measurements which show that other oceans are rising at an increasing rate.
However, contrary to the pretty pictures and unfounded claims in parent's reference, the Antarctica Ice sheet is
growing smaller. Not only have we witnessed the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf, but rivers of meltwater are draining the Antarctic ice. Indeed, NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) shows declines in the ice pack in both Antarctica and Greenland. Add to this the study I cited earlier which shows even greater declines in mountain glaciers across the globe and the pattern becomes hard to refute.
By the way, parent's claim that "glaciers in California are also growing" is laughable. The article he cited as evidence lists one solitary glacier (the Whitney glacier on Mount Shasta). Readers of Slashdot are smart enough to understand that climate change is going to have local results that are difficult to predict - that one mountain might get enough extra snow to be an exception to the rule. Note that article states that this is "the only glacier in the world that's now larger than it was in 1890". Yikes!
Why nonsense like this gets modded (Score 5:Insightful) is beyond my ability to understand.
By the way, I honestly don't know if it is correct to attribute the sinking of this particular island to global warming. I can tell you one thing I truly believe: By the end of the next century we will have lost a whole lot of beachfront property.
Yeah, I was criticising Global Warming deniers. They tend to argue that global warming might not exist, if it does it might not be caused by human activity, and even if it is we might not be able to do anything about it, therefore we should do nothing.
That kind of logic strikes me as very narrow minded, because if any of their premises are wrong we *might* end up in shit creek. I think we need policy driven by honest science-based risk assessment.
When I used the abbreviation GW to refer to global warming, I admit I was conscious of the double entendre. Whether or not Bush is responsible for our troubles, he deserves to be roundly criticized for his manipulation of the scientific process as it applies to politics.
I'm amazed that this got modded "insightful". Calling the gloabal warming trend "highly doubtful" is inflamatory to say the least. There is no serious doubt that the planet is warming. My bogometer pegs every time I listen to one of the GW deniers, and the damn thing nearly broke when I read the link. As a climber, I have seen glaciers all over North America and Europe as they vanish. Colorado scientists tell me that mountan glaciers all over the world are contributing more then the melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice. To the tune of several feet of ocean rise by the end of the century. We are in for a rough ride, folks.
I agree with parent about one thing: In the long run we are at the mercy of natural forces. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and volcanos are familiar disasters which occur in a timescale we easily comprehend. There will be another ice age, and the oceans will drop 120 meters again (as they did at the peak of the last glacial episode 20,000 years ago), but history is incapable of recording such long-term changes. The sea levels will plummet and rise again just as fast, mocking our current period of stability. However, we strongly disagree on this: If there is a likelyhook that human activity is precipitating a change in sea levels that will affect human life across the globe sooner than it would happen naturally, then I believe we owe it to ourselves to honestly evaluate the causes and effects, then take action as appropriate even in the face of (or because of) uncertainty.
If enough people begin to suspect the same usage as you, the language will eventually change. But we are not there yet. In the meantime, check out the definition of sierra in a dictionary.
If you want to argue, go look up "Sierra Nevada" on Wikipedia and tell me that mountain range is also called "The Sierras". Just be prepared when I tell you I like to call it "Home of the Flying Spaghetti Monster".
Slashdot Mirror
[blockquote] This is a common mistake and is only good for very low power stuff. In picking a wire size people often think going from 120 volts to 12 volts only involves the math of supplying a wire 10X larger to handle the current without overheating. In a 120 volt application, you are permitted a 5% voltage drop. This isn't much as 5% of 120 volts is only about 6 volts. No big deal when running a 1200 watt portable hair dryer. If you simply size the wire to now do the same thing on 12 volts, you no longer have a 5% voltage drop. At the same current you still have a 6 volt drop with the 10X larger wire but you now lost 50% of your power in the wire. Take a hint from the pro.. Use an inverter. The 10% the inverter lost is made up by the 45% not lost in the wire. Do the math. Engineer the project. [/blockquote] Using wire 10x the size would work fine because its resistance would be one 1/10 that of the original line. The resulting drop in power would still be 5%. The problem will be running cables as thick as your thumb and making the connections. There's also the cost (something line $10/foot for the cable and who know what for 150 amp connectors). No. There is are practical reasons for using higher voltages for high power appliances. By the way, a small scale solution could be to run specific circuits off lead acid batteries (e.g. 12V lighting or a computer with a 12V input power supply), which is primarily charged by by the renewable source, with a backup from the grid triggered when the battery drops below a set value. I'd ask around at RV suppliers who sell small scale solar systems to see what they have.
Don't kid yourself. Linux is potentially as vulnerable as other operating systems. Reports say that rootkitted linux machines serve as botnet controllers. Keeping linux machines patched for security is necessary, too.
The reason radios modulate sine waves is that all other waveforms contain harmonics (signals in bands that are a multiple of the fundamental). This is also the reason we don't use amplitude modulation to transmit digital information (AM using a square wave will be full of harmonics of the data signal).
[Hit Submit instead of preview - here's the final version]
You are right about 2.4 GHz devices interfering with each other. That's about it.
First: Wi-Fi devices may be assigned "static channels", but these are not minimally wide frequency bands as you imply. In fact, the channels are 30Mhz wide and contain spread spectrum signals. Channel 1 overlaps channels 2 through 5 enough to cause interference.
Second: Digital modulation techniques need not "bleed over" significantly past the bandwidth required to carry the information (i.e. potentially less than analog transmission of the same information). For example, psk31 is a digital mode with a bandwidth of about 31Hz.
Third: Modulated signals are necessarily not sine waves. Especially signals designed to look like noise (n.b. Wi-Fi is meant to look like noise across 30MHz of spectrum). You will see changes in frequency or phase (I'm not certain which). If individual cycles of the 2.4GHz waveform you saw looked rough then you made a mistake sampling the signal. Visible distortion of a single wave so far out of bad it would not affect any 2.4GHz devices.
BTW, my license says "Extra".
You are right about 2.4 GHz devices interfering with each other. That's about it. First: Wi-Fi devices may be assigned "static channels", but these are not minimally wide frequency bands as you imply. In fact, the channels are 30Mhz wide and contain spread spectrum signals. Channel 1 ovelaps channels 2 through 5 enough to cause interference. Second: Modulated signals are necessarily not sine waves. Digital modulation techniques need not "bleed over" significantly past the bandwidth required to carry the information (i.e. potentially less than analog transmission of the same information). For example, psk31 is a digital mode with a bandwidth of about 31Hz. Third: You should not expect a signal designed to look like noise to be a clean sine wave. Wi-Fi is meant to look like noise across 30MHz of spectrum. You will see changes in frequency or phase (I'm not certain of the specific modulation techniques). If individual cycles of the 2.4GHz waveform you saw looked rough then you made a mistake sampling the signal. Visible distortion of a single wave will be so far out of bad it would not affect any 2.4GHz devices (except maybe if broadcast at high enough power to overload the front end or affect intermediate circuits). BTW, my license says "Extra".
What does Best Buy have to lose? Their trademark. It is called trademark dilution.
I'm no fan of best buy. Sending scary letters to quash news of this is reprehensible. Still, a trademark that is not actively enforced can be lost. That's how business works in the land of the free.
TFA mentioned the keyboards operate on 27MHz. That's a wavelength of over 11 meters. At about half a wavelength wide, a yagi will not be small.
Others suggested dish antennas. For 27Mhz, no way.
Sorry but cracked linux boxes are already part of some botnets. Switching to something other than Windows would surely help, but wouldn't solve all our botnet problems.
Games cost $60, less if you are willing to wait, often for a hundred hours of play time. No travel expenses. No special clothes required. Hell, gamers don't even need to buy deodorant. Ever priced a round of golf at a good course? How about membership at the club so you can play there?
I know... if you want to compete with the best players or impress your friends you may choose to buy lots of bleeding edge hardware. My point is you don't have to do so if you just want to play games.
Do you often try something again and again, expecting different results? But hey, if you don't have what it takes to type "emacs key" on Google's search page and press "I'm feeling lucky", then honestly I'd have to recommend Apple's TextEdit application for you. I understand that it is easy to get lost in emacs info hell, but it is just as easy to find helpful tutorials. Printing out a cheat sheet for common key bindings will get you started without even that.
Next time you try running emacs in terminal-mode - and it runs quite well that way - take a minute to read the instructions on the splash screen. You'll find out how to access Emacs' help features, exit the program, and use the menus. Better still, install the version announced here and you'll get a real windowed (Carbon) OS X application, with menus accessible by mouse. What could be easier?
By the way, I built emacs 22 from source since I did not find an OS X build. Yhe build is This is essentially "configure; make; make install", but requires reading mac/INSTALL to find the option needed for OS X and you have to use sudo for the "make install". If that's too much trouble, then Emacs probably isn't for you.
Emacs is big, but you can learn to edit files with it in a matter of minutes. It comes with a good manual, a tutorial, and extensive (and powerful) self-documentation features. Don't be put off because you heard it was hard to learn - that advice is probably the largest impediment for people who actually want to learn Emacs. Of course, learning *all* of emacs is pointless for most of us, so don't think you have read every section. Especially at first.
You will also find lots of LISP resources bundled with Emacs, and a handy *scratch* buffer where you can evaluate LISP code with the press of a (control-) key.
As for your keyboard layout: I googled "dvorak emacs" and the first link I clicked has a nice looking customization file for emacs. Pick one that looks good and try it.
It is sad that I almost feel obliged to answer Emacs detractors. All I am going to say is, if you don't like like Emacs, why on Earth are you reading this???
Because I am already loathe to load any software that includes copy protection crapware on my computer. If I could, I would load and run my games in separate virtual machines. That way, I wouldn't worry about rogue ring 0 device drivers and who know what else affecting my system.
Of course that same copy protection junk will probably choke when run in a virtual environment. C'est la guerre!
BTW, is it still paranoia if they are really trying to get me?
Hear, Hear! I expect most "chocolate" candy bars to be junk, so I was excited to find apparently high-end chocolates - Ghirardelli's Intense Dark and Hershey's Cacao Reserve - on sale at my local 7-11. I bought one bar that claimed to be dark chocolate and found it to be inedible (and yes, I read the label and decided to try it despite the inclusion of milk fat). Blech.
It looks to me like this is all about marketing, rather than chocolate, and my opinion of both companies has dropped.
Walmart is traded on the big board, symbol WMT.
Maybe not, but I walked into a busy Apple store yesterday with a failing MacBook Pro battery, explained that it had a bulge, and walked out with a free replacement 15 minutes later. Makes me feel a little better about paying premium prices. BTW, they required me to show them the laptop.
I did. At least I could afford it. Some of our board members didn't have much money, but they found ways to get there and a spot on a floor or couch to sleep on. What made it worthwhile was the good work the organization did, plus the opportunity to spend time with some very cool, like-minded people.
Now I don't know squat about how Wikimedia is run, but if it is like many small non-profits, board members are expected to contribute. Generously. Our board was accused of wasting donations on travel even though we paid our own way. Forgive me if I am sensitive to this issue, but you haven't come close to demonstrating that Wikimedia is using its funds improperly. My experience was that the people who argued as you do had no clue about the organization.
By the way, I recently found this site of polygraph criticisms.
By the way, your reference was written two years prior to this gravitational study. From the NASA news release: "Measuring variations in Antarctica's ice sheet mass is difficult because of its size and complexity. GRACE is able to overcome these issues, surveying the entire ice sheet, and tracking the balance between mass changes in the interior and coastal areas."
Unfortunately, the overall picture science is giving us tends to supports the hypothesis that ice is rapidly melting on a global scale. Rapid, in contrast to the stability of the past several thousand years. Mt. Shasta's Whitney glacier excepted.
Parent makes an interesting point in mentioning the drop in arctic sea levels. This is puzzling and appears to contradict measurements which show that other oceans are rising at an increasing rate.
However, contrary to the pretty pictures and unfounded claims in parent's reference, the Antarctica Ice sheet is growing smaller. Not only have we witnessed the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf, but rivers of meltwater are draining the Antarctic ice. Indeed, NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) shows declines in the ice pack in both Antarctica and Greenland. Add to this the study I cited earlier which shows even greater declines in mountain glaciers across the globe and the pattern becomes hard to refute.
By the way, parent's claim that "glaciers in California are also growing" is laughable. The article he cited as evidence lists one solitary glacier (the Whitney glacier on Mount Shasta). Readers of Slashdot are smart enough to understand that climate change is going to have local results that are difficult to predict - that one mountain might get enough extra snow to be an exception to the rule. Note that article states that this is "the only glacier in the world that's now larger than it was in 1890". Yikes!
Why nonsense like this gets modded (Score 5:Insightful) is beyond my ability to understand.
By the way, I honestly don't know if it is correct to attribute the sinking of this particular island to global warming. I can tell you one thing I truly believe: By the end of the next century we will have lost a whole lot of beachfront property.
Yeah, I was criticising Global Warming deniers. They tend to argue that global warming might not exist, if it does it might not be caused by human activity, and even if it is we might not be able to do anything about it, therefore we should do nothing.
That kind of logic strikes me as very narrow minded, because if any of their premises are wrong we *might* end up in shit creek. I think we need policy driven by honest science-based risk assessment.
When I used the abbreviation GW to refer to global warming, I admit I was conscious of the double entendre. Whether or not Bush is responsible for our troubles, he deserves to be roundly criticized for his manipulation of the scientific process as it applies to politics.
I'm amazed that this got modded "insightful". Calling the gloabal warming trend "highly doubtful" is inflamatory to say the least. There is no serious doubt that the planet is warming. My bogometer pegs every time I listen to one of the GW deniers, and the damn thing nearly broke when I read the link. As a climber, I have seen glaciers all over North America and Europe as they vanish. Colorado scientists tell me that mountan glaciers all over the world are contributing more then the melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice. To the tune of several feet of ocean rise by the end of the century. We are in for a rough ride, folks.
I agree with parent about one thing: In the long run we are at the mercy of natural forces. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and volcanos are familiar disasters which occur in a timescale we easily comprehend. There will be another ice age, and the oceans will drop 120 meters again (as they did at the peak of the last glacial episode 20,000 years ago), but history is incapable of recording such long-term changes. The sea levels will plummet and rise again just as fast, mocking our current period of stability. However, we strongly disagree on this: If there is a likelyhook that human activity is precipitating a change in sea levels that will affect human life across the globe sooner than it would happen naturally, then I believe we owe it to ourselves to honestly evaluate the causes and effects, then take action as appropriate even in the face of (or because of) uncertainty.
If you want to argue, go look up "Sierra Nevada" on Wikipedia and tell me that mountain range is also called "The Sierras". Just be prepared when I tell you I like to call it "Home of the Flying Spaghetti Monster".