I don't know if there's any truth to what the Chinese gov't says, but when I went to China I was told that Falun Gong had had one of their members murder a certain number of homeless people. I don't know if there's any truth to this or if it's just 'breathing exercises.'
But I thought I'd share the view that Chinese people are given of Falun Gong.
Blocking of our media? It's hard to get a block away from someone selling pirated DVDs or software or watching a TV show that was pirated from the US and rebranded. They don't block our media so much as select which parts make it into the mass media... and then ignore each and every one of our IP laws, for better or worse.
I think the US did the same to England, back when they were rising to power.
If big businesses can invest their money wisely enough to buy off a Congress, I'm not very free. (See the energy, telecommunications, defense, highway bills.)
I don't get it? You're complaining because the economic well-being of companies is debated by congress? I'm don't get it.
Power is, to some degree, like a zero sum game. Political donations influence elected officials. The purchase of influence dilutes the influence of voters, and is hence anti-democratic.
The grandparent poster is correct. China is only nominally tied to Maoism at this point, and is probably closer to a mild version of fascism. They have local elections but an unelected national government. They are allowing private ownership of property, a growing free market, increasing disparity of wealth etc. Some industries are still government owned.
The ruling party might be called 'Communist' but they sure don't act like it.
The problem is that as flawed and faulty as the Left might be, the Right is just as bad. Given free reign, the Right would slaughter any person which didn't agree with their political agenda. Just as the Nazis jailed and murdered their political enemies, we're hearing numerous calls to 'kill the liberals.' People didn't take Hitler's threats seriously either. Give the Right all the power they want and we'd be the Nazi party a la American actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the installation of Pinochet, and the propping up of dictators worldwide. If you truly believe that your enemies are 'traitors' as so many on the "right" have said, then why not? We'd see expanded interference in the governments of legitimate democracies as we have in the Ukraine and Japan, with our government doling out welfare and exemptions to industry and continuing to erode individual rights which interfere with the state's ability to wield power. Or, alternately, we'd have a Religious state which eliminated the teaching of evolution from public schools and any other scientific doctrine which contradicted the Bible as interpreted by a few fundamentalists. They would remake our nation according to their highly selective view of the bible, carefully editing out portions like Jesus' communal lifestyle.
Of course, if you take the most extreme elements of any movement as you've done, you're going to be able to paint a ghastly picture. The authoritarian "Right" despite their rhetoric to the contrary, is as interested in centralization of power as the authoritarian "Left" is. The Patriot Act is now permanent. Those with power will have the information to discredit their political opponents, just as the soviets did. It's just a matter of deciding to use any information that your party can get, as Herbert Hoover and Nixon did.
"The Right" makes itself look good by comparing itself favorably to Communism and trying to convince people that every Democrat is a Communist, or that every person on the left wants centralization of power. There are a few socialist Democrats (who I don't agree with) but the majority of Democrats are not socialist. And sure, you can run a radio talk show and selectively allow folks on the air (Rush Limbaugh's callers are more heavily screened than any other call-in show) or selectively discuss a person's view but that isn't honesty, however much it looks like it. Given enough material, I can selectively quote just about anyone to make them look like an idiot.
Bush has not been honest by any stretch of the imagination. He's claimed to be for tax cuts, while increasing government spending. You can't have both. Either ask people to sacrifice so we can have the best military in the world, or give up the dream of being a global superpower and cut taxes. One or the other. Go for the middle and you're a 'flip-flopper.' Bush decides what he wants, and then manipulates people to get it. Nobody in their right mind thought that Saddam was trying to get Uranium from Iraq.
Look at how he manipulated people to believe that Iraq was behind 9-11. Even if you support the war against Iraq, you have to admit that deceptive means were used to launch it.
Bush claimed he wanted to give more power to the states, yet "No Child Left Behind" is a mandate on the national level. Why does this bill have to be implemented at the national level as opposed to the state level? Why hasn't Bush even funded his own bill? If the funds don't exist to run NCLB, then scrap the attached mandates.
As governor of Texas, Bush claimed that a recount was preferable in the case of a close call, then tried to shut down the recount back in Florida, while simultaneously calling for recounts in New Mexico. His party (not him personally) has since set in place Diebold voting machines which don't even leave a paper trail. This is a stupid thing to do on purpose. If it's a mistake, it's readily solved. But it hasn't been. A mistake of this import should be fixed before the next election.
It's nerds who have the latest hardwaree which is capable of handling all that crap.
Yeah, but they don't buy that stuff in order to view crap. Nerds are among the ones who complain most loudly about that kind of stuff, or else best know how to avoid it.
Nerds buy top of the line computers to play games or do work which requires top of the line computers.
Who do you think is more likely to use a non-conforming browser? Nerds or the mainstream?
WHAT?! Doing something sensibly so that everyone with any browser can use it? But I'm a nerd! I need all sorts of pointless geeky wizzy crap that need the latest version of the latest browser and a broadband internet connection to even get started with!
Usually nerds are process people. They have longer attention spans and are more concerned with utility than glitz or fashionability.
It's the rest of the population that's obsessed with bright flashing lights and pretty pictures.
At the worst, geeks do things too simply, using an interface which requires users to write their own SQL or otherwise putting too much of a burden on the user.
The exception is with things like games, but their PURPOSE is to be recreational. The purpose of government documents is not.
"It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see China becoming a capitalist democracy"
Actually it does take a lot of imagination. China has thousands of years of authoritarian government and weak support for democracy. The strongest push in China is against corruption and class divisions. Being able to write letters to the editor isn't a priority there.
China is a dictatorship on the national level, however it allows elections on a local level, so China does have a democratic tradition. Of course, I don't know how legitimate the elections are in all cases, but I think that at least some are legit. But the US downplays elections by any nation that it doesn't like. Iranians have a broader choice of leaders for their national leadership than Americans do.
The strongest push in China is against corruption and class divisions. Agreed on corruption. Why do you say 'class divisions.' Are you sure that's up to date? Heck, China's agricultural policies actively discriminate against farmers a la the American Morril Tarrif before the civil war. They squeeze the agricultural sectors to grow Chinese cities and Chinese industry.
Face it, America has a two party dictatorship at the national level. Look at how difficult it is to get on the ballot in each state if you're not the favorite of the Republican or Democratic party. Despite widespread support, even Perot had trouble.
Candidates from the Republican and Democratic parties should be forced to get their name on the ballot in each individual state in the same way that third party candidates do. Party candidates should not be given any special favors in the electoral process by the government that would give them an advantage.
Give people the ability to vote with their money, eventually they'll demand to vote at a ballot box.
The US was fine with Batista in Cuba, not because they thought he'd eventually become a democracy, but because we could do business with him. Hell, look at the shit that they did in El Salvador.
Assauge your conscience however you want, but American corporations have never met a buyer they didn't like, and they have a lot of say with the US gov.
Re:And yet Europe seems to be doing fine
on
Pornified
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Teen pregnancy costs the United States at least $7 billion annually.
How much does adult pregnancy cost the US annually?
Digital cameras, more than the internet
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Digital cameras, more than the internet, may be responsible for the rise of the harsher forms of porn.
In the past, if you wanted to get film developed, you had to develop it yourself or else have someone else do it. Or use a poloroid, but those are pretty low quality.
Now you can use a digital camera to take the picture yourself and reproduce it instantly. Digital images and cheap, easy to use tools for making them, are the second half of the porn explosion.
I'm starting to think that Occam's razor is abused more often than it is used correctly.
Parent asserted; Occam's Razor, which is a basic tenent of modern scientific thought says that the simplest explanation is the best.
This is an abuse of the version of Occham's Razor used in modern scientific thought, though an oft repeated misinterpretation.
A better way of phrasing the desire for elegance in modern science is; "Given two identically predictive models, choose the one which requires the fewest assumptions." Reducing the number of assumptions is not always the same as 'simplifying' the problem.
Also, remember that the purpose of science is to generate predictive value. If one of those models is more complex but also more predictive, then it is ALWAYS the better model, no matter how complex.
The original version of Occam's Razor, as correctly expressed in the Wiki article, is "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity" where 'necessity' equates to generating the maximum level of predictive value.
Check out the following link, which gives a better summation of the role of Occham's razor in science than the wiki article does.
Ewald's book "The Evolution of Infectious Diseases" describes how pathogens ( particularly single strain airborne pathogens which can only propagate in a host for a few days or weeks before the host becomes immune) often evolve to manipulate host defenses in such a way that the host gets what it wants (self defense) and the disease gets what it wants (transmission to a new host.)
This dynamic changes, however, with fluid borne pathogens where multiple strains are transmitted at once, and it's this latter case that Ewald focuses on the most.
Why don't STDs ever do this? Instead of rotting someone's liver or whatever, why isnt' there a sexually transmitted disease which ups people's testosterone and makes them really horney?
Or is there...
There are ton of supposedly harmless viruses and bacteria that have yet to be catagorized. It'd be interesting to see if any of them had this effect.
It should be readily testable. Fossil fuels are going to have less C13 in them. So altered levels of C13 in the atmosphere would be a good indication of manmade changes.
Considering that those doing carbon dating are forced to account for atmospheric changes in C13, this indicates to me that the changes in CO2 were most likely caused by fossil fuels.
Of course, if you can show a sudden severe upswing in volcanic activity, that might account for the same phenomenon, but it would take a LOT of volcanic activity, and the quantity of fuels burned is enough to account for things.
It's like the way that medical people used to believe that disease was caused by bad smells. Everybody could see it was true - the people in the bad smelling places were disease-ridden, while the people in the clean hospitals weren't. Obviously the elimination of bad smells prevented disease. So wearing strong perfume would be a good defence.
Oops.
Actually, the lavendar sachettes that were used are anti-bacterial, as were some of the other herbs used. The 'strong perfumes' used may actually have been helpful.
The link you provided had reliable information in it, however it doesn't support what you're saying.
CO2 levels fluctuate
Yes, they fluctuate seasonally from winter to summer, but they're increasing from year to year all the same "in a wavy upward trend" as the linked article mentions. Human activity is the most likely cause for this.
And yes, in the distant past the CO2 levels were higher than what they are now. However drastic changes in CO2 levels preceeded radical temperature changes by ~30-100 years. I don't know if this is correlation or causation, but the notion that "we're within Earth's normal operating parameters" is no reassurance. Earth's climate was likely not as amenable to agriculture as it was in the past, though there are a good number of other variables. (Of course, in the past, we didn't have a solid land mass under the South Pole, which may be helping to stabalize temperatures.)
Just saying 'more hairspray is in use now than ever before, and CFCs at high altitudes are in higher concentrations than ever before', does not link those two phenomena.
It's my understanding that there aren't any natural processes which produce CFCs. So what we find in the upper atmosphere is linked to human activity somewhere.
It takes a long time for CFCs to migrate to the upper atmosphere. I can't remember the exact length of time off hand. But I don't think you'd find a good year to year correlation between CFCs produced and the ozone hole, even if use and ozone depletion were correlated.
What would be interesting is if some natural process produced CFCs. But noone's made that claim yet, surprisingly.
By your reckoning, maybe banks should get rid of 6 security cameras and put more 3 security guards in place. Because we all know how reliable witness's memories are after a traumatic event, who needs a machine to record exactly what happened?
The thing is with bank security cameras, humans are still ultimatly doing the pattern recognition. They're not relying on machines to do facial recognition and pre-identify bank robbers. Some are probably trying, now. But I don't imagine the technology will become viable for a few more years.
Just like accounting software isn't meant to replace the accounting department, this is a tool to help avoid human errors.
True, and eventually I can see such systems being useful. But I think realtime pattern-recognition technology like this is currently dramatically over-hyped and underperforming.
I mean, it'd be great if it does what it says, but I just don't buy the sales pitch. This single success, which supposedly wouldn't have happened without the system, doesn't convince me. Maybe if we measured the failure rate in pools with or without this technology in order to calculate the benefit...
Cameras to record events? Sure, great idea. Belief that technology can ourperform humans when it comes to real-time pattern matching in chaotic situations? Not yet.
What would it cost, for example, to have an underwater observation deck? A small air bubble with air piped into an enclosed transparent chamber so that one of the five lifeguards could see the bottom of the pool and move if there was an emergency?
The claim with global warming is that the air is getting warmer.
"Global Warming" has been changed to "Global Climate Change" since too many people, scientists included, were expecting just hotter and hotter temperatures. We know that more CO2 will add more energy to the system. But we don't know where that energy will go, or how it will flow through the system.
Attempts at modeling have failed horribly. But the change in CO2 levels is factual, and it's effect on natural systes shouldn't be ignored.
We do know how some things work. We do know that CFCs destroy Ozone. That's a fact. Test it out in the lab all you like. There are other variables once the chemicals get into the atmosphere like the rate of ozone produced or where the CFCs travel to exactly, or if they can be destroyed or precipitated, etc. but chemical reactions are easy enough to test in the lab. .
However, suddenly we analyse weather for what... 100 years? 200 years?
Several tens of thousands, thanks to ice core samples. It's possible to gather data on events that happened before recorded history. It may not be perfectly accurate, but it's better than nothing. And even in our lifetime, we've altered the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Models based on past climate changes have been horrible at predicting future climate changes, but that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and make no decisions whatsoever, or that we're inevitably safe.
Whether or not there's a political debate around a scientific assertion should be irrelevant to the weight of validity that you assign to it. For example, the insurance industustries try to play down the health risks of mold so they don't have to cover mold-ridden houses (which would be incredibly expensive.) But talk to any microbiologist and they'll tell you just what mold can do to you.
Politics is a pretty poor barometer of the truth or falsity of an assertion, I agree. We need to make our decisions based on evidence rather than political ideology. But while politics shouldn't be involved in sciences science should be involved in politics. Or should we just go with our gut feelings?
Will our medicine be considered primitive in the future? I'm sure. Honestly, who said otherwise?
I, for one, would like to see rapid identification of bacterial infections and greater reliance on bacteriophage (viruses which kill bacteria) so that normal intestinal flora are not destroyed. This would allow treating people with only mildly harmful infections, since the side effects of treatment (potential fungal overgrowth, C. Difficile infection, etc.) would not be as bad.
Our techniques for rapidly and cheaply diagnosing pathogens right now are piss poor, and as they improve we'll be able to give very specific, effective treatments with fewer side effects.
Even our legal system could be making better utilization of science. All people have certain mostly benign viruses in them, which are often sexually transmitted. If a court case came up where one person claimed they were raped and another denied doing it, sexual involvement could be demonstrated by showing the two people had a similar set of viruses in their body. Mutation rates of the more steady portions of the virus might be useful for determining the relative date of the event (good for divorce trials, too.) Of course, more than one virus would have to be used.
Stop telling me we know how everything works or that our methods are perfect and all that's left is time and discovery. In 250 years they're going to poke as much fun at what we know now as we do the science of 1750.
Who, exactly, has been telling you that they know how everything works?
With the exception of spotting a huge space object heading for the planet, doomsday science can be summarily ignored.
So the harm attributed to pesticide usage, lead in the water pipes and in face paint, poor food quality standards, and sexual pandemics... these are just phantoms of our imagination? I'm sure you can think of more.
Sometimes science does identify real threats. And it requires a political movement to get the law to recognize those threats.
The thing is, no matter how little information we have, we still have to make decisions based on that information or else confusion and indecision will paralyze us, socially, scientifically, and politically.
I had one of my posts, that was perfectly reasonable, modded down as a troll too. I suspect someone was doing that to as many evolution vs. creationism posts as they could, without regard to content.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if there's any truth to what the Chinese gov't says, but when I went to China I was told that Falun Gong had had one of their members murder a certain number of homeless people. I don't know if there's any truth to this or if it's just 'breathing exercises.'
But I thought I'd share the view that Chinese people are given of Falun Gong.
Blocking of our media? It's hard to get a block away from someone selling pirated DVDs or software or watching a TV show that was pirated from the US and rebranded. They don't block our media so much as select which parts make it into the mass media... and then ignore each and every one of our IP laws, for better or worse.
I think the US did the same to England, back when they were rising to power.
If big businesses can invest their money wisely enough to buy off a Congress, I'm not very free. (See the energy, telecommunications, defense, highway bills.)
I don't get it? You're complaining because the economic well-being of companies is debated by congress? I'm don't get it.
Power is, to some degree, like a zero sum game. Political donations influence elected officials.
The purchase of influence dilutes the influence of voters, and is hence anti-democratic.
Nobody in their right mind thought that Saddam was trying to get Uranium from Iraq.
Should read "from Nigeria." And yes, I know Saddam did try to build a nuke power plant at one point, and had one that was observed by the IAEA.
My point here is that the documents were rigged, everyone knew it, and Bush still used them.
The grandparent poster is correct. China is only nominally tied to Maoism at this point, and is probably closer to a mild version of fascism. They have local elections but an unelected national government. They are allowing private ownership of property, a growing free market, increasing disparity of wealth etc. Some industries are still government owned.
The ruling party might be called 'Communist' but they sure don't act like it.
The problem is that as flawed and faulty as the Left might be, the Right is just as bad. Given free reign, the Right would slaughter any person which didn't agree with their political agenda. Just as the Nazis jailed and murdered their political enemies, we're hearing numerous calls to 'kill the liberals.' People didn't take Hitler's threats seriously either. Give the Right all the power they want and we'd be the Nazi party a la American actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the installation of Pinochet, and the propping up of dictators worldwide. If you truly believe that your enemies are 'traitors' as so many on the "right" have said, then why not? We'd see expanded interference in the governments of legitimate democracies as we have in the Ukraine and Japan, with our government doling out welfare and exemptions to industry and continuing to erode individual rights which interfere with the state's ability to wield power. Or, alternately, we'd have a Religious state which eliminated the teaching of evolution from public schools and any other scientific doctrine which contradicted the Bible as interpreted by a few fundamentalists. They would remake our nation according to their highly selective view of the bible, carefully editing out portions like Jesus' communal lifestyle.
Of course, if you take the most extreme elements of any movement as you've done, you're going to be able to paint a ghastly picture. The authoritarian "Right" despite their rhetoric to the contrary, is as interested in centralization of power as the authoritarian "Left" is. The Patriot Act is now permanent. Those with power will have the information to discredit their political opponents, just as the soviets did. It's just a matter of deciding to use any information that your party can get, as Herbert Hoover and Nixon did.
"The Right" makes itself look good by comparing itself favorably to Communism and trying to convince people that every Democrat is a Communist, or that every person on the left wants centralization of power. There are a few socialist Democrats (who I don't agree with) but the majority of Democrats are not socialist. And sure, you can run a radio talk show and selectively allow folks on the air (Rush Limbaugh's callers are more heavily screened than any other call-in show) or selectively discuss a person's view but that isn't honesty, however much it looks like it. Given enough material, I can selectively quote just about anyone to make them look like an idiot.
Bush has not been honest by any stretch of the imagination. He's claimed to be for tax cuts, while increasing government spending. You can't have both. Either ask people to sacrifice so we can have the best military in the world, or give up the dream of being a global superpower and cut taxes. One or the other. Go for the middle and you're a 'flip-flopper.' Bush decides what he wants, and then manipulates people to get it. Nobody in their right mind thought that Saddam was trying to get Uranium from Iraq.
Look at how he manipulated people to believe that Iraq was behind 9-11. Even if you support the war against Iraq, you have to admit that deceptive means were used to launch it.
Bush claimed he wanted to give more power to the states, yet "No Child Left Behind" is a mandate on the national level. Why does this bill have to be implemented at the national level as opposed to the state level? Why hasn't Bush even funded his own bill? If the funds don't exist to run NCLB, then scrap the attached mandates.
As governor of Texas, Bush claimed that a recount was preferable in the case of a close call, then tried to shut down the recount back in Florida, while simultaneously calling for recounts in New Mexico. His party (not him personally) has since set in place Diebold voting machines which don't even leave a paper trail. This is a stupid thing to do on purpose. If it's a mistake, it's readily solved. But it hasn't been. A mistake of this import should be fixed before the next election.
Putting aside the question of whether Bush could
It's nerds who have the latest hardwaree which is capable of handling all that crap.
Yeah, but they don't buy that stuff in order to view crap. Nerds are among the ones who complain most loudly about that kind of stuff, or else best know how to avoid it.
Nerds buy top of the line computers to play games or do work which requires top of the line computers.
Who do you think is more likely to use a non-conforming browser? Nerds or the mainstream?
WHAT?! Doing something sensibly so that everyone with any browser can use it? But I'm a nerd! I need all sorts of pointless geeky wizzy crap that need the latest version of the latest browser and a broadband internet connection to even get started with!
Usually nerds are process people. They have longer attention spans and are more concerned with utility than glitz or fashionability.
It's the rest of the population that's obsessed with bright flashing lights and pretty pictures.
At the worst, geeks do things too simply, using an interface which requires users to write their own SQL or otherwise putting too much of a burden on the user.
The exception is with things like games, but their PURPOSE is to be recreational. The purpose of government documents is not.
"It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see China becoming a capitalist democracy"
Actually it does take a lot of imagination. China has thousands of years of authoritarian government and weak support for democracy. The strongest push in China is against corruption and class divisions. Being able to write letters to the editor isn't a priority there.
China is a dictatorship on the national level, however it allows elections on a local level, so China does have a democratic tradition. Of course, I don't know how legitimate the elections are in all cases, but I think that at least some are legit. But the US downplays elections by any nation that it doesn't like. Iranians have a broader choice of leaders for their national leadership than Americans do.
The strongest push in China is against corruption and class divisions. Agreed on corruption. Why do you say 'class divisions.' Are you sure that's up to date? Heck, China's agricultural policies actively discriminate against farmers a la the American Morril Tarrif before the civil war. They squeeze the agricultural sectors to grow Chinese cities and Chinese industry.
Face it, America has a two party dictatorship at the national level. Look at how difficult it is to get on the ballot in each state if you're not the favorite of the Republican or Democratic party. Despite widespread support, even Perot had trouble.
Candidates from the Republican and Democratic parties should be forced to get their name on the ballot in each individual state in the same way that third party candidates do. Party candidates should not be given any special favors in the electoral process by the government that would give them an advantage.
Give people the ability to vote with their money, eventually they'll demand to vote at a ballot box.
The US was fine with Batista in Cuba, not because they thought he'd eventually become a democracy, but because we could do business with him. Hell, look at the shit that they did in El Salvador.
Assauge your conscience however you want, but American corporations have never met a buyer they didn't like, and they have a lot of say with the US gov.
Teen pregnancy costs the United States at least $7 billion annually.
How much does adult pregnancy cost the US annually?
Digital cameras, more than the internet, may be responsible for the rise of the harsher forms of porn.
In the past, if you wanted to get film developed, you had to develop it yourself or else have someone else do it. Or use a poloroid, but those are pretty low quality.
Now you can use a digital camera to take the picture yourself and reproduce it instantly. Digital images and cheap, easy to use tools for making them, are the second half of the porn explosion.
I may, later.
The string theorists have certainly been rolling somthing...
I'm starting to think that Occam's razor is abused more often than it is used correctly.
e ral/occam.html
Parent asserted;
Occam's Razor, which is a basic tenent of modern scientific thought says that the simplest explanation is the best.
This is an abuse of the version of Occham's Razor used in modern scientific thought, though an oft repeated misinterpretation.
A better way of phrasing the desire for elegance in modern science is; "Given two identically predictive models, choose the one which requires the fewest assumptions." Reducing the number of assumptions is not always the same as 'simplifying' the problem.
Also, remember that the purpose of science is to generate predictive value. If one of those models is more complex but also more predictive, then it is ALWAYS the better model, no matter how complex.
The original version of Occam's Razor, as correctly expressed in the Wiki article, is "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity" where 'necessity' equates to generating the maximum level of predictive value.
Check out the following link, which gives a better summation of the role of Occham's razor in science than the wiki article does.
http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~dkoks/Faq/Gen
Ewald's book "The Evolution of Infectious Diseases" describes how pathogens ( particularly single strain airborne pathogens which can only propagate in a host for a few days or weeks before the host becomes immune) often evolve to manipulate host defenses in such a way that the host gets what it wants (self defense) and the disease gets what it wants (transmission to a new host.)
This dynamic changes, however, with fluid borne pathogens where multiple strains are transmitted at once, and it's this latter case that Ewald focuses on the most.
There are a few viruses of this type. I think there's another with wolves and deer, where predators 'use' the virus to make prey more vulnerable.
Predators weed out the sick and the weak. And apparenly they're part of the reason for the sick and the weak too.
Why don't STDs ever do this? Instead of rotting someone's liver or whatever, why isnt' there a sexually transmitted disease which ups people's testosterone and makes them really horney?
Or is there...
There are ton of supposedly harmless viruses and bacteria that have yet to be catagorized. It'd be interesting to see if any of them had this effect.
It should be readily testable. Fossil fuels are going to have less C13 in them. So altered levels of C13 in the atmosphere would be a good indication of manmade changes.
Considering that those doing carbon dating are forced to account for atmospheric changes in C13, this indicates to me that the changes in CO2 were most likely caused by fossil fuels.
Of course, if you can show a sudden severe upswing in volcanic activity, that might account for the same phenomenon, but it would take a LOT of volcanic activity, and the quantity of fuels burned is enough to account for things.
It's like the way that medical people used to believe that disease was caused by bad smells. Everybody could see it was true - the people in the bad smelling places were disease-ridden, while the people in the clean hospitals weren't. Obviously the elimination of bad smells prevented disease. So wearing strong perfume would be a good defence.
Oops.
Actually, the lavendar sachettes that were used are anti-bacterial, as were some of the other herbs used. The 'strong perfumes' used may actually have been helpful.
The link you provided had reliable information in it, however it doesn't support what you're saying.
CO2 levels fluctuate
Yes, they fluctuate seasonally from winter to summer, but they're increasing from year to year all the same "in a wavy upward trend" as the linked article mentions. Human activity is the most likely cause for this.
And yes, in the distant past the CO2 levels were higher than what they are now. However drastic changes in CO2 levels preceeded radical temperature changes by ~30-100 years. I don't know if this is correlation or causation, but the notion that "we're within Earth's normal operating parameters" is no reassurance. Earth's climate was likely not as amenable to agriculture as it was in the past, though there are a good number of other variables. (Of course, in the past, we didn't have a solid land mass under the South Pole, which may be helping to stabalize temperatures.)
Just saying 'more hairspray is in use now than ever before, and CFCs at high altitudes are in higher concentrations than ever before', does not link those two phenomena.
It's my understanding that there aren't any natural processes which produce CFCs. So what we find in the upper atmosphere is linked to human activity somewhere.
It takes a long time for CFCs to migrate to the upper atmosphere. I can't remember the exact length of time off hand. But I don't think you'd find a good year to year correlation between CFCs produced and the ozone hole, even if use and ozone depletion were correlated.
What would be interesting is if some natural process produced CFCs. But noone's made that claim yet, surprisingly.
By your reckoning, maybe banks should get rid of 6 security cameras and put more 3 security guards in place. Because we all know how reliable witness's memories are after a traumatic event, who needs a machine to record exactly what happened?
The thing is with bank security cameras, humans are still ultimatly doing the pattern recognition. They're not relying on machines to do facial recognition and pre-identify bank robbers. Some are probably trying, now. But I don't imagine the technology will become viable for a few more years.
Just like accounting software isn't meant to replace the accounting department, this is a tool to help avoid human errors.
True, and eventually I can see such systems being useful. But I think realtime pattern-recognition technology like this is currently dramatically over-hyped and underperforming.
I mean, it'd be great if it does what it says, but I just don't buy the sales pitch. This single success, which supposedly wouldn't have happened without the system, doesn't convince me. Maybe if we measured the failure rate in pools with or without this technology in order to calculate the benefit...
Cameras to record events? Sure, great idea. Belief that technology can ourperform humans when it comes to real-time pattern matching in chaotic situations? Not yet.
What would it cost, for example, to have an underwater observation deck? A small air bubble with air piped into an enclosed transparent chamber so that one of the five lifeguards could see the bottom of the pool and move if there was an emergency?
The claim with global warming is that the air is getting warmer.
"Global Warming" has been changed to "Global Climate Change" since too many people, scientists included, were expecting just hotter and hotter temperatures. We know that more CO2 will add more energy to the system. But we don't know where that energy will go, or how it will flow through the system.
Attempts at modeling have failed horribly. But the change in CO2 levels is factual, and it's effect on natural systes shouldn't be ignored.
We do know how some things work. We do know that CFCs destroy Ozone. That's a fact. Test it out in the lab all you like. There are other variables once the chemicals get into the atmosphere like the rate of ozone produced or where the CFCs travel to exactly, or if they can be destroyed or precipitated, etc. but chemical reactions are easy enough to test in the lab. .
However, suddenly we analyse weather for what... 100 years? 200 years?
Several tens of thousands, thanks to ice core samples. It's possible to gather data on events that happened before recorded history. It may not be perfectly accurate, but it's better than nothing. And even in our lifetime, we've altered the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Models based on past climate changes have been horrible at predicting future climate changes, but that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and make no decisions whatsoever, or that we're inevitably safe.
Whether or not there's a political debate around a scientific assertion should be irrelevant to the weight of validity that you assign to it. For example, the insurance industustries try to play down the health risks of mold so they don't have to cover mold-ridden houses (which would be incredibly expensive.) But talk to any microbiologist and they'll tell you just what mold can do to you.
Politics is a pretty poor barometer of the truth or falsity of an assertion, I agree. We need to make our decisions based on evidence rather than political ideology. But while politics shouldn't be involved in sciences science should be involved in politics. Or should we just go with our gut feelings?
Will our medicine be considered primitive in the future? I'm sure. Honestly, who said otherwise?
I, for one, would like to see rapid identification of bacterial infections and greater reliance on bacteriophage (viruses which kill bacteria) so that normal intestinal flora are not destroyed. This would allow treating people with only mildly harmful infections, since the side effects of treatment (potential fungal overgrowth, C. Difficile infection, etc.) would not be as bad.
Our techniques for rapidly and cheaply diagnosing pathogens right now are piss poor, and as they improve we'll be able to give very specific, effective treatments with fewer side effects.
Even our legal system could be making better utilization of science. All people have certain mostly benign viruses in them, which are often sexually transmitted. If a court case came up where one person claimed they were raped and another denied doing it, sexual involvement could be demonstrated by showing the two people had a similar set of viruses in their body. Mutation rates of the more steady portions of the virus might be useful for determining the relative date of the event (good for divorce trials, too.)
Of course, more than one virus would have to be used.
Stop telling me we know how everything works or that our methods are perfect and all that's left is time and discovery. In 250 years they're going to poke as much fun at what we know now as we do the science of 1750.
Who, exactly, has been telling you that they know how everything works?
With the exception of spotting a huge space object heading for the planet, doomsday science can be summarily ignored.
So the harm attributed to pesticide usage, lead in the water pipes and in face paint, poor food quality standards, and sexual pandemics... these are just phantoms of our imagination? I'm sure you can think of more.
Sometimes science does identify real threats. And it requires a political movement to get the law to recognize those threats.
The thing is, no matter how little information we have, we still have to make decisions based on that information or else confusion and indecision will paralyze us, socially, scientifically, and politically.
I had one of my posts, that was perfectly reasonable, modded down as a troll too. I suspect someone was doing that to as many evolution vs. creationism posts as they could, without regard to content.