Of course, clearly making visual improvements to bring Minesweeper's look in line with the rest of Vista utterly precludes them from making security changes. It's because Microsoft's such a small company, you know. They've got only one coder, and they only come in alternate Tuesdays, so they had to decide: build the consumer version of Windows on top of a redesigned Windows 2003 server kernel with a completely new user account model, new networking stack, protected mode IE, and a new resource-protected driver model; or make Minesweeper look a bit nicer. It was a close call, but Minesweeper won out in the end. And aren't we all the better for it?
I find it ironic when people complain that Calc and Notepad haven't changed. In fact, both programs have changed. (Notepad gained some additional menu and status bar options. Calc got a severe workover.)
I wouldn't be surprised if these are the same people who complain, "Why does Microsoft spend all its effort on making Windows 'look cool'? They should spend all their efforts on making technical improvements and just stop making visual improvements."
And with Calc, that's exactly what happened: Massive technical improvements. No visual improvement. And nobody noticed. In fact, the complaints just keep coming. "Look at Calc, same as it always was."
I think I speak for all of us when I say the saddest part of all this, for me, is that my plan to convert entirely from DVD to the wonderful technology that is Blu-ray will be tragically delayed...
Ah, but you misunderstand the point. When Apple implemented it, they were making their software more compatible, more forward looking, and more future-standards compliant. Microsoft, despite doing exactly the same thing, are clearly doing so in order to maliciously slow the entire internet down to a crawl. Isn't it obvious?
Exactly. It's interesting how everyone in Slashdot seems to treat Opera as a kind of 'honourary open source' browser: look at all the threads above using TFA to expound the advantages of open source by favourably comparing Firefox to IE. This is hardly a fair comparison of open source to closed source in general, Microsoft being Microsoft. None on them, you note, compare Firefox to Opera, arguably a much more fair comparison -- but one that would rather invalidate their argument, since, in my experience, Opera is far more stable and bug-free than Firefox. (Not, of course, that I'm detracting from the open-source model -- I really do think it's a wonderful concept and highly admire those who work in it).
Kitten authentication! It's perfect! Identifying small, cute, furry animals needs a basic cultural background in animals common to the West, but at the same time requires little or no intelligence (plus, it's fun!).
Try it out at http://www.kittenauth.com/node/5. It's currently being rewritten; if you can't see any animals the first time, click 'submit'.
>Well, maybe the problem is that users actually will have to pay to use this system which does everything that Ubuntu does with the default install. Perhaps the second problem is that this system requires more horsepower (DX10 compliant video card, 1Gb of RAM according to what I read before) to deliver the same experience as Linux+XGL - granted, XGL goodies are still in development phase, and support only a few video chipsets, but the mandatory specs are low.
Maybe so, but I'm betting Vista won't require five straight hours of command line xorg.conf editing, rebooting, trying something else, rebooting... until I found some combination of settings that enabled multiple monitors in a way that Windows sets up automatically with a single checkbox, without even needing rebooting (and has been consistantly able to since Windows 98). Even when it worked it was still nowhere near as good as in Windows, since the way Xinerama handles different resolutions on different monitors is frankly almost unusable*. Why does it have to be like that? I'm assuming Xinemara is just like any other open-source tool, with an active community supporting and developing it, so why is it so blatantly inferior to the Windows equivalent that's been in place for 8 years now?
As per instructions in your post, I hereby acknowledge that I'm venting -- though after being told that Linux was now "ready for the desktop" and "more logical to use than Windows" I think I'm entitled to. And this is with Ubuntu, a supposedly beginner-friendly distribution. Linux ready for the desktop? Not when it takes me half an hour, several Unix commands, and the help of a set of support forums to delete a folder I accidentally created...
*For anyone not familiar with xinerama, if you've got a 1024x768 right hand monitor and a 1280x1024 left and one, the right hand one will show a 1024x768 'window' onto an actual desktop that's 1024 pixels high. Why such a terrible kludge is considered acceptable I don't know. I suppose 99% of the people who would complain -- i.e. non-Linux-Zealots -- would never be able to get to a stage where they'd see it in the first page...
OK, I found an independant site that configured two identical systems as impartially as possible -- and you're right, that Mac was $90 cheaper with 20" displays configured, and $332 cheaper with no displays configured. Not nearly as much as the $1000+ I understand was mentioned in the keynote (due to the keynote apparently ignoring irregularities like the Dell coming with a 3 year warranty as opposed to Apple's one year), but still cheaper, which, as Dell is usually considered one of (if not the) cheapest PC vendors, is no mean feat. Specific point happily conceded, though I still stand by my original post: if I had not found any independant comfirmation (and if it were not possible to do the test myself) my default position would always still be to disbelieve any such statements like these until confirmation could be obtained, chart or no chart. Numbers can lie.
...The field has to be really strong, because it has to exceed the coercivity of the magnetic coating on the storage device. Hard drive platters have a coercivity of a few thousand Oersteds, which means a field of the same number of Gauss is needed to demagnetise them. The ferrite magnet on a computer's PC speaker, assuming it's not shielded, will have a surface field strength of only about a thousand Gauss, so it won't endanger hard drive data even if the drive's right next to it. Even 10,000 Gauss rare earth magnets can't wipe a hard drive if they're not sitting on top of it.
So just fiddling with magnets as you read Slashdot will not wipe your hard drive.
Try explaining inverse cube laws and Oersteds and Gauss to the average Microsoft Outlook user, though.
So in order to avoid mopping up drool from confused consumers, all of us Amazingly Knowledgeable, Windswept and Interesting Science and Technology Gods have fabricated a more easily explained conventional wisdom, which says: "Don't put a magnet near your computer, or, roughly speaking, your liver will catch fire."
>Clearly you didn't watch the WWDC keynote address.
Really?!? You mean Apple, at the keynote address given by their own CEO at their own developers conference, claims that they themselved are not overpriced? Are you sure? I mean, I think I speak for all of us when I say that I was expecting Steve to stand up there like a man and say that Macs are too expensive.
(Actually, I *do* think that Macs are now competitavely priced, but I'm annoyed that so many people just blindly believe what companies (in general, not just Apple) tell them. "But it must be good value, it says it is on the label!")
>Why you think Windows is in any way more productive when it does not ship with a real shell is a mystery.
I'm sorry, but I have to question this. Why is it that an operating system has to have a real shell to be productive? As far as I can see, the only thing a real shell (as opposed to a add-on shell such as cmd.exe on win2000/XP) gives you is the knowledge that you're using a text-based OS with a graphical shell on top, rather than one built to be graphical (not that I'm saying Windows is a perfect example of the latter). It's not like you can't run text-based commands from a GUI; Windows, for example, has Winkey+R. I can only see one thing that would be better done with a text-based user interface rather than a graphical one, and that's automation of a sequence of repetitive tasks since you can copy and paste a long string of commands; however, you can do that via scripting anyway. And I speak as someone who's just spent half a day editing xorg.conf from the command line to try and get Xinemara give me some use out of my second monitor; something that windows consistantly sets up automatically with a single tick of a checkbox. Can you even imagine trying to get something like this: http://www.dansdata.com/images/io060/monitors_f.gi f working in Linux without spending a *very* long time trying to coach xorg.conf to give you exactly what you want (especially considering the frankly awful kludge xinemara uses if you're monitors are set to different resolutions)?
Erm... I seem to have deviated quite some way from the original point, but I needed to rant anyway...
Can't really say without knowing exactly what level of publication you're looking for:
- A couple of steps above newspapers you have New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/) and Scientific American (http://www.sciam.com/).
- At a higher level of specialisation and greater depth, you have the institute publications; e.g. Physics World (http://physicsweb.org/subscribe/index.cfm?mag=PHW ) and its equivalents in the rest of the Sciences.
- At an even higher level you have the Journals - e.g. Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/magazine.dtl) and Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html) which publish individual Scientific papers, but also have summaries, analysis etc.
- At ever high that you get journals with increasingly greater specialisation, such as The Journal of Investigative Dermatology (http://www.nature.com/jid/index.html) (And if you think that's bad, try Nature Clinical Practice Urology...).
Just to note - the summary comments on the aesthetics of the interface (which would include both hardware and software parts), but the picture on the article it links to is clearly a picture of a third party online radio player called SiriuCE running on Windows Mobile 5, superimposed on the Zune. You can even see the original site from which the screenshot was missapropriated from http://www.emulamer.com/SiriuCE.html. I don't think anyone's leaked a picture of what the actual Zune software interface is going to be (correct me if I'm wrong), but it definitely won't be Windows Mobile 5.
Incidentally, forgot to mention: the only reason I even mentioned the 2000 year graph in the first place was because of your nonsensical question about why it is only the hottest year since records began, not the hottest year ever -- the obvious answer being that before records began there were no records, so the only thing it is possible to say with complete certainty that this is the hottest year for 150 years -- i.e. since records began. I provided the 2000 year graph only as a side note, to show that, as far as short-time-period extrapolations that are reasonably accurate in absolute terms (as the close matching of the ten different researchers results show), it is also the hottest period for the last 2000 years. I remind you of this since you seem to have a bad habit of ignoring the main part of a rebuttal to one of your previous posts and attempting to build a new argument on small parts that are indeed not conclusive when taken on their own. Should I take this habit to mean that you are in each case completely agreeing to the main part of my argument (to be specific: in your second post about the amount of data necessary to judge trends, in your third post about 500,000 years of CO2 vs. temperature correlation and your post-glacial abode, etc. etc.?)
>This is gibberish. You can accurately predict if you accept the extrapolation? Ok so if I say it's true then it's true?
The extrapolation I assume you're talking about (the 2000 year one) was the plotted data from ten different large-scale climate studies from 1998 to 2005 (they're each a different colour on the graph). They were all working independantly. Are you seriously accusing all ten studies of some kind of vast scientific conspiracy?
If you really have a serious urge to plot the graphs yourself, the original data is all available from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html, the US Government National Climate Data Centre. Unless -- is the US Government included in this conspiracy too?
The data from the last 150 years of temperature and CO2 (the one that shows the almost exact correlation) is publically available. Unless -- maybe the measuring instruments are also part of the conspiracy?
>All of these predictions are untestable since we don't know how hot it was. A untestable theory is an unprovable theory.
I'm sorry, but your not making the slightest bit of sense. Of course we don't know exactly how hot it was over 150 years ago, since that's when records began. That's the point of the studies which attempt to work out how hot it was from data such as the formation of ice at the poles.
Your 'argument' about testability is identical to the argument used by Creationists trying to rubbish Evolution; that because something is a long-term, ongoing process (and thus, most of the data is historical), it's impossible to test, and is thus not a scientific theory. Unfortunately, it's as bad an argument applied to Climate change as it is applied to Evolution. It's perfectly testable, you just use historical (sometimes extrapolated) data rather than experimental data. The data that's extrapolated does certainly have a higher error margin than measured data, but as long as the margin is calculable and stated, that doesn't make it somehow 'untestable'. Besides, we still have 150 years of unarguable, measured data, and that data unfortunately is consistant with my (and pretty much all Scientists) position.
>You're talking about things on a geologic scale here. 2000 years is yesterday.
The 2000 year data was as a period in which extrapolations can be made backward to a high degree of absolute accuracy, that shows Man's effect on the environment in the last 150 years at a scale that also shows the previous 1850 for comparison. I believe I gave you the graph of the last 400,000 years or so some five posts ago; however, that was too large a scale to effectively show the sudden difference that has occured in the last 150 years.
>The whole purpose of this thread was to address skeptics but you've provided nothing but pictures from a propoganda site. You point to two bars both rising and claim it's obvious. As you said it is obvious and exact if you accept the premise. Skeptics don't do this. They reject the premise.
The question I asked on the first post, and you still haven't answered, is WHAT PREMISE EXACTLY IS IT YOU ARE REJECTING? As far as I can tell, for the last 7 posts you've questioned one after another, and as soon as I explain the one you've questioned you switch to a different one. And no, there is no unified fundamental concept that all sceptics 'reject' unilaterally. The point of scepticism is to not accept something UNTIL THERE IS SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR IT. Not to look at the scientific evidence and claim it doesn't exist because you 'reject the premise'. What premise, exactly, is it you claim that all these different independant researchers have? Or for that matter, what premise is it you claim measuring instruments have?
>Stop trying to convince people with data from an obviously biased site. Why not grab some of your opposition's data and debunk that?
>Yes I see the correlation. How ever I'm asking for the causation. Please provide that.
I have given you the theoretical reason of why rising CO2 causes higher temperature. I have given you the empirical data showing a correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperature to a degree that matches the theoretical predictions. I fail to see what more I could possibly give you. Science is, unfortunately, not like Maths, where it is possible to prove that A is caused by B; the only thing that Science can do is come up with a theory that explains A in relation to B and see if it matches the empirical data (i.e. if there is the expected correlation between A and B). In this case, there is.
>Also what proof do you have that temps are rising. Sure this is hottest year in the last 150 but it's not the hottest year ever. If we have such a high level of C02, record levels some would say, why is it not the hottest year ever?
The reason that you only hear that this is the hottest year in the last 150, not that this is the hottest year ever, is that records have only been kept for 150 years. Thus, the only thing it is only possible to say with complete certainty that this is the hottest year for 150 years (graph of recorded temperature in last 150 years: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Instrum ental_Temperature_Record.png).
It is, however, possible to extrapolate absolute temperature backwards with a reasonably high degree of accuracy to the recent past, of the order of thousands of years; if this extrapolation is accepted, it becomes possible to say that this is the hottest year for 2000 years, too (graph of extrapolated temperature for last 2000 years: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:2000_Ye ar_Temperature_Comparison.png).
It's not exactly disputed science. Carbon dioxide traps more of the sun's energy. It's a fact. You can test it in any science lab with a temperature probe, a clear box, an infrared lamp, and a cylinder of carbon dioxide. The temperature rise for a given increase in carbon dioxide is a perfectly predictable.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, clearly making visual improvements to bring Minesweeper's look in line with the rest of Vista utterly precludes them from making security changes. It's because Microsoft's such a small company, you know. They've got only one coder, and they only come in alternate Tuesdays, so they had to decide: build the consumer version of Windows on top of a redesigned Windows 2003 server kernel with a completely new user account model, new networking stack, protected mode IE, and a new resource-protected driver model; or make Minesweeper look a bit nicer. It was a close call, but Minesweeper won out in the end. And aren't we all the better for it?
Reminds me of this Raymond Chen post.
Quote:
I find it ironic when people complain that Calc and Notepad haven't changed. In fact, both programs have changed. (Notepad gained some additional menu and status bar options. Calc got a severe workover.)
I wouldn't be surprised if these are the same people who complain, "Why does Microsoft spend all its effort on making Windows 'look cool'? They should spend all their efforts on making technical improvements and just stop making visual improvements."
And with Calc, that's exactly what happened: Massive technical improvements. No visual improvement. And nobody noticed. In fact, the complaints just keep coming. "Look at Calc, same as it always was."
You will be pleased to know that "As of Office 2007, Microsoft has removed the Office Assistant feature entirely in favor of a new help system".
I think I speak for all of us when I say the saddest part of all this, for me, is that my plan to convert entirely from DVD to the wonderful technology that is Blu-ray will be tragically delayed...
Reminds me of this...
Ah, but you misunderstand the point. When Apple implemented it, they were making their software more compatible, more forward looking, and more future-standards compliant. Microsoft, despite doing exactly the same thing, are clearly doing so in order to maliciously slow the entire internet down to a crawl. Isn't it obvious?
Exactly. It's interesting how everyone in Slashdot seems to treat Opera as a kind of 'honourary open source' browser: look at all the threads above using TFA to expound the advantages of open source by favourably comparing Firefox to IE. This is hardly a fair comparison of open source to closed source in general, Microsoft being Microsoft. None on them, you note, compare Firefox to Opera, arguably a much more fair comparison -- but one that would rather invalidate their argument, since, in my experience, Opera is far more stable and bug-free than Firefox. (Not, of course, that I'm detracting from the open-source model -- I really do think it's a wonderful concept and highly admire those who work in it).
Never mind a 24" ipod, how about an 3000' one?9 56&spn=0.293105,0.234146
http://maps.google.com/?t=k&ll=-30.516354,121.336
Kitten authentication! It's perfect! Identifying small, cute, furry animals needs a basic cultural background in animals common to the West, but at the same time requires little or no intelligence (plus, it's fun!).
Try it out at http://www.kittenauth.com/node/5. It's currently being rewritten; if you can't see any animals the first time, click 'submit'.
>Well, maybe the problem is that users actually will have to pay to use this system which does everything that Ubuntu does with the default install. Perhaps the second problem is that this system requires more horsepower (DX10 compliant video card, 1Gb of RAM according to what I read before) to deliver the same experience as Linux+XGL - granted, XGL goodies are still in development phase, and support only a few video chipsets, but the mandatory specs are low.
Maybe so, but I'm betting Vista won't require five straight hours of command line xorg.conf editing, rebooting, trying something else, rebooting... until I found some combination of settings that enabled multiple monitors in a way that Windows sets up automatically with a single checkbox, without even needing rebooting (and has been consistantly able to since Windows 98). Even when it worked it was still nowhere near as good as in Windows, since the way Xinerama handles different resolutions on different monitors is frankly almost unusable*. Why does it have to be like that? I'm assuming Xinemara is just like any other open-source tool, with an active community supporting and developing it, so why is it so blatantly inferior to the Windows equivalent that's been in place for 8 years now?
As per instructions in your post, I hereby acknowledge that I'm venting -- though after being told that Linux was now "ready for the desktop" and "more logical to use than Windows" I think I'm entitled to. And this is with Ubuntu, a supposedly beginner-friendly distribution. Linux ready for the desktop? Not when it takes me half an hour, several Unix commands, and the help of a set of support forums to delete a folder I accidentally created...
*For anyone not familiar with xinerama, if you've got a 1024x768 right hand monitor and a 1280x1024 left and one, the right hand one will show a 1024x768 'window' onto an actual desktop that's 1024 pixels high. Why such a terrible kludge is considered acceptable I don't know. I suppose 99% of the people who would complain -- i.e. non-Linux-Zealots -- would never be able to get to a stage where they'd see it in the first page...
OK, I found an independant site that configured two identical systems as impartially as possible -- and you're right, that Mac was $90 cheaper with 20" displays configured, and $332 cheaper with no displays configured. Not nearly as much as the $1000+ I understand was mentioned in the keynote (due to the keynote apparently ignoring irregularities like the Dell coming with a 3 year warranty as opposed to Apple's one year), but still cheaper, which, as Dell is usually considered one of (if not the) cheapest PC vendors, is no mean feat. Specific point happily conceded, though I still stand by my original post: if I had not found any independant comfirmation (and if it were not possible to do the test myself) my default position would always still be to disbelieve any such statements like these until confirmation could be obtained, chart or no chart. Numbers can lie.
>A magnetic power cable. Did Apple's IQ drop like 5 points or something. Who puts a magnet near a computer?
...The field has to be really strong, because it has to exceed the coercivity of the magnetic coating on the storage device. Hard drive platters have a coercivity of a few thousand Oersteds, which means a field of the same number of Gauss is needed to demagnetise them. The ferrite magnet on a computer's PC speaker, assuming it's not shielded, will have a surface field strength of only about a thousand Gauss, so it won't endanger hard drive data even if the drive's right next to it. Even 10,000 Gauss rare earth magnets can't wipe a hard drive if they're not sitting on top of it.
Excert from http://www.dansdata.com/gz009.htm:
So just fiddling with magnets as you read Slashdot will not wipe your hard drive.
Try explaining inverse cube laws and Oersteds and Gauss to the average Microsoft Outlook user, though.
So in order to avoid mopping up drool from confused consumers, all of us Amazingly Knowledgeable, Windswept and Interesting Science and Technology Gods have fabricated a more easily explained conventional wisdom, which says: "Don't put a magnet near your computer, or, roughly speaking, your liver will catch fire."
His words, not mine...
>Clearly you didn't watch the WWDC keynote address.
Really?!? You mean Apple, at the keynote address given by their own CEO at their own developers conference, claims that they themselved are not overpriced? Are you sure? I mean, I think I speak for all of us when I say that I was expecting Steve to stand up there like a man and say that Macs are too expensive.
(Actually, I *do* think that Macs are now competitavely priced, but I'm annoyed that so many people just blindly believe what companies (in general, not just Apple) tell them. "But it must be good value, it says it is on the label!")
>Why you think Windows is in any way more productive when it does not ship with a real shell is a mystery.
i f working in Linux without spending a *very* long time trying to coach xorg.conf to give you exactly what you want (especially considering the frankly awful kludge xinemara uses if you're monitors are set to different resolutions)?
I'm sorry, but I have to question this. Why is it that an operating system has to have a real shell to be productive? As far as I can see, the only thing a real shell (as opposed to a add-on shell such as cmd.exe on win2000/XP) gives you is the knowledge that you're using a text-based OS with a graphical shell on top, rather than one built to be graphical (not that I'm saying Windows is a perfect example of the latter). It's not like you can't run text-based commands from a GUI; Windows, for example, has Winkey+R. I can only see one thing that would be better done with a text-based user interface rather than a graphical one, and that's automation of a sequence of repetitive tasks since you can copy and paste a long string of commands; however, you can do that via scripting anyway. And I speak as someone who's just spent half a day editing xorg.conf from the command line to try and get Xinemara give me some use out of my second monitor; something that windows consistantly sets up automatically with a single tick of a checkbox. Can you even imagine trying to get something like this: http://www.dansdata.com/images/io060/monitors_f.g
Erm... I seem to have deviated quite some way from the original point, but I needed to rant anyway...
Not sure how spittle would affect the gyroscopes, though...
That article was great.
Alex: Final question, what are we having for dinner?
Mrs. P: Are you kidding? After all that, you expect me to make dinner, too?
Alex: Touché.
That was the most obvious, but it was all pretty funny - almost satire, even better because it *wasn't* actually satire.
The interface in the picture *is* a WinCE Pocket PC. And that isn't the actual interface. See http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193883&c id=15896504
Can't really say without knowing exactly what level of publication you're looking for:
W ) and its equivalents in the rest of the Sciences.
- A couple of steps above newspapers you have New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/) and Scientific American (http://www.sciam.com/).
- At a higher level of specialisation and greater depth, you have the institute publications; e.g. Physics World (http://physicsweb.org/subscribe/index.cfm?mag=PH
- At an even higher level you have the Journals - e.g. Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/magazine.dtl) and Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html) which publish individual Scientific papers, but also have summaries, analysis etc.
- At ever high that you get journals with increasingly greater specialisation, such as The Journal of Investigative Dermatology (http://www.nature.com/jid/index.html) (And if you think that's bad, try Nature Clinical Practice Urology...).
Sadly, the video's a fake. See http://www.badscience.net/?p=261
Finally, since it will use WMA (when ripping CDs etc.) rather than MP3, it won't need an MP3 encoder -- so it won't be "Lame"!
Just to note - the summary comments on the aesthetics of the interface (which would include both hardware and software parts), but the picture on the article it links to is clearly a picture of a third party online radio player called SiriuCE running on Windows Mobile 5, superimposed on the Zune. You can even see the original site from which the screenshot was missapropriated from http://www.emulamer.com/SiriuCE.html. I don't think anyone's leaked a picture of what the actual Zune software interface is going to be (correct me if I'm wrong), but it definitely won't be Windows Mobile 5.
Incidentally, forgot to mention: the only reason I even mentioned the 2000 year graph in the first place was because of your nonsensical question about why it is only the hottest year since records began, not the hottest year ever -- the obvious answer being that before records began there were no records, so the only thing it is possible to say with complete certainty that this is the hottest year for 150 years -- i.e. since records began. I provided the 2000 year graph only as a side note, to show that, as far as short-time-period extrapolations that are reasonably accurate in absolute terms (as the close matching of the ten different researchers results show), it is also the hottest period for the last 2000 years. I remind you of this since you seem to have a bad habit of ignoring the main part of a rebuttal to one of your previous posts and attempting to build a new argument on small parts that are indeed not conclusive when taken on their own. Should I take this habit to mean that you are in each case completely agreeing to the main part of my argument (to be specific: in your second post about the amount of data necessary to judge trends, in your third post about 500,000 years of CO2 vs. temperature correlation and your post-glacial abode, etc. etc.?)
>This is gibberish. You can accurately predict if you accept the extrapolation? Ok so if I say it's true then it's true?
The extrapolation I assume you're talking about (the 2000 year one) was the plotted data from ten different large-scale climate studies from 1998 to 2005 (they're each a different colour on the graph). They were all working independantly. Are you seriously accusing all ten studies of some kind of vast scientific conspiracy?
If you really have a serious urge to plot the graphs yourself, the original data is all available from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html, the US Government National Climate Data Centre. Unless -- is the US Government included in this conspiracy too?
The data from the last 150 years of temperature and CO2 (the one that shows the almost exact correlation) is publically available. Unless -- maybe the measuring instruments are also part of the conspiracy?
>All of these predictions are untestable since we don't know how hot it was. A untestable theory is an unprovable theory.
I'm sorry, but your not making the slightest bit of sense. Of course we don't know exactly how hot it was over 150 years ago, since that's when records began. That's the point of the studies which attempt to work out how hot it was from data such as the formation of ice at the poles.
Your 'argument' about testability is identical to the argument used by Creationists trying to rubbish Evolution; that because something is a long-term, ongoing process (and thus, most of the data is historical), it's impossible to test, and is thus not a scientific theory. Unfortunately, it's as bad an argument applied to Climate change as it is applied to Evolution. It's perfectly testable, you just use historical (sometimes extrapolated) data rather than experimental data. The data that's extrapolated does certainly have a higher error margin than measured data, but as long as the margin is calculable and stated, that doesn't make it somehow 'untestable'. Besides, we still have 150 years of unarguable, measured data, and that data unfortunately is consistant with my (and pretty much all Scientists) position.
>You're talking about things on a geologic scale here. 2000 years is yesterday.
The 2000 year data was as a period in which extrapolations can be made backward to a high degree of absolute accuracy, that shows Man's effect on the environment in the last 150 years at a scale that also shows the previous 1850 for comparison. I believe I gave you the graph of the last 400,000 years or so some five posts ago; however, that was too large a scale to effectively show the sudden difference that has occured in the last 150 years.
>The whole purpose of this thread was to address skeptics but you've provided nothing but pictures from a propoganda site. You point to two bars both rising and claim it's obvious. As you said it is obvious and exact if you accept the premise. Skeptics don't do this. They reject the premise.
The question I asked on the first post, and you still haven't answered, is WHAT PREMISE EXACTLY IS IT YOU ARE REJECTING? As far as I can tell, for the last 7 posts you've questioned one after another, and as soon as I explain the one you've questioned you switch to a different one. And no, there is no unified fundamental concept that all sceptics 'reject' unilaterally. The point of scepticism is to not accept something UNTIL THERE IS SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR IT. Not to look at the scientific evidence and claim it doesn't exist because you 'reject the premise'. What premise, exactly, is it you claim that all these different independant researchers have? Or for that matter, what premise is it you claim measuring instruments have?
>Stop trying to convince people with data from an obviously biased site. Why not grab some of your opposition's data and debunk that?
>Yes I see the correlation. How ever I'm asking for the causation. Please provide that.
m ental_Temperature_Record.png).
e ar_Temperature_Comparison.png).
I have given you the theoretical reason of why rising CO2 causes higher temperature. I have given you the empirical data showing a correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperature to a degree that matches the theoretical predictions. I fail to see what more I could possibly give you. Science is, unfortunately, not like Maths, where it is possible to prove that A is caused by B; the only thing that Science can do is come up with a theory that explains A in relation to B and see if it matches the empirical data (i.e. if there is the expected correlation between A and B). In this case, there is.
>Also what proof do you have that temps are rising. Sure this is hottest year in the last 150 but it's not the hottest year ever. If we have such a high level of C02, record levels some would say, why is it not the hottest year ever?
The reason that you only hear that this is the hottest year in the last 150, not that this is the hottest year ever, is that records have only been kept for 150 years. Thus, the only thing it is only possible to say with complete certainty that this is the hottest year for 150 years (graph of recorded temperature in last 150 years: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Instru
It is, however, possible to extrapolate absolute temperature backwards with a reasonably high degree of accuracy to the recent past, of the order of thousands of years; if this extrapolation is accepted, it becomes possible to say that this is the hottest year for 2000 years, too (graph of extrapolated temperature for last 2000 years: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:2000_Y
It's not exactly disputed science. Carbon dioxide traps more of the sun's energy. It's a fact. You can test it in any science lab with a temperature probe, a clear box, an infrared lamp, and a cylinder of carbon dioxide. The temperature rise for a given increase in carbon dioxide is a perfectly predictable.
_ History_and_Flux_Rev.png, and the graph of global temperature is http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Instrum ental_Temperature_Record.png. See the correlation?
_ Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png.
If you want graphical evidence that the CO2 is actually causing temperature rises in the atmosphere, the graph of CO2 concentration is http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon
Incidentally, the AC is completely right - the CO2 rises are in no way normal. CO2 levels are historically between 180 and 270 ppmv, in a 100,000 year cycle. They are now 385 ppmv. See http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon