On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Phlip [email protected] wrote:
effort on behalf of the news media to always show both sides of an issue…
I’d love to read that article, if you can find it again.
martin
I’d love to read that article, if you can find it again.
I tried while posting. Googling for any variation on [climate change]
gives
a billion hits, and I don’t remember anything specific about the
article!
Now, do I believe the earth’s climate is changing? Absolutely. It has
been in a state of flux since the beginning of time - why should it stop
now? Do I think man is the reason? The jury is out on that one.
Actually, >95% of all scientists agree the cause is anthropogenic (us).
However, surveys have shown that >90% of civilians think the scientists
are
split 50-50.
The article I read concluded - playfully - by attributing this to a
noble
effort on behalf of the news media to always show both sides of an
issue…
Phlip wrote:
Now, do I believe the earth’s climate is changing? Absolutely. It has
been in a state of flux since the beginning of time - why should it stop
now? Do I think man is the reason? The jury is out on that one.Actually, >95% of all scientists agree the cause is anthropogenic (us).
As before … exactly where does that statistic come from? What is its
source? It’s very easy to throw around numbers that have been tossed out
- but many if not most statistics (from both sides) are simply made up.
As I pointed out in the previous post, there are over 30,000 scientists
who signed a statement that they do NOT believe that. There is no
comparative list of those who believe that it is. In and of itself, that
doesn’t say that it isn’t. After all, there was once a vast majority of
scientists who believed the earth was the center of the universe.
This is my main complaint with this type of argument. Those in the
argument - on BOTH sides - seem to be incapable of rational thought.
They hear a statement and don’t question it. Worse, they accept - or
reject - facts just because it happens to support their personal bias.
It’s worth pointing out that, in point of fact, there is a clear
consensus in the climatology community
as delineated by peer reviewers. In a survey of papers published
between 1993 and 2003 (a sample
size of ~1000), the number of papers published which disagreed with
the anthropogenic model of
climate change was exactly zero - also the number who argued that the
earth’s climate is naturally warming.
Here’s a citation:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
As to the argument that many ‘scientists’ have signed a statement to
the effect that climate change is not
caused by humans, I wish to quickly point out that because a person is
a scientist does not make them
an expert on science in general. I am a neutrino physicist, and I
consider myself completely unqualified
to offer an expert opinion on many sub-disciplines within physics -
let alone those entirely outside it. Asking
a generic scientist is the climate is changing based on the data is a
bit like asking an electrical engineer
to evaluate the safety of a building. Right idea, wrong guy.
If you’re going to listen to ANYBODY on this argument, you should be
listening to the people who are
publishing scientific and peer-reviewed papers on the topic - and the
consensus there is entirely
unambiguous.
As to the argument that many ‘scientists’ have signed a statement to
the effect that climate change is not
caused by humans, I wish to quickly point out that because a person is
a scientist does not make them
an expert on science in general.
Dilbert covered that once. Dogbert hired a consultant to bribe a
scientist
and a reporter to generate a headline that pollution was good for
toddlers.
This is one of the funniest e-mails I’ve read on this list.
Thanks.
Jon,
Why is it funny? - I mostly agree with everything he said - the only
qualification is that I am skeptical that even a lot of people dropping
out will have any impact on the major problems that he mentions. He is
right, Malthus was right.
BTW, I am a sometime biologist using Ruby to do biological simulations
(population genetics), which, for me, means this discussion is ON topic
and relevant.
Regards,
Phil.
Jon A. Lambert wrote:
truly loved what I was doing. I did experience some of the health
community is in the vast majority in thinking that it is man made, thatcombined are at this point probably insurmountable. The longer we wait
yourselves. It’s life or death now, but the problem is that humans,
even the smartest humans do not react to threats unless they are
directly in front of them in plain view. We have our own evolutionary
psychology to blame for this.We need all the brains of the earth on this one.
Good Luck.
–
Philip R.
GPO Box 3411
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia
E-mail: [email protected]
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 01:40:42PM +0900, Xeno C. wrote:
help. All the crap from the Reaganites was just bate and switch, and they
have conned us to the tune of tens of trillians of dollars with it.
I don’t think there’s anything ironic about the notion that eliminating
large corporations is necessary to secure a free market. After all,
corporations are by definition the result of market intervention by
force. Government steps in and defines a special class of legal entity
with its own “rights” called the corporation, and suddenly all hell
breaks loose. Eliminate this interference with market forces, and many
of the hurdles standing in the way of a healthy free market economy will
evaporate.
I don’t see how “requiring 100% worker ownership”, equalizing income
levels regardless of the value or cost of one’s contributions, or making
other interventionist moves is in any way compatible with a free market,
though. That would be ironic, since it would be self-contradictory.
How exactly is the act of prohibiting people from being rewarded in
proportion to their contributions part of a “fair system”?
There are other options than fascism and socialism, y’know.
I think Ruby will help cheapen information, but the real problem isn’t with
ruby, but with the rules of ownership and the legacy of power owned from
spoils rather than merit activity. Money is a poor reflection of merit,
especially nowadays, and the biggest resource wasters are not those raising
taxes, but those who cut them so they could waste more resources
personally. The greenest among us are the homeless people, so it makes
most sense that others should be massively taxed to subsidize the homeless
people to do some real savings.
Saying it doesn’t make it so.
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 02:10:02PM +0900, Phlip wrote:
And besides, who are we kidding thinking that the planet needs us?
It’s been around for a long time before we were here and can do
without us fine**x, where x is a Bignum.Who will move it to a safe orbit as the Sun goes off the Main Sequence?
Post-humans, of course. I, for one, welcome our new us-as-masters in a
post-singularity world.
Mother Nature works in mysterious ways. Including sometimes via Epic Fail.
. . . or, in this case, by giving rise to a race (humans) who have the
potential to accelerate its own evolution via technological singularity
(I hope).
On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 01:11:11AM +0900, Phlip wrote:
Only MN is allowed to extinct things. Not us.
Minnesota . . . ?
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 09:18:13AM +0900, Todd B. wrote:
I’ve been avoiding this thread, but what the heck…
A so-called “free” market economy, I’m sorry to say, is not the utopia
you think it would be. You can worship Mr. Smith all you want, but
people simply aren’t pawns in a giant chess game. What I mean is that
Adam (and other likewise economists) makes some severe logical leaps;
some terribly skewed assumptions about human behavior.
I think you gravely misunderstand what “free market” means and have
little or no idea what Smith said. There’s nothing in any Austrian
economic theory or economic individualist philosophy that implies an
economy is a giant chess game. These are the beliefs, not of free
market
economists, but of Keynesian economists and similar interventionists.
You will continue to have, and indeed must have, some semblance of
intervention at the ruling party level. It’s simply a check against
what you think would be a balance.
How you can say that with a straight face just after asserting that
people aren’t pawns in a giant chess game is beyond me.
On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 06:40:41AM +0900, Martin DeMello wrote:
new scarce resource.
Interesting. Accelerando is sitting on a shelf in my living room,
waiting to come up in the reading list queue some time in the next month
or so.
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 04:31:44AM +0900, List Sp wrote:
I believe the technical term for the notion that “the free market” is to
blame for the current economic train wreck is “poppycock”. Only
left-wingnuts, corrupt corporate lobbyists, and politicians that have
been bought and paid for by corrupt corporate lobbyists can claim this
is
a “free” market with a straight face.So what country does have this “free market” you describe ?
Let me guess: none.
What utopian system do you favor that does exist, or has existed in
a
form that didn’t end up failing in a truly epic manner (or even with a
pathetic whimper)?
If we remove the (cause of all evils, the bad bad) government, what
would change ?
Who said anything about government being the cause of all evils, or that
it should be “removed”?
Let me guess: nothing, the multinationals would still rule the world.
I think you may lack some understanding of what makes corporations tick.
They depend on market interventions for their various existence.
…but lets suppose we start all over again, lets suppose we have all the
people with the same resources and the same opportunities, then we apply
“free market” what happens ?
people get together and start their small companies, some do better than
others, the ones that did better buy another company, and then
another…and ooooppss, what we have: monopolistic control over
resources ? corrupt corporate lobbyists ? nahhhhhh the forces of “free
market” suddenly appear and destroy the bad guys and wipe corruption
from the face of the earth.
A company can’t “own” anything without economic intervention by an
authoritarian power structure such as government. Only individuals can
own something, absent agents of authoritarian power to enforce the legal
decree of personhood conveyed upon a corporation.
…that souns familiar, yes I think I saw that somewhere…oh yes, I
now remember, I was eating popcorn…
I don’t find that statement a very compelling argument, nor even a very
clever jibe.
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 05:15:01AM +0900, Phlip wrote:
A “free market” is a math curiosity that works in the presense of a
perfectly level playing field, incorruptable rule of law, pure democracy,
and business standards all perfectly tuned to foster competion. My HMO will
never sentence me to death because I can easily switch HMOs and force them
to compete. By magic.
An HMO wouldn’t exist in a free market, because “free market” implies
the
necessary absence of governmental intervention causing the existence of
a
corporation to be possible. Corporations are, by definition, legal
“persons” – something that sure as shit doesn’t exist without someone
with a bunch of guns going around making sure everybody plays along.
That doesn’t sound very “free” to me.
On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 3:08 AM, Chad P. [email protected]
wrote:
what you think would be a balance.
How you can say that with a straight face just after asserting that
people aren’t pawns in a giant chess game is beyond me.–
Chad P. [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
Quoth Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “A designer knows he has achieved
perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is
nothing left to take away.”
I’m starting to think that you are talking so loud that I can’t hear
what you’re saying.
Todd
“Philip R.” wrote:
Why is it funny? - I mostly agree with everything he said - the only
qualification is that I am skeptical that even a lot of people dropping
out will have any impact on the major problems that he mentions. He is
right, Malthus was right.
It’s funny because it’s a sky-is-falling stupid rant.
Since you’re a biologist, I’ll just ask you on the first point.
Can you name one of the 200 species that became extinct today?
Can you name any of the 6000 that became extinct this month?
On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Jon A. Lambert [email protected]
wrote:
any of the 6000 that became extinct this month?
I highly recommend “The Science of Discworld” (a popular-science book
about the history of the scientific method) for a good perspective on
the issue.
martin
Phlip wrote:
Alexey P. wrote:
The Singularity will come earlier (~30).
Thirty years? Note that only 40 years ago, futurists predicted we’d have
flying cars, moonbases, and brain transplants by now…
Didn’t you get your jet pack? 
The closer we get to the upper right, the less valuable each scientific
advance becomes. Eventually, a billion dollars of research will not yield a
million dollars of profit from new gizmos.
We’ve got a long, long, long way to go before we get there.
It’s funny because it’s a sky-is-falling stupid rant.
from Holocene extinction - Wikipedia
which by the way is the current extinction event.
“Most biologists believe that we are at this moment at the beginning of
a tremendously accelerated anthropogenic mass extinction. E.O. Wilson of
Harvard, in The Future of Life (2002), estimates that at current rates
of human disruption of the biosphere, one-half of all species of life
will be extinct by 2100. In 1998 the American Museum of Natural History
conducted a poll of biologists that revealed that the vast majority of
biologists believe that we are in the midst of an anthropogenic mass
extinction. Numerous scientific studies since then—such as a 2004 report
from Nature,[4] and those by the 10,000 scientists who contribute to the
IUCN’s annual Red List of threatened species—have only strengthened this
consensus.”
you can quibble about the exact figures if that’s your bag, but that
truly would be stupid.