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>> ^criticalthud:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^criticalthud:
just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.

you seem to mistake me as someone who is arguing with you. i'm really only interested in insights.
I'm certainly not a climatologist. I work with spines. But in answer to your proposition that it would be chaotic if we cut back, I think the strength of the human species is in their ability to adapt, and as far as i'm concerned, the ballooning world population combined with a worldwide contracture in resources makes this inevitable (not to mention the growing climate change issue) - but it's up to us on how painful we want it to be.
Our entire economic system and our culture of consumerism needs to be revised. We are mindless automatons, with little awareness to our impact on the earth as a species. Our daily lives are almost entirely self-centered.
Secondly, as to "the" question of human contribution, I would offer the microcosm of the forest fire, in which carbon is suddenly released into the atmosphere. The overall effect is, clearly, very warming, almost suffocating. On a grander scale, the species is continually burning and releasing carbon into the atmoshphere all over the planet. How that would fail to warm the planet escapes me. but, like i said, it's not my field. peace out.


Sorry if my tone comes off as combative, it's not really my intent so please don't take my vehemence on issues personally. Maybe I'm just getting older but I'm of the mindset that the fastest way to know where I'm right and wrong is to be forward and assertive with how I understand things and allow the opportunity to be corrected where I'm wrong.

My thoughts on the human contribution are tempered by a few things. From the very top, that CO2's contribution is small compared to H2O(I count this an uncontested fact). Annual CO2 emissions are small(5%) compared to natural CO2 emissions(I again count this an uncontested fact). The experts do insist that the human CO2 emissions are building up and still driving the natural CO2 levels significantly higher each year. We don't understand the natural CO2 emission and absorption processes very well, so poorly in fact our margins of error on them are larger than the human contribution. There is evidence that CO2 levels are rising in the last 100 years, and there is a correlation there to human emissions. What we don't have strong evidence for yet is what impact that has on climate. We DO know it is warming effect, but the magnitude of it is still poorly understood. As I've outlined above the understanding of temperature trends over the last 2k years is still a work in progress with large margins of error(even systematic ones that are being worked out). The computer models we have by definition are no more reliable than that data, which places us without a strong correlation or confidence in what magnitude of change the CO2 will have when all other variables are considered.

As a side point, if you look at the IPCC or listen to certain climatologists, you may hear it sounding like they disagree and believe my last statement is disproven. What they have studied is the impact CO2 increases should have overall with the assumption of all other variables being equal. It's a useful figure to have, and the confidence in it is better than my last statement described. That is because I was talking about something different, I stated that CO2's impact, with all other variables being considered NOT equal, is still poorly known and has very low confidence levels. In the real world the impact of one climate variable impacts the role of all the others, and often significantly. The IPCC and a select few climatologists talk about CO2 projections that ignore that interaction as a base assumption and somewhere along the line between them and the public or them and Al Gore, that base assumption gets dropped off. That base assumption is central and vital, and it's why as our climate models improve we will see predictions for CO2 that fall outside the error margins of the IPCC models with that assumption. That doesn't invalidate the IPCC's work, it is an advancement of it and improvement upon it. Remembering the base assumptions is vital for the public to maintain faith in the integrity and reliability of scientific research. People need to know WHY the predictions they were told by the IPCC a few years back have changed so much and yet the IPCC insists they weren't wrong. The truth is simply that they were misunderstood.

As yet another rabbit warren, there is an even smaller set of people within the climate community who actively encourage that misunderstanding. They do it firmly believing that the impact of CO2 with all else ignored is still indicative of CO2 with all else considered. Which is even a reasonable and normal expectation. The trouble is it falsely communicates the level confidence and margin of error of current known facts. I can't abide that kind of thinking, it's what is supposed to differentiate scientists from priests and politicians, they are supposed to refuse to make that kind of compromise when presenting what they do and do not know is demonstrably true.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^criticalthud:
just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.


you seem to mistake me as someone who is arguing with you. i'm really only interested in insights.

I'm certainly not a climatologist. I work with spines. But in answer to your proposition that it would be chaotic if we cut back, I think the strength of the human species is in their ability to adapt, and as far as i'm concerned, the ballooning world population combined with a worldwide contracture in resources makes this inevitable (not to mention the growing climate change issue) - but it's up to us on how painful we want it to be.
Our entire economic system and our culture of consumerism needs to be revised. We are mindless automatons, with little awareness to our impact on the earth as a species. Our daily lives are almost entirely self-centered.

Secondly, as to "the" question of human contribution, I would offer the microcosm of the forest fire, in which carbon is suddenly released into the atmosphere. The overall effect is, clearly, very warming, almost suffocating. On a grander scale, the species is continually burning and releasing carbon into the atmoshphere all over the planet. How that would fail to warm the planet escapes me. but, like i said, it's not my field. peace out.

>> ^criticalthud:

we're not special. that's part of the legacy of lies of religion. (we're all god's flowers, lamb of god, god is with you, god's chosen, god looks like us, the planet is OUR domain). self-entitled bullshit. that is not reality.
consumerism also sells to the "specialness".
one of the major problems with the psyche of our species is that we're so focused on pursuing our own special self interests to the detriment of the planet and everyone else. consumerism or religion to the individual isn't a big deal. for the collective it is destroying the planet.
shit i'm starting to sound like a broken record.
but evolution of the species means evolution of the consciousness.
bolivia gets it right:
http://www.pvpulse.com/en/news/world-news/bolivia-set-to-pass-historic-law-of-mother-earth-which-will-grant-nature-equal-rights-to-humans#star
tOfPageI
d776
we are just another species.
i would even go so far to argue that on the whole, we are not an intelligent species. we possess intelligence, and there are those in our species who could be considered intelligent, but most of us just repeat patterns and emotion rules our decisions rather than cognition. Around 80% of humans are virtual automatons.
we celebrate competition and division and feed that to our young, while it is without question that cooperation is how an intelligent species flourishes.
before guilt and shame and expectations that you cannot possibly meet fuck up your life, religion has to first establish that you are something more than a primate, another piece in the collective. it has to first prey upon your ego, your fears, and your self interests. it is an element of control.
Consumerism, before selling you piles of crap, must first convince you that you need to buy that shit, that you deserve it, that you are entitled to it, and that by accumulating more shit to the self, you will fulfill your dreams and your happiness.


Very well said, also the information on Bolivia is really great news, lets hope America doesn't send in troops/arrange assassinations to reverse this fantastic effort.

>> ^direpickle:

>> ^criticalthud:
>> ^direpickle:
@criticalthud: "We're not special! Well, except for me and my friends. We're pretty intelligent. But geez, the rest of the human race is dumb."
Come on.

i would claim to be curious. but certainly not special. and being smarter than your peers doesn't necessarily qualify you as intelligent.
but please, explain how you happen to be special.

I wouldn't say that I am, any more so than anyone else. I was just calling you out on your own hypocrisy and self-conceit, claiming at once that no one is special and that most people are just automatons (presumably excluding yourself from that last distinction).


Coming from a fairly rabid puritan family, i was quite infected with the specialness for a long time. At some point I started realizing how much of a limiting factor it was psychologically, especially in creative pursuits. I'm pretty sure that I'm not quite free of it yet, but like many things, it's a continual journey.

>> ^criticalthud:

>> ^direpickle:
@criticalthud: "We're not special! Well, except for me and my friends. We're pretty intelligent. But geez, the rest of the human race is dumb."
Come on.

i would claim to be curious. but certainly not special. and being smarter than your peers doesn't necessarily qualify you as intelligent.
but please, explain how you happen to be special.


I wouldn't say that I am, any more so than anyone else. I was just calling you out on your own hypocrisy and self-conceit, claiming at once that no one is special and that most people are just automatons (presumably excluding yourself from that last distinction).

we're not special. that's part of the legacy of lies of religion. (we're all god's flowers, lamb of god, god is with you, god's chosen, god looks like us, the planet is OUR domain). self-entitled bullshit. that is not reality.
consumerism also sells to the "specialness".

one of the major problems with the psyche of our species is that we're so focused on pursuing our own special self interests to the detriment of the planet and everyone else. consumerism or religion to the individual isn't a big deal. for the collective it is destroying the planet.
shit i'm starting to sound like a broken record.
but evolution of the species means evolution of the consciousness.

bolivia gets it right:
http://www.pvpulse.com/en/news/world-news/bolivia-set-to-pass-historic-law-of-mother-earth-which-will-grant-nature-equal-rights-to-humans#startOfPageI
d776

we are just another species.
i would even go so far to argue that on the whole, we are not an intelligent species. we possess intelligence, and there are those in our species who could be considered intelligent, but most of us just repeat patterns and emotion rules our decisions rather than cognition. Around 80% of humans are virtual automatons.
we celebrate competition and division and feed that to our young, while it is without question that cooperation is how an intelligent species flourishes.

before guilt and shame and expectations that you cannot possibly meet fuck up your life, religion has to first establish that you are something more than a primate, another piece in the collective. it has to first prey upon your ego, your fears, and your self interests. it is an element of control.
Consumerism, before selling you piles of crap, must first convince you that you need to buy that shit, that you deserve it, that you are entitled to it, and that by accumulating more shit to the self, you will fulfill your dreams and your happiness.

Whatever you say those cops are well trained automatons. You have to be a special kind to want to be a police officer these days.

I hope that you do eventually get through to a real person, and that this can be rectified. I think that "objectionable violence" might be as hard to define as "porn". For example, while some may see beauty and grace in a Muhammad Ali highlights reel, others may see only brutality.

The Felony Fights video clearly meets Adsense's criteria, but to give 72 hours notice to "clean up" thousands and thousands of pages of user generated content... that's highly unreasonable and should not be left to the discretion of an automaton. Best of luck!

First off, thanks for replying. I enjoy these conversations. They give me lots of great things to think about and explore.

Now, I think you unintentionally changed my argument. My argument wasn't "How does science explain why I like sugar?" I know people like sugary foods already. My point was that science cannot tell me why it is that of all the yummy flavors of ice cream out there, I like chocolate chip mint best. This, by the way, is not a technical limitation of science. Science can, as you noted in your post, provide an explanation as to why I prefer eating ice cream to say, spinach. It can indeed tell me about all the processes that occur in my brain (which areas get activated, what chemicals get released, etc.) when I eat chocolate chip mint ice cream. The problem is that these processes will not be the same for all people who eat chocolate chip mint ice cream.

So what we have here, then, are people experiencing that same exact objective event--we're all eating the same ice cream--and getting different results. Science is utterly unprepared to deal with this situation. Science only works in a situation in which objective knowledge can be obtained. It shouldn't matter who is doing the measuring--you should get the same result. Yet in this situation, we have multiple people "measuring" (ie tasting ice cream) and getting different results depending on the person.

To truly answer the question of why I like chocolate chip mint best, we are forced to refer to subjective knowledge and explore my personal life history up to this point, including things like my experiences, feelings, attitudes, likes and dislikes, etc. These things cannot be measured. How do you measure an experience? How could you possibly understand what I meant by without being me--having access to all of my memories, thoughts, feelings, EVERYTHING that is me? The answer is simple: you couldn't. I could explain to you in crude terms that I like chocolate chip mint better than chocolate chip by only a little bit, but you will never be able to "know" exactly what I mean "by only a little bit" (without being me, that is).

Your argument is that this problem is simply a technical matter, but I'm curious if you've taken that view to its logical conclusion--that we have no free will and are simply automatons that function at the whim of electrical impulses and chemical reactions in the brain. If science truly could explain to me why I like chocolate chip mint ice cream over say pistachio without taking into account my subjective experiences, then subjective experiences would have no meaning at all. Is that really what you're suggesting?

Let me next address a couple of unspoken assumptions you made in your reply to me. One seems to be that people of faith stop searching for answers because they believe in a god or higher power. But here clearly we have significant counter-evidence to your belief--namely in the vast number of scientists who are also believers in some religion (see this article). As scientists, they must continue to look for answers and re-evaluate new evidence as it arises, which seems to run counter to your assumption.

Another assumption seems to be that science and "rational thinking" makes people less likely to believe in religion. Again, see the previous article, which shows the percentage of scientists believe in religion hasn't changed so much despite the advances in science from 1916 to 1997 (when the second study was done). Are there religious people who are closed-minded and refuse to re-evaluate new evidence as it arises? Absolutely. But that is not a characteristic of many religious people and therefore your assumption would be an over-generalization.

Now, on to your next assumption--that no one will cry over the loss of dark matter. While I agree that in an ideal world, this would be true, I think you and I can agree the world we live in would be far from ideal. Science takes a great deal of time to change. The very skepticism that science holds so dear also puts the brakes on quick change in consensus within the scientific community. People will refuse to change their beliefs quickly. Experimental data will be checked and re-checked and I'm sure criticisms will be made about experiment design and other factors. Few experiments are performed that are so well designed as to be able to defy criticism. Skepticism doesn't just require evidence for belief, it requires overwhelming evidence and hence any change will be slow (there are still scientists arguing against global warming).

Ironically, I think you could look at religious people as reverse-skeptics. Where a skeptic will not believe anything without overwhelming evidence to support it, a religious person will not change their belief in something without overwhelming evidence that the belief is wrong. And this, I suppose, is the main reason why skeptics and believers simply cannot agree with each other. There is not enough (I would say any, actually) reliable evidence (objective or subjective) to convince either side. How could there be? Most skeptics discount subjective knowledge (their own included) right from the start. Everyone is arguing over apples and oranges.

Now, by all means, when someone says the world is 6000 years old, or that Jesus walked with dinosaurs, or that evolution is "just a theory," by all means take these people to task. They're wandering about in the realm of objective knowledge where science reigns supreme. But when someone says they believe in something (religion, Democracy, volunteering, world peace, whatever), demanding they show objective evidence of their belief and ridiculing them if they can't meet your arbitrary standard of proof (science requires overwhelming evidence, but there's no clear definition of how much is enough) is just plain wrong in my opinion.

In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
Perhaps, but no religious apologist I've ever heard has managed to convince me of that. Thats my whole point. If a believer came to me saying something like "we have independent statistics showing a significant benefit of prayer among cancer patients", that would be the kind of thing that might make me admit that belief in god was a rational and logical decision.

To your point about chocolate preference, I wouldn't be as sure, it may be a technical limitation rather than an absolute one. We already know why people tend to like chocolate, for instance (evolved sugar craving) its a tad more tricky to find out the specifics of your particular taste, but if we fully understood every detail of the brain, it might not be impossible, even without actually being you. Either way, Chocolate is a perfect example of how our subjective experience fails us: Because our ancestors lived in environments where sugar was a rarity, our bodies treat every carbohydrate molecule like it was the jackpot, basically our bodies telling us "Sugar in large quantities is great for you" Well its not, and thats a perfect example of how objective knowledge and scientific thinking always prevail over the subjective assumptions we make.

Which brings me to the point about the sun moving across the sky, which is again were science triumphs: Yes, the default assumption was that the sun, moon and stars moved around the earth, but the important part of the story is that as scientists and curious apes as we are, we arent happy just making assumptions and stop there, we keep investigating, as we will do with dark matter, it may be the best assumption we currently have, but thats not the important thing, the important thing about science is that we keep trying to figure out exactly whats going on, and if that means scrapping the whole idea about dark matter, no scientist will shed a tear, (just like we didnt when it turned out we werent the center of the universe) we will rejoice in our deeper understanding of things.

>> ^SDGundamX:

What you see as a leap-of-faith may be to the experiencer a perfectly rational and logical decision.

>> ^wolfiends:

it said cbs goddamn sports. maybe it was a segue-way for the march madness coverage on said affiliated networks? or maybe you should go buy another copy of catcher in the rye.


Segue is pronounced "seg-way" and doesn't require a redundant phonetic "way" added to the end.

And I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with the http://www.letsmove.gov/ campaign and little to do with March Madness, but I don't claim to have the ability to persuade the myopic majority who cling blindly to partisan flag waving.

It's getting to where you can't ask a fucking question about Obama without his automaton army getting defensive and attacking you. Jesus Christ. Calm down, I don't give a shit what he's promoting. He could be there to promote euthanasia of fat people and I wouldn't give a goddamn.

Just thumbing through the list, there are some good movies there. I was looking for a foreign film called Man Facing Southeast, didn't find it, but came across A Man Escaped on there. Classic! While watching it, think about how Speilberg shot the adults in ET (without faces and heads). Bresson does the same in this movie (obviously his version came first), and it works well to make the Nazis faceless automatons.

I know it's not on the list, but you should certainly check out Man Facing Southest if you can find it. Come to think of it, that's a metaphoric story of Christ very much like ET. Well look at that! Two movies with similarities to ET in one post. Ain't I cool?

Why is this not live music ? if sum one was playing the drums from sheet music with a tape recording of the other instruments they are doing exactly the same thing.

its a shame you cannot get a pro version of rock band or say piano hero that would basically teach you how to use the instrument properly.

If you wanted to be a mindless automaton and just play other peoples music then why not?

>> ^Memorare:
It's wads like these 2 who are twisting the original message.


I'm sorry, but even the original message was one of ignorance. We can forgive them, however, as it was a time of ignorance and fear. Today, we have FACTS, KNOWLEDGE, and INTELLIGENCE to help us avoid becoming mindless, idiot automatons.

Things we didn't understand way back then were best described using theories and storytelling; just as the ancient Greeks, Mayans, and countless other civilizations did throughout history. It was all they had of explaining the way the world around them worked, as they hadn't yet developed the knowledge and tools to come to FACTUAL, OBSERVABLE conclusions. If you believe these two morons, then you may as well believe the Earth is flat, Zeus has orgies in the clouds, and that you can see Russia from Alaska.

Or, you can join the rest of humanity and accept something much more plausible and intelligent. People like this will one day be extinct. Humanity is growing smarter, and outgrowing mythical bedtime stories told to keep children in line through fear, and from questioning ignorance. More proof of evolution.

No sir, I don't need to rationalize my tendency to turn on the asshole when its turned lose on me and I am not selling anything-AGAIN-Perception-My delivery reflects a frustration, true, but what is the one law of love as you see it? Is it based on ones ability to or willingness to suffer a particular subject or dialog until it satisfies a personal fancy?
I don't need to watch a video when I understand the mechanics of the delivery and the reasons why some chose to express a mundane and simplified world view by letting some talking head they identify with through years of detrimental and unhealthy programming do it for them. The constant posting of news clips and editorials that tend to all say the same goddamn thing, is a redundant, unrealistic, uninspiring, and uncreative way of expressing one's point.
I DON'T NEED TO BE CONSTANTLY HIT OVER THE HEAD WITH A POINT TO GET THE GYST! This describes the loop that some are in. A loop is a rut, a loop is a broken record, a loop takes you back to the same place over and over, and its a form of exhibitionism I detest. You see nothing but the "ravings of a retarded douchebag, because that is HOW YOU CHOSE TO REACT. I respond to bullshit as I see it with a similar methodology. My story does not change. Like a pitcher who has a particular set of strengths and styles of delivery, he rolls with what is handed him. Some batters are very predictable and can't adapt. I am lazy when it comes to trying to teach someone who is unresponsive sometimes, but I never tire in reminding the same over and over, with a view to finding some mutual understanding.
(choggie's response:)
Don't waste your brainpower on anything that does not suit your desire-RM represents in her livelihood for
me, someone who has sold her soul to the machine I despise. I could give a rat's as about her preferences, her sexuality, or her politics. She's a goddamn diversion, a puppet in the hands of a cancerous distraction for a nation of weak-willed, automatons. Again, MW, I don't need to be beat over the head with why FOX is a piece of shit news organization, and the same goes for MSNBC over any other. Major media, news, politics, are a broken, twisted mound of garbage, that shows no sign of doing anything but turning slaves into prisoners, into chum.

You don't like the user???.. I can live with that. Lazy would be to run and hide behind acerbic one-liners directed at a user and not the content of a user's posts. Admittedly, I have been guilty of the same, and probably will slip again. Ignore is the same beast as denial or self-indulgent public masturbation for me.

Douchbag? Check a mirror when letting fly with convenient labels.