StrangeSox

That is some pretty convoluted thinking.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 10:18 PM) The first part of that there is some evidence for. The second part is very much open for debate. Animal farts supposedly do more harm than people. Maybe the bovines should institute a cap and trade on gaseous emissions. Even if the "methane from cow farts" bit was true, why are there so many bovines in the world? edit: There's "some" evidence for it like there's "some" evidence that the world is round. If that's the true cost of gas, sure. Right now we're leaving out a huge chunk of externalities. It's not about authority figures deciding or declaring things. But, anyway, yes, there are problems with current commercial farming practices, just like there were problems with farming before the dust bowl. That doesn't mean it needs to be abandoned, just modified to use land, water and fertilizer in better ways. Who says trucks and trains are going to disappear? I don't think we need population controls now. But should the human race continue growing indefinitely? What if we reach 50 Billion people? There's a limited carrying capacity for the planet. More strawmen. I'm not a luddite. I don't propose we all follow Walden and go live in the woods. I fully support alternative forms of energy such as geothermal, wind, wave, solar and, where we really need to go short- and mid-term in my opinion, nuclear. The US is already looking like the laggard here. The rest of the world, including China, has recognized the problem and has started to correct it. My electricity bill was $30 last month, over half of it was fees and not actual power usage. My commute is 5 miles. I recycle. I've started to modify what sorts of food I buy and where I eat. I try to use less and less plastic and limit the number of disposable items I buy. I pay attention to the practices of stores I shop at. I vote for politicians who plan to actually do something about this problem. I wanted to save this one for last and turn it around on you: How long are you willing to ignore that the status quo is not sustainable? That "do nothing" means our standard of living is going to drop. That we'll continue to have more and more droughts and floods and record highs and lows around the world. That power plants will have to run at lower capacity because their cooling water is too hot. That acidification of the ocean isn't a real problem. That nitrogen runoff into lakes, rivers and the oceans isn't killing the base levels of the food chain for those ecosystems. That the garbage island in the Pacific is only going to keep growing and keep killing marine life and birds. How long are you willing to ignore that many of the industrial practices of the 19th and 20th century are incredibly destructive to the environment and that continuing these actions will result in long-term costs and harm for people? How far are you willing to mortgage the standard of living of future generations so that you don't have to change now?

My neighbor, who has been dead for about a year now, is being evicted on Monday.

In other words, you can't actually support your assertions or arguments. You don't want to have a discussion but would rather make sweeping dismissals and accusations of fraud, dishonesty and dollar-seeking and then hand-wave away any challenges. The overwhelming paradigm in climate science is that the planet is warming and that humans are responsible for a significant portion of that. It's not a conspiracy. It's not fraud. It's not chasing after that sweet, sweet grant money. It's good, solid science consillient with a variety of findings in a wide array of fields. Denial comes almost exclusively from politically or economically motivated entities. Do you have any experience with academic research? Your statements about grant money and peer review seem to indicate that you do not. To reiterate an earlier point, no science is perfect. But the scientific method is the best system we have for determining provisional truths and expanding knowledge. You cannot isolate your statements about grant money and the peer review process to one single field because that situation is the same across the board.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:31 PM) Nor the foreign contribution Obama got during his campaign thru his website. Was Obama's contributions documented? Should millions of dollars of foreign and corporate investment be allowed in elections?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:29 PM) You may only see one if you have your head buried in the sand. I don't deny the fact that there are some changes noted. I dispute the severity of them and the honesty of most of the people delivering them. Too many agendas and too much money involved. Yet you seem to not see, or care, that many of the most vocal proponents for your position either lied, exagerated or rellied on data that was not entirely accurate, and what is worse, don't care that they did so. I found this an interesting read. http://my.telegraph.co.uk/reasonmclucus/re...ysical-society/ I'll ask for another support-or-retract, but then I'd like to make another point: It doesn't matter what proponents or spokespeople say. That's simply an authority figure saying something. What matters is what is in the papers, if the data is reliable and if the methodology is valid, and then you can assess the validity of the conclusions drawn in the paper.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:16 PM) YEs. When climatolgists get data showing a half degree rise, they start cherry picking and ignoring data unitl they get a 4 degree rise because that sounds scarier. They been caught doing stuff like that so many times that anyone who was sceptical to begin with just doesnt' believe anythign they say anymore. Support or retract. You're making a broad claim against climatology in general here, not against a specific paper or researcher. And, of course, "man bites dog". You see the handful of examples of questionable papers splashed all over the media, but you don't see the hundreds of papers published yearly without incident.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:44 PM) Publish or perish. Same holds true for your research. If you start off to prove climate change is real, you had better do that or you can kiss your grant money goodbye. No incentive there to fudge data, forget about those few reporting station over there, make a program to interpret the data that has formulas inside it that would make a programmers head explode, but give you the results you want and/or attack the character of anyone that speaks out against you instead of what they are speaking about. This post demonstrates a lack of familiarity with academic research, but it's typical of the denialist crowd. "They do it for the grant money" is an absolutely ridiculous assertion. Look, this is very similar to the evolution "debate". Tens of thousands of scientists in the field all agree say one thing, a small handful disagree and make charges of grand conspiracies, suppression of ideas, fabrication of data, etc. etc. And it's all bulls***, frankly. It's based on ideological objections. There isn't some worldwide conspiracy to make up climatology to get grant money. There isn't a worldwide conspiracy involves tens of thousands of researchers and hundreds (thousands?) of different institutions. Vague accusations of data fabrication that disparage the entire scientific community and scientific methodology aren't exactly convincing arguments. Science is not perfect. Mistakes have been made in every field and certainly in climate modeling. But over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, as the models are refined and made increasingly accurate, the results are essentially the same. We're warming. We're warming rapidly. It's going to effect ecology around the world, and it will likely not be pretty for humans. And, most importantly, humans are the primary reason it is rising as fast as it is. You can't burn hunderds tens of millions of years of stored carbon and not expect there to be consequences. edit: probably more accurate edit 2: it's not just warming that is a cause for concern from CO2 emissions, either.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 02:59 PM) You know, it would help if every time the one side gets the tiniest bit of data to support its position, it didn't exagerate it 1000-fold or just make s*** up becauor just because the real data wasn't 'sexy' enough to induce fear to act now. You lie, and it doesn't matter what the truth is, people will not believe you. You're describing the denialist side. Except their tiniest bit of data is usually due to poor interpretations or willful ignorance.

Our company has used Skype to communicate with people on other continents, seems reliable. They're only using voice, though.

To be fair, he did correctly characterize them as whackjobs, but the comparison to questions regarding the US Chamber of Commerce funding is weak. There is ample evidence that Obama was and is a US citizen, but we have no indication of where the CoC funds are from.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 02:24 PM) Sharon Angle needs to represent Nevada in the Senate because fake towns in Texas are ruled by Sharia law. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/...0_10/026080.php QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 9, 2010 -> 12:19 PM) Tea party candidates continue to be crazy: Sharon Angle claims Dearborn, MI and a non-existent Texas town are under Sharia law. And Iott's SS fetish, which at first glance you can pass off as historical interest, but a look at their website shows they completely white-wash that division and paint them in the light of a fight against communism and a fight for personal freedom (of the master race, of course!) Now I know what Balta feels like...

^this. There's an awful lot of ridiculously unreasonable rhetoric from the right (and big business) on this issue specifically and science in general that has to be countered. Starting from a position of "what makes the most sense financially and has the biggest, quickest impact" means we'll go from a good solution to a pile of crap that's barely better than status quo during the political discourse in this country. Just look at the health care boondoggle.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 11:20 AM) However, the store doesn't want the 25th person in line to come in, see that the #1 tv deal is gone, and just walk out the door and tell everyone in the line "everything's gone you can go home now", so they'll load their stockrooms to the brim with a quality deal on different models of laptops, TV's, whatever. Those may or may not carry the "minimum x units per store" line, because they still want people to come in early to grab them rather than buying something later in the day at a competitor. They will be the ones that are offered until noon, or with a special rebate, whatever. They want you in their store and they want you actually to spend money on those items, so they won't run out of them until late in the day, and they'll be more flexible on the deadlines until they clear that merchandise out. Something like this happened at Best Buy when my fiance bought a laptop about a month ago. We had one picked out and were ready to purchase, price was $500 IIRC. It wasn't on a special sale or anything, but they were out of stock. Instead they offered a laptop that normally retailed for about $750 more for only $550 instead of back-ordering the other laptop (or, more likely, walking out the door to another store/online). Not exactly the same situation as day-after-thanksgiving specials, but it shows that they're willing to deal once you walk in that door.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 09:40 AM) And I agree with you. But you quoted my post, which did NOT endorse that method, and tried to make it out as if I did. I think that even on the economic level, "stop ruining the environment" is a winner. If we don't spend the money now to address the issue, it's going to cost us much more down the road. Not necessarily in terms of technological implementation, but in terms of lost or destroyed economic opportunities (loss of fisheries, droughts, floods, etc.). But I don't think "it will cost too much" is a valid rejection of "stop ruining the environment", even if that is a net economic loser.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 09:33 AM) And I didn't use that argument, did I? I stated that it will cost a lot, and you are damn right that is a valid point in the argument. You don't want the consequences of not acting ignored, yet you seem quick to ignore the costs of acting. You need to look at both. My point is that, whenever environmental issues are discussed, Republicans whine on and on about the economic impacts but never address the actual science and the actual environmental impacts. And that in the case of AGW, the economic costs of not acting outweigh the costs of acting, so the costs of acting are not a relevant concern anymore.

"It costs too much money to change" is not a valid reason to continue destroying the environment, and that applies to more than AGW.

The first point is only valid if you ignore the economic consequences of not addressing it.

That's why DA hasn't been seeing the field.

QUOTE (GoodAsGould @ Oct 10, 2010 -> 02:39 PM) Or maybe its just Lovie being stubborn and starting the wrong guy, its not like he hasnt made questionable decisions before. He's an undrafted backup QB who has barely seen the field. By definition he's not going to be very good when he comes into the game. I think he's better than Collins, but I wouldn't be surprised with some bad throws from him.

Let's not forget in our hatred of Collins that Hanie isn't very good, either.

that has to be it for Collins. He's been unbelievably bad here.

please get collins out of there, he can't make any throws.

Hope they make the switch at half time.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Oct 10, 2010 -> 01:02 PM) What is Todd Collins doing? NFL QB's should not be that terrible. PLease put Hanie in. Flashbacks to the Hutchinson/Quinn era.