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In addition, consider the snow leopard. Lives the remote, high altitude areas of the Himalayas - considerably more remote than the West Virginia woods. Stealthy AF, near perfect camouflage, super low abundance, solitary. Formally described in 1930. Lots of crystal clear photos. Tens of physical museum specimens. A sequenced genome. Over 160 you can go see, live, with your own eyes in a zoo. Bigfoot is supposedly bigger, lives in a much more fragmented and densely populated locality, and yet none of the above evidence exists.

Biden’s speech tonight was good. He was the right president in the moment. I wasn’t ashamed to have him be my elected representative. He asked us to defend democracy together. He even defended the hecklers taunting him (they were in Philly, after all), but spoke to the broader moment. Hopefully enough people are still listening.

Have they check in Hunter Biden's briefcase?

I think it is a rocket designed to go to the moon. What are your thoughts on it?

Undoing the bonds created in Nixon's Southern Strategy by drawing a clear line between Reagan Republicans and MAGA is a bold move, and a smart one imo. It's a compromise that works for Biden, who still wants to reach across the aisle, and shows that he finally gets that MAGA folks have never really been interested in democracy, so no amount of aisle reaching is going to overcome the racism and hatred and resentment. It's just going to take everybody else to stand up and tell them this isn't acceptable, never was, never will be, and maybe take the opportunity to fix some things to better benefit 99% of us.

I realize things are different in various places, and in the UK there are stronger statutory safeguards for employees than in the US, but this sentiment is wrong. Sick leave is part of one's compensation. You earn a salary or wage, but you also earn time off. For example, I earn 4 hours of sick leave per pay period. When I take sick leave, it's not that my employer is getting nothing. In my case, my employer has already gotten the work that earned me that time off. Same with vacation. You can't decouple the leave from the money - both are part of your compensation.

You mostly can't control your thoughts, but you can - presumably - direct them to a focus of attention, such as the object of desire with whom you are trying to connect, or the school subject you have to study for, or the football score on which you have a bet. You probably don't control your moves... and yet somehow find your way to the refrigerator when you're hungry and the bathroom when you feel bladder pressure, and across the street when the light is green and not when it's red, and it's nice to get credit for a clever chess move or well-played guitar solo - especially if you've spent a great many hours practicing those moves. So your movements and thoughts are being influenced, every minute, by changing circumstances in your environment, and you are responding in the present minute. If the bucket of the universe emptied all those minutes 13 billion+ years before you were in it, some very specific droplets were reserved just for you. Why not pretend you're interacting with them voluntarily? That's what most of us feel we're doing, most of the time, even if it isn't technically true.

I think it's a great example, i understand now, thank you

It has taken quantification of every possible influence and estimations of their interactions to reach the conclusion that greenhouse gases - CO2 mostly - are the biggest (but not only) driver of global warming. Some of those influences are considered too small to be significant over the time scales that are under consideration, like volcanic heat, waste heat, orbital cycles/changes. These are not excluded from consideration, just estimated to be of low signicance. Specific to the points you are raising the impacts of vegetation changes to albedo (how much change to reflection of sunlight, ie it's dispersion) are being estimated and included along with other things that affect reflectivity, like snow cover. As are the flows of carbon into and out of vegetation and soils and oceans. I don't think the energy flows/stores within vegetation are explicitly considered in climate modeling but are still intrinsic to estimations of changes to global biomass and could be derived from them. Global Carbon Cycle - (a bit dated but it gives a good overview) - Estimations of climate forcings (including albedo and other land use changes) -

I'm actually surprised that practical jokers haven't performed more and better bigfoot japes. The stuff that does exist is pretty dated and tame. If they can fake a moon landing, you would think faking bigfoot would be a doddle. 😊

I love how "We understand X" is immediately followed by a spectacular demonstration of not understanding X.