bascule

I loled

No, it is NOT the mean of the uncertainty. The uncertainty extends out from the red line, which is generated from model output. You're reasoning is completely backwards. They begin with the model output (the red line) and then plot uncertainty from there, not vice versa. Your methodology is you pulled it out of your ass? That's not a very sound methodology, sorry.

Awesome Krugman article on this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Ghosts don't exist, except in movies and at DisneyLand

I'll reserve judgment until I see an in-depth analysis of the combined House/Senate bills though. Just for the record though: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/07/16/obama_pushes_hard_on_healthcare_overhaul/ Compare to the Republican track record: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Prescription_Drug,_Improvement,_and_Modernization_Act FWIW though: http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/281590/Healthcare-Is-%22Not-a-Right%22-and-Obama%27s-Plan-Will-Cost-Way-Beyond-1T-Ron-Paul-Says

I see two red lines, FWIW. I assume you're talking about the one that's a historical reconstruction, not the one denoting the highest temperatures in the past 400,000 years. It's not just the "mean". The red and yellow lines represent two independent historical reconstructions. The plots are the data that came out of the model. And instead of getting it out of a model, you pulled it out of your ass. Yes. There's no methodology behind your line. You just drew a line on the chart, and claim it's good because it's within the uncertainties of a real model. I'm done. I can't take anymore.

Costs are already high, but in the near future they will become unsustainably high: It's easy to bandy about terms like "staggering expense", but you really should address the relative costs of the new system versus the present system. I'm not seeing the problem with this approach. My understanding, which may be flawed, is that this program would replace Medicare. Medicare presently costs $408 billion. So for an additional $207 billion the program insures all families who make less than $88,000 per year. I would like to see projected costs over time ala the graph I linked above, but so far this isn't setting off any warning bells in my head. Well, aside from taking us from a budget surplus to the first trillion dollar budget deficit by cutting taxes and increasing spending, driving the national debt up above $10 trillion, entangling in two nasty foreign wars, torturing prisoners, spying on Americans and ruining the economy... Republicans passed a rather disastrous Medicare bill, the so-called Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. This bill precluded Medicare from interfering in the supply chain between the pharmaceuticals and the pharmacies. Medicare could not purchase drugs in bulk from the pharmaceuticals and then disseminate them to the pharmacies so Medicare patients could receive drugs at a discounted price. Instead, Medicare was forced to pay retail for the drugs. This is why drugs are so much cheaper in Canada than they are in the US. It's also one of the things driving up Medicare costs. So I'm unsure what it is you think the GOP did right in regard to healthcare. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedAs an addendum specifically in regard to the issues of costs and coverage: According to Dennis Kucinich 60% of bankruptcies are because of hospital bills, and 80% of those people are insured. Provided this is really the case, I think that's a pretty clear indication the system is fundamentally broken.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to compare it to something like economics, anthropology, or history. I think a better comparison could be made to biology. There is no way biologists can know the specific and intimate details about every part of the system. Are humans more closely related to rodents or bats and flying lemurs? Different biologists will give you different opinions on that matter. There are gaps in our understanding of biology. This is where a creationist steps in and goes "you can't even tell us definitively if humans are closer to rodents or bats, therefore everything you say must be wrong!" (and oh by the way, god did it) As I see it, this is akin to a climate science denier stepping in and going "you didn't predict an unusually strong La Nina event in 2007, therefore everything you say must be wrong!" (and oh by the way, humans have no impact on the climate system and it's all part of the natural cycle) Some sciences do lack evidence needed to understand the system in its gestalt. The systems are too big and to fully understand them we need information about the past that can only come through estimation and statistical analysis. However, climate science still rests upon a strong physical science basis. It's not a mushy topic like economics or anthropology. The physical science behind the climate system is rigorously studied and well understood, and where the details grow fuzzy, the margins of error are well understood.

Your comments are extremely misinformed. Do you see the size of the error bars on the historical reconstructions? You've cherry picked a particular point in one reconstruction, and used that to try to argue that current warming is unprecedented. The projections are based on model output, which is based on a rigorous understanding of the climate system. It's not like climate scientists were sitting around one day and decided "let's blame it all on CO2!" then framed their argument to match that assumption. This is a conclusion based on decades of research and modeling. Again: you've failed to demonstrate how plotting model output is "alarmist". There's nothing alarmist about it. These are scientists putting forward their best estimates with a rigorous and methodological approach. And you base this on what... opening up a graph in paintbrush and drawing some lines on it? Did you download their data and do a statistical analysis on it? Are you even remotely qualified to do that?

An article you wote? Are you a witer? (Sorry, couldn't resist)

This was a rather interesting article, especially in the light of the recent flurry of activity involving "skeptics" in certain other threads on these boards: http://www.nolanchart.com/article6621.html The article continues beyond that but I found the lead captures the issue quite elegantly in a nutshell. I have seen many people self-apply the label "skeptic" when expressing doubt about the mainstream scientific opinion on climate change. However, there seems to be a common prevailing attitude among many of these people: they seem to have started with the assumption that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way climate science research is being performed, and proceed to seek out information which supports this position without first doing a thorough examination of the scientific argument. This issue hits home particularly hard for me because for many years I worked for a climate science research group headed by a man regarded by the scientific community (but not himself) as a "skeptic". However, if you asked him his opinions on the fundamental science behind climate change, such as if CO2 were the strongest radiative forcing affecting the climate system today, he would agree. He was among the many scientists who peer review the IPCC Assessment Reports, and his concerns were not so much that recent climate change isn't anthropogenically forced, but that there were anthropogenic forcings other than greenhouse gases which were going underreported by the IPCC, such as the many effects of land use. This sort of skepticism is a far cry from the sort of "skepticism" I've typically seen from laymen questioning the mainstream scientific opinion. The real problem, as noted in the article, is that implicit in the self-application of the title "skeptic" by this group of people is the notion that climate scientists are unscientific or unskeptical. From my observations, this is typically coupled with the notion that these scientists are misstating their position due to political reasons. If I had to guess, self-ascribed "skeptics" disagree with the politics of the scientists involved, and by virtue of the political disagreement proceed to disagree with the science without first seeking to understand it. I've done some Googling on various arguments I've seen presented, such as the notion that the climate has been cooling since 1998, and found these arguments repeated over and over again by rather dubious looking blogs created by non-scientists. I can't help but feel that "skeptics" have all the trappings of conspiracy theorists: these people are repeating arguments they read on blogs without scrutinizing them first. That is the exact opposite of skepticism. It's for this reason that I have very little patience for "climate skeptics" and am unafraid to bandy around the title of "denier" in the same way I would call a creationist a "cdesign proponentsist". These people are not acting in a skeptical manner, do not seem particularly willing to engage in a discussion of the facts, cannot provide information to support their positions, and are generally unwilling to take the time to actually understand the mainstream scientific position. Their behavior is more akin to conspiracy theorists: any information coming out of the prominent scientific organizations researching this topic (e.g. NASA GISS, NOAA) is inherently tainted and immediately disregarded, whereas information which fits their confirmation bias despite coming from dubious sources is implicitly trusted. All that said, I do appreciate people who take the time to try to understand the mainstream scientific position even if they continue to question it. On these forums, JohnB gets an honorable mention in that regard. He does a good job of questioning the mainstream scientific opinion while refraining from making untrue statements about it. It's possible for true "climate skeptics" to exist but they are few and far between. And as an aside, oddly enough when I first started discussing global warming on these forums I often found myself on the side of the "skeptic", challenging various statements about climate change which I found to be in error. However, over time I saw the people overzealously touting the dangers of climate change evaporate, replaced with a legion of "skeptics" baselessly expressing fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the mainstream scientific opinion. What do you think? What is the best way to deal with climate science "skeptics"/deniers? I'll certainly admit I very quickly grow impatient with these sorts of people, but the same can be said for anyone who has an antiscientific agenda, including creationists. Is that bad? Is there anything that can be done to promote sound, rational, scientific, and truly skeptical discussion with these people?

How is plotting model output "alarmist"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

If the Last.fm charts are any indication Jackson's biggest song was written by Jackson himself and initially disliked by Jones. That song is... Billie Jean.

When many threads on a particular science start popping up in "Other Sciences" and "General Discussion" I think it's indicative people can't find the proper place to put them. Just to venture a guess, I'd say it's because right now the proper place to put global warming threads is under "Biology" which doesn't make sense.

For what it's worth your experience with jryan is much like my own. I think insane_alien put it best: jryan doesn't seem to be here for discussion. I asked him to defend a single statement he made an absurd number of times and he just ignored me. From what I can tell he's just here to spread FUD and propaganda, and baselessly claim various aspects of the mainstream scientific opinion on climate change are wrong. I'd say we've entered "Do Not Feed the Trolls" territory. I don't think you're going to get any worthwhile information out of jryan.

I'm not sure what you mean by "genius". He's a musical genius, not a mental one. I'd say the same thing about Kanye West. I don't attribute his musical genius to his pedophilia.

The CUDA SDK is aimed at C, although as I said earlier, it can be targeted by any language with a compiler that can output CUDA opcodes, like Obsidian in Haskell.

FWIW according to your URL the remote sensing satellites are also operated by NOAA, not NASA (which I find strange because I maintained the web site of some remote sensing satellites operated by NASA) Maybe NOAA compiles the data... not really sure how that works.

*blink* http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/ NASA GISS most certainly makes use of remote sensing...

We mainly use: 1) Ruby as our primary language, because it's extremely high level and allows us to get things done quickly 2) JavaScript as our third party developer language, because it's relatively high level and well-known There's a wide gulf between being able to do what you want in C++ and being able to understand others' C++ code. Do you understand RTTI? Standard template libraries like Boost? I suppose the word you're looking for in that regard is "evaluated" Like this: sieve(N) -> sieve(lists:seq(2, N), []). sieve([], L) -> lists:reverse(L); sieve([Prime|T], L) -> sieve([X || X <- T, X rem Prime /= 0], [Prime|L]).

Then again: please link me to the relevant data. I somewhat encouraged this red herring, but now I'll ask you to put it aside, which I did myself. Your statement is: "If you take an average from the peak of the 98 El Nino to present the temperature is definitely declining" Please find data to defend this statement. When have they ever done that? When errors are found in their data they correct them and publish a statement. Now you're not just spreading lies about the climate, you're spreading lies about NASA GISS... great. No it's not. The PDO follows 30 year cycles of warming and cooling' date=' that 30 year time slice is dominated by a warm PDO.[/quote'] Can you please connect the dots between the PDO and your statement "If you take an average from the peak of the 98 El Nino to present the temperature is definitely declining" This statement appears to be yet another red herring. Who is claiming that "those that found the errors as less reputable because they aren't 100% convinced of the AGW theory"? It's not me. Strawman. In what ways do you "check the work of climate scientists"? So far I've asked you a few dozen times to defend a single assertion by providing data or analysis which substantiates it and you have unable to do so. Now you're saying that NASA GISS "resisted correction and ignored glaring issues with their data" You're not looking at NASA GISS's argument. You're instead making value judgments about them as an organization, and saying that reflects negatively upon their arguments. That's an ad hominem. What's ironic is you are apparently accusing me of considering "those that found the errors as less reputable because they aren't 100% convinced of the AGW theory" even though I'm not. That's exactly what you're doing to NASA GISS here. Your confirmation bias against the mainstream scientific opinion has lead you to make a value judgment against this organization which is in turn influencing your interpretation of their scientific argument. Letting personal vendettas get in the way of your analysis of a scientific argument is very unscientific/unskeptical, sorry. I'm going to ask you again: "If you take an average from the peak of the 98 El Nino to present the temperature is definitely declining" So let's see, what do your arguments consist of so far: Assertions which fly in the face of establish science and are not supported by data Red herrings Straw men Ad hominems This is not how a scientist or a skeptic presents an argument. This doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I'll give you one more chance to justify your statement: If you are unable to do so in your next post, then I am done with you. You can't even present and defend one single argument, even when asked to do so dozens of times.

Well, my comments were specifically in response to the requirements of a hybrid functional/imperative/OO language as laid out by PhDP. The resulting code will probably be slower than its C++ counterpart, but will be free of overflows of all types and will likely be shorter and more maintainable. In certain cases it will be implicitly parallelizable too.

"Go fish" again, huh? The summary (which is Comic Sans? ow my eyes) makes the assertion "Global temperatures have been on a cooling trend since 2002" (which contradicts the previous assertion of cooling since 1998?) and again does not provide a citation. Or any citations, for that matter. This is supposed to be a scientific paper? You're making a claim. You have the burden of proof. Giving me a URL and expecting me to dig through it to find the information which confirms your position is in very bad form. Nice red herrings. Perhaps we could get back to your assertion that: "If you take an average from the peak of the 98 El Nino to present the temperature is definitely declining." This assertion is wrong. You are still yet to find data to defend it. Either find the data to support your position (don't just give me a link and expect me to find the points to support your position) or admit you're wrong. It's a far more reputable source than any you have cited so far, which make inconsistent claims and don't support them with data or citations. Furthermore, making mistakes doesn't invalidate their research. The data were corrected. That's science for you: when errors are made they are corrected with the best available information. I continue to maintain that your assertion: "If you take an average from the peak of the 98 El Nino to present the temperature is definitely declining" is wrong. The fact GISS made mistakes does not invalidate the totality of their research or any research output of NASA GISS as an organization. It only goes to show they are scientists who are willing to admit when they are wrong and are willing to make the appropriate corrections. You should be applauding them for that, not saying they are untrustworthy. It seems you are of the resolute opinion that climate scientists are incorrect in their assertions and are willing to spout whatever inaccuracies you wish in order to undermine them. This makes you anti-science, not a skeptic.

It sounds like Scala or OCaml would fit your needs.