John Cuthber

The negation thing doesn't get you anywhere so I'm glad you have stopped. I didn't talk about a policeman. And, I'm just talking about one politician. If he says things that are not true then you can't trust him. The bad analogy you have come up with would be something like "if I can't trust Mr Cameron because he repeatedly says things that are untrue, does that mean that his whole party is untrustworthy?" Well, they elected him as leader... It only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch. I truly believe that in any other area you would see the problem, but when you're doing it on the topic of religion, you can't. You can not, or will not, see the difference between 1" all policemen acting as individuals can't be trusted" and 2 " The police as a whole can't be trusted". If it shown that some police lie then I'm sure we agree that this does not prove the first assertion. But it does prove the second one. If you know that (at least) some police tell lies, can you trust a police report? Or do you accept that it may have been written by a bent copper- so you can't rely on it to be honest?

It reminds me of one of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soxhlet_extractor

OK, the first page cited starts with, "CO2 released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2 " which is wrong. As I already pointed out, you can carbon -date the CO2 that has been added to the air. It's old, soi its origin ie geological rather than oceanic. It also says "Prior research has shown infrared radiation from greenhouse gases is incapable of warming the oceans, only shortwave radiation from the Sun is capable of penetrating and heating the oceans and thereby driving global surface temperatures. " which is silly. The whole point about the greenhouse effect is that the sun warms the earth. The greenhouse stops the heat escaping. The second web page says things like "However, since the LWIR re-radiation from increasing 'greenhouse gases' is only capable of penetrating a minuscule few microns (millionths of a meter) past the surface and no further, it could therefore only cause evaporation (and thus cooling) of the surface 'skin' of the oceans." which are unrealistic. Heating the surface of the ocean makes it hotter. It also makes the underlying water hotter by conduction. The only way it could promote evaporation would be by heating. Incidentally, that page also cites this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_A._Pielke#On_climate_change He doesn't support your ideas that people are not responsible for climate change. When you are citing people who don't agree with you in support of your ideas, it's probably time to find some better ideas. I'm glad you find science funny. There's not a lot of science in the pages you linked to- why is that? Anyway, rather than posting links to stuff that doesn't stand up to any sort of analysis, why don't you answer my question? Why don't you believe that the additional blanket we have put on is the reason we are hotter (and, yes- we are hotter- that's essentially the point Swansont is making)?

To an extent, though the point of such a sphere would be to absorb light rather than to reflect it. No absorber is perfect so some light would be reflected back and heat the star. That would make it slightly hooter and burn slightly faster.

"What source?" The Bible. You seem to be talking about the idea that "not all of it is true" does not mean "all of it is false" OK, fine, we both know that. "Not all of it is true" means " some of it is false" The thing is that once some of it is false you can't rely on it for truth. OK so "Showing some parts of some books wrong doesn't mean that you can group those books together with a bunch of other books and call them all untrustworthy " But I didn't lump them together. Whoever stuck them into two volumes and called them the Bible did that. Or, if you prefer a less narrow approach, whoever lumped them together (with a lot of others) as "Scripture" did that. What I'm saying is that , so long as there are bits which are wrong, you can't trust the whole thing. Scripture - as a whole- is untrustworthy- even though bits of it are right. If I says I don't trust a politician, I'm not saying he never tells the truth, I'm saying he sometimes lies. Re "The bible is like the second trio, but the first trio is NOT its negation." Once again, nobody said it was, so that's another strawman you are arguing about. Similarly "If Jesus saying something wrong" Who mentioned him? Oh, it's another strawman. Re "Just because you can't figure out how what I'm saying applies to what you've said doesn't make it a strawman." No, showing that it can't apply- for example, because nobody had mentioned Jesus or

"I'm asking if proving that part of the bible is wrong automatically makes the following quote untrustworthy." Yes. It comes from a source that is known to get things wrong. I can not take it on trust that it is correct. I would need to check, it may be right or it may not be. "That some parts of the bible are wrong isn't the same as it being totally inaccurate as far as we know. " Well thank the Lord that nobody said that. Why are you even discussing that? It's because you like putting up strawman arguments, isn't it? I'm not saying it's totally inaccurate, and I never did: that would be silly. I'm saying bits of it are inaccurate, and you don't know which bits. What do you consider the word "trustworthy" to mean? To me it means that I can believe it without checking. So, rather than the Bible here's a much shorter text to look at At least some dogs are brown. At least some cats are black. One and one is two. That text is trustworthy- you can rely on what it says. Now let's try a different credo At least some dogs are brown. At least some cats are black. One and one is three. Now, the third of those statements is wrong. Can you trust that trio of statements? No, of course you can't- because it's not always right. Can you trust the second statement in that trio? Yes- on it's own. But you can't trust the whole group? No. The religious scriptures are like that second trio. So, for the 4th time Since the scriptures are partly wrong, and entirely unreliable, what use are they?

The latter is, of course, the reason why the former is true in this case. So all that Latin stuff of yours was irrelevant. If it was- as far as is known- totally accurate then you could trust it to be correct. However, as at least some bits of it are known to be wrong, you really can't rely on it because you don't know which bits are wrong. No part of them can be relied on without independent checking. So, you cite some text and ask if I think it's true or not. I might agree with it, or I might not. What I can't do is trust it. I can't do what a "true Christian" would do and accept it as matter of faith because it must be true- it's the Word of God. Because I don't know if it's from "part of the scripture that's true" or from "part of the scripture that's false" because they don't have handy labels. I can, of course, read it and make up my own mind- based on other things. That's my point- I never said the scripture is all wrong. I said it's all untrustworthy. When I read bits of it, I have to rely on something else to tell me if I should accept what I read. So, for the third time. Since the scriptures are partly wrong, and entirely unreliable, what use are they?

I know. It's also irrelevant because what I said was "Once you can show that some bits are wrong, you have shown that all of it is untrustworthy." So, nice strawman while it lasted. Why did you bother? My point is that, since at least some bits of the scriptures are wrong, you can't know which bits (if any) are true. You need another means to check it. One such mechanism is science. If that looks a little familiar, it's because I said it in post 575 but,it seems you didn't read it. On a related note (i.e. where you clearly didn't read stuff), when do you plan to apologise for slandering half the world? http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/78072-theistic-scientists/page-23#entry768238 http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/78072-theistic-scientists/?p=768404

I read the question. I also read the passage which led to that question being asked, which was "Their belief in the bible makes everything they claim questionable." If I see that someone is speaking French it's not unreasonable for me to conclude that they will (probably) be able to speak French tomorrow. It's the sort of thing we do every day- we assume that we can predict future behaviour from what happens today. So, if we see people regularly making irrational decisions, we think they are likely to do the same thing in the future. That's not likely to be good for them, or for society. So we arrange for other people to make decisions for them. We put them in secure safe places (OK sometimes that gets messed up- but the idea is that those places are secure and safe). And we don't let them vote because we know that people who make irrational choices are not the people best placed to decide on the nature of our government. We do this because we see them making highly questionable judgements and, on that basis we classify those people as "people who make poor judgements" We do classify the people on the basis of their actions- what else would we do? Do you not see the similarity between "people who make poor judgements" and people who believe stuff that's known to be false? Wouldn't it be sensible to check on their judgement before acting on it? Isn't that checking the same as questioning their judgement? Doesn't that amount to saying that their judgements are questionable? That's what was said in the first place

I always find it amusing when I hear so-called experts saying things like "Although it occurs naturally in the environment, acquiring enough of it to kill would require individuals with expertise and connections. It would also need sophisticated lab facilities - and access to a nuclear reactor." They miss out the other option for getting hold of polonium. Find a clever woman who is prepared to work hard in a shed using 19th century technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#History It says a lot about Mme Curie that she was able to do this. The simple answer is that if you just want something to test a geiger counter with, you can buy uranium glassware or ores from ebay.

Do you understand why the don't let mentally ill people vote?

There's also the NF3, SF6 and a bunch of CFCs that are potent greenhouse gases for which we are entirely responsible. But even if you just look at CO2 the issue can be looked at as There were 3 blankets on the bed. We added a fourth. It's warmer in bed than it was. But I don't believe it's warmer because we put on another blanket. You really don't need a PhD in atmospheric physics to see the problem with that idea.

No I didn't. I pointed out earlier that at least some of religion is wrong and therefore the rest of it is untrustworthy. So, once again I will ask the same question which you ignored last time. So, since the scriptures are partly wrong, and entirely unreliable, what use are they?

If you can't frame a decent argument as text here, then it also won't work as a video. Perhaps you can explain something for me. We know that there's roughly a third more CO2 in the air than there used to be. (The measurements way-back might be a little less precise than today's, but the general estimate would be pretty close to correct) We know that this additional CO2 is due to our burning of fossil fuels. (Essentially, we know this because we paid tax on those fuels so they were quite well documented, but the radiocarbon signature also shows that this additional CO2 is geologically ancient). We know that CO2 acts as a "greenhouse gas"- it absorbs infrared radiation. We know that such IR absorbing gases will warm the earth. We know that the earth is warming. How do you come to the conclusion that we are not responsible for that warming? .

What I admit to not realising is that you thought a rude word was a technical term. I see that you continue to use the word, even though you were asked not to. That's not an unreasonable mistake on my part, since the word is not " " a technical and accurately applicable term". Hardly the same thing. Did you says that because you didn't understand, or was it meant to mislead people? It seems that you don't realise that all radioactivity is nuclear. And the body is unable to distinguish between an alpha particle from uranium in nuclear waste, from an alpha particle from uranium in coal ash. How could it? "Ask yourself how someone could type - right in front of themselves - the assertion that Fukushima has and will kill only one person, and not immediately discard that as ridiculous and hit the research connections?" Easy. Can you give me the name of the person who died? OK, so all estimates of the death toll are speculative. That page gives a very low estimate. However, as I pointed out, any remotely realistic estimate gives the same overall conclusion. At best, if you say that Fukushima will kill as many people as all the other nuclear power industry put together, including Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Windscale and all the others then you change the figures from "Coal kills roughly 2500 people for every person killed by nuclear power" to "Coal kills roughly 1250 people for every person killed by nuclear power". So, where you say "And we see that the mitigation of nuke risk - despite the enormous sums and labors devoted to it - is not nearly good enough. " you make my point for me. Why are the precautions taken to avoid harm from coal seen as "good enough" when the thousandfold better ones taken with nuclear power are not?

Unity+ Re. "Science finds the mechanisms of the world. It isn't meant to describe a part of history." That brings up two issues- the first is that, if it was true it wouldn't be relevant because religion still says things today that are plainly wrong today. The second issue is that the statement simply isn't true. Science does describe history. We can look back at the fossil record and see ancient history or, we can look back to things like the 'flu epidemic at the end of WWI and explain what really happened. The mechanisms don't change so they are just as good at describing past events as they are at describing the present and the future. and re. "Just to make sure you know, I respect everyone's opinion," The age of the earth isn't an opinion. The nature of evolution isn't an opinion. The number of ribs men and women have isn't an opinion. If I held the opinion that the atmosphere didn't really contain oxygen and that such an idea was a conspiracy, would you actually respect that opinion or would you respect my right to hold that opinion? There's a difference between the two ideas. If I was to suggest teaching kids that oxygen is a myth, would you be happy with that? The usual quote here is "you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. The truth is that religion gets things plainly wrong, and that's not " irrelevant to the matter." when the matter in hand is theistic scientists. The willful propagation of falsehood is the antithesis of science so it's very much the crux of the matter.

Was this meant to be ironic? "Just a quote for you! MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Rips UN IPCC Report: ‘The latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence’ — ‘It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going’ Have a good day!" You quote someone who essentially just claims the ipcc report is rubbish- you don't offer any sort of evidence and then you say "AND WHERES THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE!" Good question. Where's the evidence that their report is wrong? Also re" Really? You actually cannot defend your position other than trying to defame other scientists in the community who oppose your view. " No, that's not wall I can do. I pointed out that one of your so called experts is a- shall we say - "questionable" witness. And he was the first one I looked up, so I don't know what the others are like. But the real point that you have missed is simple. No, I didn't just question the reliability of your "experts" I pointed out that , from a field of countless thousands of scientists, you can come up with a few dozen who support your belief and you pretend that those handful are enough to detract from the fact that the overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the world iw warming and we are at least partly responsible. You said I can't defend my position. Well saying that is obviously wrong. I had just defended it when you wrote that rant. Were you lying deliberately, or did you just not understand that your were obviously utterly wrong? Also, please learn to use the quote function correctly. As it stands you have falsely attributed some of your gibberish rant to me.

I apologise for any offence caused by my repetition of Overtone's choice of word. I must admit I hadn't realised it was afforded the status of " a technical and accurately applicable term". I thought he was just being a bit rude. Please let me know when either the number of deaths due to coal falls- or the number of deaths attributed to nuclear power rises- to the point where they are even roughly equal.

Propagation by cutting si pretty much cloning by definition. Here's what Wiki has to say. "The term clone is derived from the Ancient Greek word κλών (klōn, “twig”), referring to the process whereby a new plant can be created from a twig. " As for "The economics of the process are highly doubtful in 2013" I don't have an estimate of the value of the worldwide market for golden delicious apples but I wish I had that kind of money.

If I counted correctly that's 35 scientists who believe mankind is not responsible for global warming. Swansont's contention is that something like 95 % of scientists don't agree with that opinion. That's about 1 in 20. Your "evidence" is a refutation as long as there are no more than 20 times 35 scientists in the world. Otherwise it's just a list of names. A different list would be the authors of the IPCC's latest report. There are about 600 of them. So, I can easily cite a group that suggests that Swansont's position is reasonable. Incidentally, would you like me to check up on the credentials of those 35? how many of their wiki pages include stuff like ". Tennekes objected to the increase of computing power for medium-range weather forecasting, because he considered this unnecessary. According to Komen, Tennekes supported this decision by referring to biblical texts."?

I'm not sure if the "rich" should be defined as the top x% of the income distribution or if it should be the group who, between them have more than - let's say- 50% of the money. So, when you see something like this "richest 10 percent of Americans control 75 percent of the wealth, leaving only 25 percent to the other 90 percent of Americans." it's difficult to see that as fair. It's also true that the current political system is king that bad situation worse. The idea that hard work will make you rich is unrealistic. There are plenty of people who work like dogs and are still poor. By far the best predictor of who will be a millionaire when they grow up is not "who works hard?" but "who has millionaire parents?" All very interesting. Now, pleasse can we get back to the reasons for the problems in Greece?

One could say that it doesn't matter whether we know if the distortions are due to translation, poor recording, deliberate distortion or whatever. Once you can show that some bits are wrong, you have shown that all of it is untrustworthy. Even if some bits of the (various) scriptures were correct by divine inspiration, you wouldn't know which bits were right and which were wrong. So you would have to find some other method for distinguishing those options. That's what science does. So, since they are partly wrong, and entirely unreliable, what use are they?

Psalm 93:1 etc says "The Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the Lord is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is established, that it cannot be moved." But Foucault's pendulum shows that the earth does move- it rotates. Now, if just one of those lines said it the earth wast stationary and another line somewhere said it moved then you could make a case for the description being poetic rather than literal. However they all agree on the "fact" that the earth doesn't move. That's a problem for religion- it kept clearly saying something that was wrong.

" highest observed occupied molecular orbital " There's a branch of soft Xray spectroscopy colloquially referred to as sexy, but that's small beer compared to Daedalus' entry.

I will have to look at that in more detail but... " thus at high enough pressures, frequent collisions induce very broadband absorption " I suspect that, under those conditions of temperature and pressure the world would be sufficiently different from ours to make any comparison unreliable. Liquid hydrogen is about a thousand times denser than the gas at normal atmospheric conditions and it's transparent. The data for H2 absorbing radiation are given here http://www.astro.ku.dk/~aborysow/programs/AApaper.2002.pdf but the units are not ones I'm familliar with so I will have to convert them to something I can compare to other materials