Pangloss

Oh yeah, definitely -- who's talking about AIDS anymore? But there is, IMO, unfortunately, an aspect of the pro-GW lobby that believes that the best way to spur action is to (metaphorically speaking) incite the public to riot. From where they sit it's just an ugly kind of math: If you want X% reduction in greenhouse gases you need to incite Y million people to vote Z. I can understand the cynicism, but the problem is that that sort of thing is almost always a losing battle, and even when you win what have you accomplished for the long term? One thing that I think should be recognized is that tremendous progress has happened already in the arena of public perception. The public has either changed, or is in the process of changing, its mind on this issue, and IS pressuring leadership for change in emissions practices. The engineering/practical-science community is responding with better technology, the business world is paying more attention (even to the extent of trying to stay out in front of potential regulation with actual change rather than lobbying for resistance), and BOTH political parties are stating platforms of change (of course the current administration promised mandatory reductions and we saw where that went, huh?). Two steps forward is progress even if it is occassionally met with one step back. That's how a free society advances, and we are making progress. We don't have to solve this problem overnight, and we don't have to trash our economy either. I read a quote somewhere (I think on these boards) from someone saying "well we know how to rebuild an economy, we just don't know how to rebuild the Earth" -- that kind of negative thinking will simply not solve the problem in a free society. And I for one don't think a free society is worth sacrificing regardless of the cost (yes, regardless of the cost -- DEATH is better than the loss of freedom). Of course that's just my opinion.

Well... I think it's a valid point to say that if you put CO2 in the atmosphere then the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will rise, even if you don't know by how much. I realize it's more complex than that (since CO2 is "consumed" by various means, such as plant life), but the reasoning here is pretty straightforward -- either we've crossed that threshold or we have not (and all the evidence says we have). This strikes me as a completely different issue from the question of predictability. The problem in my mind has always been the complexity (and accounting) of the variables, not the core reasoning. And if complexity is an issue, and you can never remove all potential variables, then that works both for and against the issue -- just as you can't prove beyond any doubt that it is human derived, nor can you prove that it is not. Therefore the core reasoning is more important than the accuracy of a specific prediction. (Wait, did I just reason myself out of a skeptical-about-human-causation position??)

He's just making a joke, Aardvark. And a funny one, too. Yes, I agree, people are getting behind Global Warming because of current weather events. But that's a fickle beast that can easily cause more harm than good. We should change the way we produce energy in this world because it's the correct course of action on logical, scientific grounds, not because of false premises and poor reasoning. They actually touched on this, saying that the public didn't jump on climate change in the 1990s was because of Mount Pinatubo's 1991 eruption causing a dampening in the warm-up. I don't know how accurate the science is behind that, but either way they missed their own lesson, or simply don't care when the fickle public is motivated in the correct direction, and will go right back to complaining when another Pinatubo happens and some governor asks for another dozen coal plants to heat people's homes. But what the hey, at least they'll be able to sell ME (through PBS) anther documentary about how wrong and evil I am. Weee. It takes two sides to play political games, but the carbon count and the temperature couldn't care less who's in office.

The show originally ran about a year ago, and was repeated last week. The entire episode may be viewed online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/ I'm a huge fan of Frontline, so I was sorry to see this. There were some parts of it that were interesting and well done, but the episode centered around an approach that ALL sides of the GW debate here at SFN have agreed are flawed. They tout Kyoto, for example, completely ignoring its flaws (but the points about how it was like "flipping a bird at our allies" is one that most here have agreed on at various times). The real problem is that numerous examples of current events are touted as examples of proof of global warming -- specifically Hurricane Katrina, for example. There's a whole long passage talking about Texas farmers dealing with locusts and "putting facts together on their own and concluding that global warming must be real". Just read this first line from the show: "Climate Change became a national issue for Americans in 1988 because they could feel it.... Even the Amazon was on fire." Yeesh. This isn't a science piece, it's a promotional video. A total agenda job. Mine you, Frontline is not a science show, it's a politics show, and so they can be expected to focus on politics and opinions and public awareness rather than the science. I don't expect details in a show like this, but I do expect accuracy and I sure as shootin' expect them to avoid deception.

Yeah, they used to call that "write-behind caching". Not sure if they still do. The OS and the HD are actually pretty robust about stuff like that, so it's mainly a question of data loss, like IA says above. Note that with a USB drive the failure to use "safely remove" would only run you a risk when writing data TO the drive. When reading from it you can just rip it right out of there after the copy is done with no risk. I guess that might be another advantage for solid-state drives, although I've been wondering if they might start putting fast RAM caches in those things to speed 'em up, since their performance has been disappointing.

You seemed to be saying that Frank's article doesn't dispute GW theory, so I'm just curious why the paper would be considered "controversial" by avowed GW advocates if it doesn't dispute GW theory in any way. Obviously you don't speak for those people, I'm just asking because I seem to have missed (or misunderstood) something here. Yes it was. BTW Lance I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of correcting the name of the author on the first line of the OP. He spells it without an S on the end.

That is a completely unfair characterization, and you know it. I've never accused you of being anti-religion just because you think the religious right has had too much influence in recent years on the Republican party. But here you are calling me anti-science. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm speaking out against. You should be applauding my case, not fighting it. Our conversations over the years have helped to change my mind on a number of subjects, not the least of which is global warming, or voting Democrat in 2004. I'm sorry if I haven't fallen into lock-step with your position, but you should take that as a reason to politely fight on, not attack me with a label you know is inaccurate. You're right, my mistake. But he was referring to specific quotes, and the point again is that demonization is not an argument.

Ariana Huffington and Howard Dean are not members of this community, and thus I've not pressured them to do as they are told, nor is my post detrimental to the health of the board. You are also welcome to respond to my post. That act is distinctly different from your attempts to create a politically correct atmosphere on certain subjects here, and you're clearly playing a game here that will have no traction because it is so obviously based on a false premise.

That wasn't an attack, it was a joke.

The point I'm making is not that it's a bad idea to challenge statements with science (which I support), but that it's a bad idea to attack and ridicule people who don't do what they are told. It is detrimental to the health of the board and I won't sit idly by when it happens. Your reply above to Aardvark is perfectly acceptable, for example, and the sort of thing we support and encourage.

Unless "Aardvark" used to be called "Blade" that's not true, it was their first exchange. There may have been exchanges in other threads, but again, Bascule responded to a very specific set of quotes, insisting that they labeled him a denialist. That is what I mean by "front-loaded". But I'm not even saying that Aardvark isn't a "denialist" -- perhaps his later/other posts indicated that, I don't know. I'm only saying that that attack was not warranted, and the fact that it was not challenged has been noted for the record. Now I know you guys don't like it when I don't let your angry retorts toward me become the last word on this subject, so do you have any other questions, or can we move on, the point having been made, even if it has not been acknowledged by the relevent parties?

I would not have used the word "bigot". Attack is your tactic, not mine.

Which would be significant if we had been sending that excess corn overseas, but as I understand it it was just going to waste. I'm not opposed to changing that and sending it overseas, but that's just charity and therefore only a temporary solution. Long-term those nations need to be developed with a proper economic infrastructurs so they can pay for it.

I sense a new purchase in YT's future.

So then why does the editor of Skeptic call the article "controversial"?

But actually in this case if they immediately reallocated those crops from biofuel to store shelves prices would not likely go down, since pump prices have not yet caught up with the rate of increase in the price of a barrel of crude. And we don't need the stuff on store shelves, because there isn't a shortage of those items. Which again points to the likely fact that the increase in food costs in the US is entirely due to rising gas prices, and has nothing whatsoever to do with ethanol. But I'm not making that claim, I'm just suggesting it might be the case. I don't know all the variables well enough to know if that's true.

They're the quotes YOU gave from his post, so you're dodging the issue, and the rest of your reply to me is just changing the subject. Whatever he's done in subsequent posts, that's not what he was doing in those quotes. Bascule front-loaded an attack, and maybe he scored a winning game against a true denialist by pot luck (which I don't think has been established at all), but that doesn't even by a hair refute my point.

Whatever that means.

Yes, actually that raises another interesting problem, which is that languages like Java and C# are so seductively easy to use. The fact that so much is handled for you in the background makes for lazy programming habits and very little learning going on. Which is the POINT -- the goal is productivity, not learning. Microsoft actually touted the fact that Visual Studio 2005 reduced the amount of coding necessary in a typical application by a whopping 75%, due mainly to additional automation in the area of connection management, to the point where you can literally drag-and-drop a database table onto a web page and immediately publish it. Data-driven Web apps without a LICK of code. (Thank god we still teach ADO, or I don't know how we could hand these kids diplomas with a clear conscience.) And as you say, everyone and their mother (literally) is on the Web app bandwagon. Hardly anybody writes business applications in regular Windows forms anymore. Why bother? A Web app doesn't have to be installed, which means it's easier to support and upgrade, and the same interface can be used either in the office or via telecommuting. WHY write a Windows app? The only saving grace here is that really front-line, leading edge stuff always requires the best minds and best thinking and hardest work. Even if it's just a business app, if you want a first-rate, cutting edge app that really raises the bar, you have to get the best people for that work. The wizards won't cut it. And after that bar gets raised, Sun and Microsoft come along behind and turn that into a wizard. A typical example of that it's what's happened to AJAX, which just a couple of years ago was cutting edge stuff from really smart programmers who pushed Javascript to the limit, but now it's a minimum expectation for any web app, and it's been fully wizardized (at least on the ASP side, not sure about the LAMP side, but I assume so). There is room for CS grads at the high end of that, but they really should be at the high end of that, not sloughing it out in the trenches making the beer-hazed MBAs happy. But I digress -- read some of bascule's posts here about other programming languages -- there's a heck of a lot going on out there. It's a very exciting time to be breaking into computer science and programming as an academic pursuit, and even to be looking at the high end of the to-do list in the business programming world. If you compare Computer Science with other academic fields, there's always something interesting going on, there's never a shortage of research positions (do you know how tough a road it is for PhDs in Astronomy?!), and you have great options in the business world at any point in your career. Which is, of course, another kind of trap, as far as the human experiment is concerned (so much money in CS and so little in other important pursuits), but that's another discussion.

That's an interesting angle on it, Glider. I hadn't really thought about it in the light of 9/11 before.

Swansont, if it's bollocks then why does the magaine call the article "controversial"? I particularly enjoyed this quote at the end:

I've read that if we stop using biofuel we'll see another 20% increase in prices at the pump. And again, we do not have a food problem in the US -- it's elsewhere that the problems over food exist. I think government took the right tack this week, reducing the subsidies (but leaving them intact), and the White House asking today for an additional $770 million in food aid for use abroad (a spot increase to help with specific situational shortages). I agree with some of the points raised about ethanol subsidies causing food problems (outside of the US), but shaking things up and re-formulating the whole energy situation is what we WANT to happen. We need to push forward, not step back, and renewable sources need to be part of the dynamic, because it will help us break through to the "far side" of the equation, where we are off the oil teat completely.

Rofl. When you make me laugh like that I can't think straight enough to argue with you. Damn your hide.

Quote of the week.

I heard the sun rose in the East this morning. (Not to belittle your topic-start, CDarwin, I just can't think of anything else to say at the moment.)