GeorgiaDon

Part of the discussion that has not been mentioned yet is that most other developed countries (and some not so developed) are investing heavily in technology development. Unlike times past, we now are dealing with a global marketplace. Most countries realize that electric vehicles will only increase in importance in the marketplace; additionally there is a potential military strategic interest in being able to reduce dependence on petroleum products for powering vehicles. Countries that hold patents and that gain a head start in production will have a big advantage over those that are late to the table. Some people may think that "American Exceptionalism" means that US industry, operating entirely on private capital, can compete with heavily subsidized foreign competition, but there is little evidence that this is true. The US has long subsidized technology development, under the guise of NASA or the military. Who believes that airplanes would be just as advanced as they currently are if the only market force at play was passenger transport? Currently much of the "public" side of the equation in the US is in the form of public/private collaborations where a proportionally small investment of public dollars, usually in the form of loan guarantees, is used to leverage much larger private investments. Financial institutions and venture capitalists are pretty risk adverse, and also are looking for short term return on investment. Unless an investment is a very sure thing, most would be very reluctant to invest in an R&D venture that might or might not pay off in 20 years. A guarantee that they won't lose 100% of their investment goes a long way towards loosening the purse strings. The track record so far, less than 10% default rate, suggests that the government is not handing money out by the truckload (as was the case in Iraq), but they are exercising due diligence. Public/private collaborations seem a reasonable approach to me. Purists who insist on zero public investment can stand on principle if they wish, but they will reap a future where the US produces market-niche refinements of old technology while other countries produce the ground-breaking advances that create new markets. IMHO Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

In a magnetic field that strong, everyone within the metropolitan Oklahoma City area with a pacemaker would have fallen over dead. Certainly that wouldn't have gone unnoticed. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I believe you're wrong, as far as the US is concerned. Just expressing hate against an identifiable group is definitely not illegal. You might start to get in trouble if you advocate violence against specific individuals, and post information obviously intended to facilitate that violence. For example, some years ago people got into some trouble for advocating that doctors who perform abortions should be killed, and then publicizing the names and work and home addresses of those doctors. By "got into trouble" I mean they were just ordered to stop publicizing the names and addresses, after a doctor on the list was shot and killed in his house in front of his kids. Despite the truism about "shouting fire in a crowed theater", I suspect it would be difficult to prosecute someone in the US even for doing that. They would just have to claim they smelled smoke. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

From the article: So, this doesn't seem to be a matter of saving money. Who should be the last ones left to turn out the lights, actual marines who can defend themselves against insurgent attacks, or the cooks? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Sure. One problem here is that in science we recognize that we can only know when a hypothesis is false, when the outcome of controlled experiments disagrees with the predictions of the hypothesis. We can never know for sure that a hypothesis is correct, so instead we substitute statistical tests and provisionally accept a hypothesis based on (usually) 95% confidence intervals (or sometimes 99%, depending on issues such as sample size, number of replicates, etc). That implicitly recognizes a 5% (or 1%) chance that our hypothesis is actually false, and we got our results by statistical fluke (like flipping a coin and getting heads 100 times in a row, improbable but not impossible). If you consider the inherent variability of the weather, one needs to have a very large deviation from historical averages before you can say with 99% confidence that temperature/rainfall/whatever is different from what it used to be. If you consider the uncontrolled nature of the experiment we are doing with atmospheric CO2, it will always be possible for deniers to claim that observed changes in climate are due to mysterious or unknown "natural cycles", and so reducing CO2 emissions will always be argued to be futile. One way around the dilemma would be to reduce atmospheric CO2 by stopping emissions and increasing carbon sinks, then increase CO2, then decrease it, and apply a time-series analysis to see if temperature or other climate measures track with CO2 levels. It would be a good idea to start this experiment now by making the effort to reduce CO2, but we both know that won't happen. The whole system is tailor made to allow the deniers to either deny that anything is happening, or deny that human activities have anything to do with it, in perpetuity. You seem to be arguing that we should wait for 100% (or 99.9%) certainty before starting to do anything. That would be appropriate if we were talking about an esoteric theory with no impact on day to day life. We are not, though. Leaving aside the hyperbolic rhetoric about "the end of the planet" (which won't be what happens), we could be talking about relatively rapid changes resulting in the displacement of large numbers of people and major disruption of crop production. For example, shifting agriculture north would mean shifting it up to the Canadian Shield, where the glaciers scraped the land down to bare bedrock. Northern Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba will never be the new breadbasket of America, because you can't grow wheat (or anything else) without soil, no matter how many frost-free days you may have. Sure, there have been major changes in the climate in the geological past, but those changes were not superimposed on dense human populations. Is it ethical to wait until you are 99.9% certain that change is happening and is at least largely due to anthropogenic inputs before taking any action, if you know that those changes will be irreversible (on any practical time scale) and are likely to have dramatically adverse impacts on a significant fraction of the human population? Another thing that worries me is that past greenhouse driven climate events have not been simple linear relationships between CO2 and temperature. For example, the end-of-the-Permian event that resulted in the extinction of about 95% of the species in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems proceeded by a series of step-like increases. The process was initiated (it is currently thought) by volcanoes erupting through a large coal field in present-day Siberia, igniting the coal deposits and resulting in release of large amounts of CO2 and methane. As the deep oceanic water warmed, deposits of methane hydrides on the sea floor turned to gas, turning the oceans anoxic (as the methane displaced dissolved oxygen) and increasing atmospheric methane, further exacerbating the greenhouse temperature increases leading to more ocean warming, more methane release, and so on. So it may not be safe to assume that climate change will necessarily be a smooth, gradual, and reversible process. How does one balance the desire for certainty before taking action with the risk that delaying too long will unleash sudden and irreversible climate jumps? How much risk is it ethical to take? How does one do a cost/benefit analysis under such circumstances? Increasing energy efficiency, substituting nuclear for coal generated electricity (as StreetScooby suggests), deploying efficient solar power systems, improving mass transit: what is the downside? A few less people employed in coal mining, I suppose, but hopefully that will be balanced by increased jobs in new energy-related industries. My great grandfather's hay business went bankrupt when cars replaced horses for day to day transportation, but few would argue we should have protected the hay industry and kept cars at bay. Indeed the auto industry employs many more people than hay farming ever did. And, we could stop shipping vast amounts of money to the Middle East in exchange for oil. Getting unchained from the Saudis would be a great thing in it's own right. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

My point: it is not rationale at this time to establish what will essentially be draconian government policies using these immature models. Especially considering said policies will not make any physical difference. That I can agree with to some extent, especially considering the word "draconian". The statement that models are not science is what I took issue with. I do think there are a lot of good reasons to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, which means investing in energy-efficient technologies and in research and development of non-fossil-fuel based energy sources. I also think that the current inability to predict exactly what will happen from year to year with increasing CO2 inputs into the atmosphere does not mean that there is no risk in continuing to do so. I suspect it may not be a wise idea to carry out a long term uncontrolled experiment with the planet we depend on. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

No need to be insulting! From StreetScooby: From lawrocket: Most of what makes science useful can be described as models. All hypotheses are models. A scientific theory is a model that has been tested and has stood up many times under many conditions. How can you test a model/hypothesis/theory? The only way is to make predictions of what will happen, under certain conditions, then run the experiment and compare the actual result to the prediction. Model building, prediction, and comparing results to predictions is the essence of science. Who has ever seen an electron? The electron is a model, yet much of modern technology is based on that model and it works. I've never seen a proton or a neutron, yet the model that is the Periodic Table does a great job of predicting the chemical properties of the elements. I can't see RNA or DNA with my own eyes, yet I routinely pull messenger RNA out of insects, make an artificial gene by converting it to cDNA, insert that into some cell line or bacteria, and lo and behold the cell line/bacteria starts making the insect protein. The DNA to mRNA to protein model works very well indeed. If science were to be limited to observation, and to be barred from making models or predicting future outcomes, then it would just be an exercise in cataloging past events, unable to yield any understanding or any practical improvements in technology. Now, some areas of inquiry are amenable to experimentation, and others not (or much less so). As a molecular biologist I can manipulate conditions, make predictions about outcomes, and compare results to predictions. In climatology we can't do much in the way of experiments, aside from the uncontrolled experiment currently underway to keep upping CO2 levels and see what happens. Model building is complicated by the number of inputs into the system, and by the requirements for computing power. Currently, the latter limits the number of inputs that can be built into the models. Even in short term prediction of things like hurricane tracks you can see that working; recently the European model has yielded better predictions than the NOAA models, largely because better supercomputing facilities in Europe allow for more sophisticated models. Clearly current long-term climate models are overly simplistic, because they don't generate predictions that match year-to-year variations in climate. Obviously there is much work to be done before anyone can claim that we fully understand climate, and that understanding will be further slowed because we can't do real controlled experiments. Still, to extrapolate from that that science should be restricted to record keeping of what has already happened, and eschew model building or efforts to predict outcomes of changing conditions such as increases in greenhouse gas levels, is absurd. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Dave, You should be aware that Marc works for an energy company that is dependent on burning fossil fuel for electricity production. Not that that has anything to do with his "perspective", I'm sure. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Here is a map of rates of post-glacial rebound. Unsurprisingly, rates are far faster in areas where the ice sheets were thickest, such as Northern Canada. Of course, there the land is rising, which would produce the appearance of falling sea levels. Even in the Ottawa Ontario area, beach terraces with marine shells can be found at elevations up to 500 feet above present-day sea level, and the area experiences small earthquakes (magnitude 2-4) fairly regularly due to isostatic rebound, but remember that's 500 feet in 12,000 years. Rates of movement in non-glaciated areas is low; it seems to be barely above 0 around the Gulf States and Florida/Georgia/South & North Carolina, so I do not understand your comment about it being an especially big deal in the Gulf States. There is also a question of magnitude. Rates of change of 0 to 1 mm/year are significantly less than the rates predicted from ocean warming and ice melting, or the observed rates given on the chart you posted. Movement due to tectonic events is well known, it can be measured accurately, and it can be applied to observed sea level changes to discriminate true sea level rise (or fall) from local land movement. To imply (as some seem to be doing) that scientists are too stupid to be able to distinguish tectonic movements from sea level changes is disingenuous at best. On the chart you posted, high rates of apparent sea level change are shown at two stations in the vicinity of the Mississippi Delta. In such areas, the weight of incoming sediment being deposited on the delta at the mouth of such a large river would be expected to cause the crust to sink. This is an example of isostastic equilibrium for sure, but not of "post-glacial rebound". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Yeah, and he would also be a serial killer. He's not a serial killer, he's a mass murderer. If you're going to participate a thread quibbling over what he's being called then you should try and get it right. Nobody has agreed with you on this.I agree with him. A serial killer is someone who commits multiple murders separated by a substantial time interval (days to sometimes years). Someone who kills a bunch of people in a single incident is a mass murderer. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Nope, they chose someone who has proven that he has no problem betraying the people he should be closest to, abandoning his post, and stealing the taxpayer's money so he can get his rocks off. Also, but not yet proven, he has allegedly repeatedly violated a court order. IOW, an arrogant, narcissistic prick who believes he is above the law. And Republicans claim to be the party of "family values", of "traditional values", of respect for the rule of law? Give me a break. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So, it was the obvious meaning. Thereby making the thread title all the more appropriate. Don Nope, it was mocking the person in the article who got butt hurt over something silly. Don't people like that just make you sick? As a matter of fact they do, on multiple levels. I prefer to ignore them, but they do a lot of damage by perpetuating their culture of victimhood. There are enough real issues to get butt-hurt about without wasting time and energy over manufactured ones. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So, it was the obvious meaning. Thereby making the thread title all the more appropriate. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Ungenerous is fine. I've never seen it used in place of "small", and "small" is not listed as a synonym in any of the dozen or so on-line dictionaries I checked. Also, how does "small" fit the circumstances of this news story? If you mean "small-minded", well yes the councilwoman could certainly be called small-minded but "small-minded" is as good a fit to "niggardly" as is "orange". And do you mean the councilwoman's reaction to the student's work was "ungenerous"? I can think of a lot of words to describe her reaction, but "ungenerous" was not one that came to mind. Glad you resisted the temptation to misspell it. Unfortunately mental gymnastics is still necessary to discern any meaning to your use of the word, apart from the obvious one. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Yes I have heard the word and know what it means; as others have noted the similarity to a racial insult is coincidental. Nevertheless, the similarity is enough to have caused some trouble for people who used the word around others who are less literate and more thin skinned, which is why the alternative synonyms I suggested would be safer for general use. On the other hand, using "Jewish" in that context is definitely playing to racial stereotypes. I still have no idea of what Gravitymaster was attempting to convey when he used the word. Or maybe I do, but let's wait and see if he can provide a rational non-racist explanation. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Who is "he"? "Niggardly" means "very tight with money"; good synonyms would be "stingy" or "miserly". How is this story an example of being "niggardly"? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Go figure what? I think we can all agree that the best strategy is to ignore people who are so into playing the victim that they twist everything they see into some kind of an affront. That being said, exactly what am I supposed to "go figure" from a photo of the councilwoman? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Well, some people are obviously looking for any opportunity to be offended. They seriously need a different hobby. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Certainly the case in the states that are continually trying to ban abortion. Not just the kids, it's also women's bodies that belong to the government. But I doubt you'll hear Regulator or Marc complain about that. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Microchips would be better. That way, the "goobermint" could put readers on every street corner and track us wherever we go. Of course in my case anyone following me would get bored in a hurry. Now he's going to work. And now he's going home. And then to work. and then home... Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So Regulator, is it your argument that parents own their children? Own implies that children are property, doesn't it? So why can't parents throw their kids in the trash if they get tired of them? Or use them to harvest organs? Or eat them when times get tough? Or might it be that children are persons, with the same basic human rights that their parents have? Including the right to life, or not be deprived of life on the whim of someone, even a parent? Most people can agree that the protection of human rights is a fundamental responsibility of governments. In this case, there is a disagreement between the parents and a hospital about a potentially life threatening medical condition. The government has a duty to resolve the dispute and ensure the rights of the child are protected. Parents are caregivers who are responsible for their children, but they do not own their kids and cannot do absolutely whatever they please. But, perhaps you disagree? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Well on those grounds we should publish the names of every guy who goes into a bar, a racetrack, or a casino. After all, alcoholism and gambling addictions also cause havoc in marriages. The whole point of publishing these names and photos is to discourage "crime" by using the threat of exposing offenders to all the societal consequences (loss of job, marriage, etc) of their misdeeds, before they have had any chance to defend themselves in court. Some or all of those consequences may follow after a conviction, of course. But still, in this case niceties such as the presumption of innocence are disposed of so as to use salacious content to sell newspapers (or to attract viewers), with the wholehearted cooperation and support of so-called "law enforcement". Also, if the justification is to protect the wife from STDs, why do the police ignore the "high end hookers"? Because "high end hookers" attract "high end Johns", perhaps? And, why are people not prosecuted for adultery, despite that being a crime in 33 states? My local paper published the names and booking photos of people charged with DUI, but only after they have been convicted. The little blurb below the photo says if it is their first, or second, or whatever conviction, and lists the sentence. If the goal is to deter crime, those people are publicly humiliated but readers/viewers also get to see how costly a DUI conviction is in terms of money and jail or community service time. Plus, no issues of public punishment of legally still innocent people. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The Abrams tanks are food stamps, for the military-industrial complex and the politicians who suck off their teat. except the army is offering to cut that spending voluntarily and the government is forcing them to take their symbolic food stamps..... can you say the same for a welfare queen? OK, so in this case it's the "industrial complex" side of the partnership, not the military, that is the "welfare queen". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Why would you need kevlar undies if it's going to get cooler? Seriously, to make any conclusions about the veracity of these "predictions" one would have to know the basis for their predictions of "low solar activity", and the basis by which they conclude that low solar activity = lower temperatures on Earth. Got any information on that? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The Abrams tanks are food stamps, for the military-industrial complex and the politicians who suck off their teat. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)