iNow

Umm, no. It's about balance and concentrations... and basic chemistry/physics (in sum, the CO2 molecule reflects IR radiation back toward the surface, preventing much of it from escaping the atmosphere). Yes, we exhale CO2 everyday, that's not the point. When we exhale, it's balanced by other mechanisms... this equilibrium/homeostasis has had millenia to form... and our exhalations are taken up by trees and plants, for example. Now, we're cutting down those trees in massive quantities, and also expelling CO2 into the atmosphere by the cubic ton. This CO2 was previously buried deep beneath the surface and not interacting with the atmosphere. Now, we humans are digging it up... digging up something which has been buried for millions of years... and burning it. That adds energy to the system, and that energy WILL and DOES have an impact. Either way, the only response to your point is that it's not even wrong. If you're going to make claims about climate, I suggest you study it further prior to doing so again. First, you are correct that water vapor has more of an impact than CO2 when taken relative to ppm. However, water vapor is a feedback, NOT a forcing. If you don't know what that means, look it up. It's important. Further, water vapor only remains in the atmosphere for about 2 weeks or less. Then, this interesting phenomenon which we all refer to as "rain" happens, and it's no longer in the atmosphere having the impact. CO2 on the other hand stays in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, constantly adding to the CO2 which came before it, making the impact of newly added CO2 geometrically greater. So, if you have questions, ask them. People here will help you to find the accurate answers. However, if you have claims to make, I seriously suggest you make sure they are correct before making them, and ensure that you understand the system about which you are making those claims. Have questions about what I have stated above? Ask. Your point was wrong on several fronts, and I want to be sure that you understand why so that you won't make the same mistakes again.

You should read this study: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~ptschoen/papers/schoenemann.BBE.04.pdf In sum: It seems metabolic rate is most likely. Also, a few of your initial assumptions are wrong. For instance, body weight does not predict brain weight in mammals as well as you suggest, and there is a good degree of variation. Also, you suggest that it is body mass increase which causes brain mass increase, when it could very well be the other way around. This is discussed extensively in the link I shared. Finally, your closing suggestion is also wrong. Larger brains generally do mean larger intelligence (ala, "extra smarts"): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070518172103.htm When it comes to estimating the intelligence of various animal species, it may be as simple measuring overall brain size. In fact, making corrections for a species' body size may be a mistake. The findings were reported by researchers at Grand Valley State University and the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. "It's long been known that species with larger body sizes generally have larger brains," said Robert Deaner, assistant professor of psychology at Grand Valley and the first author on the study. "Scientists have generally assumed that this pattern occurs because larger animals require larger nervous systems to coordinate their larger bodies. But our results suggest a simpler reason: larger species are typically smarter."

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So is waving my manhood around in a bar... Never stopped me before. While I don't think your slap of my wrist was necessary for the post I made, I understand your point.

Ah, but I fear you are wrong again. We DO have an innate motivation to do science, and to achieve our goals. Let me clarify. We innately are curious about our world. We are born as little sponges ready to absorb information. We soak up and learn from our environments the moment we are born... and we keep doing so throughout life. That innate desire has helped us to survive... that innate curiosity... that innate motivation to do science. Also, your goals in life... It wouldn't be too hard for one to demonstrate how closely and directly and profoundly your goals tie into your desire to pass on your genes to the next generation, even if that desire is unconscious and not readily accessible to your conscious mind. Either way... none of this is relevant to the thread.

SUGGESTION: Start a new thread if you want to explore that. This thread is nearly 5 years old, so the most recent posts are surely much more relevant.

They also live in extremely hot climates, and their large ears allow them to dissipate more heat due to their large surface area... Not to mention the flapping/fanning they can perform with them, an effect magnified when the elephant has wet itself or covered itself in mud. But what? Average body temp of elephant is 34-36 degrees C. Average body temp of a platypus is about 32-33 degrees C. Average body temp in humans is about 37 degrees C. AFAIK... none of this has anything to do with cold versus warm bloodedness.

And none of that is relevant to the discussion at hand. Thanks though.

You seem to have the cart before the horse. The only reason we do those things is because of the positive reinforcement (euphoria) it brings. Much like sex. We don't have sex for the purpose of having children. That's a tangential effect... byproduct. We have sex because it feels good, and it feels good because through evolution those who enjoyed sex more had more of it, and hence reproduced more... Same with just about anything else. We don't eat plates full of cake and tator tots for the achievement it brings, but because it feels good. We know eating buckets of candy is bad for us, but it feels good. The list is practically endless. Sure... it's more shallow and less meaningful, but it's the positive feelings which motivate the behavior, not the other way around.

Maybe I can make my point another way. Your bedroom has now been declared a battlefield. You'll be detained without charges indefinitely. Enjoy Gitmo. This is real, navigator. You can't just make sweeping claims without exploring and understanding the implications of those claims. You are speaking as if this whole situation is somehow black and white... as if there really are these clear categories into which people neatly fit called "good" and "evil." I've long ago lived enough life to reject such an approach as naive and silly. I understand your point about holding prisoners of war until the threat has ended. What you seem to be missing, however, is just how unstoppable those in power will be if you do not clearly define war or clearly define battlefield or clearly define threat.

This whole tangent actually manages to shine light on one of the problems we have in our country. Too few people are able to define what they mean by "war," nor what they mean by "battlefield." As navigator has more than amply demonstrated, fuzzy definitions allow for fuzzy punishments and fuzzy departures from our clear laws and clear values. All I was asking for is a clear definition of which "war" s/he meant, and which "battlefields" s/he felt warranted differential treatment. His/Her response? An attack on my intelligence and a strawman of my position. I'm so frakkin tired of the lack of clarity and understanding among the larger percentage of the populace of our nation.

I was mistaken in my starting year, yes. Sorry about that. However, I must say, shortening the time scale even further (from 1998 instead to 2001) really doesn't help your case, and might, in fact, make your argument that much weaker. Either way, you are getting worked up and making claims of cooling over this set of data (per your own reference): I find that strange. First, eight years is not enough data to discuss overall climatological trends. This is why I put much greater confidence in the 30 year or greater averages. Second, when you average the trends from each of the studies listed, you still have a 0.01 degree C upward trend. So, you source doesn't support your contention. The FACT that it's caused by humans, and is hitting trigger points for additional warming. For example, the melting of the permafrost is causing carbon and methane to be increased at greater concentrations than previously thought possible. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725124.500 THE world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region. The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. <...> Siberia's peat bogs formed around 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. Since then they have been generating methane, most of which has been trapped within the permafrost, and sometimes deeper in ice-like structures known as clathrates. Larry Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates that the west Siberian bog alone contains some 70 billion tonnes of methane, a quarter of all the methane stored on the land surface worldwide. His colleague Karen Frey says if the bogs dry out as they warm, the methane will oxidise and escape into the air as carbon dioxide. But if the bogs remain wet, as is the case in western Siberia today, then the methane will be released straight into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. In May this year, Katey Walter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks told a meeting in Washington of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that she had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia, where the gas was bubbling from thawing permafrost so fast it was preventing the surface from freezing, even in the midst of winter. An international research partnership known as the Global Carbon Project earlier this year identified melting permafrost as a major source of feedbacks that could accelerate climate change by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. "Several hundred billion tonnes of carbon could be released," said the project's chief scientist, Pep Canadell of the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Canberra, Australia. http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5644 The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures. <...> "This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing." In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted a rise in global temperatures of 1.4C-5.8C between 1990 and 2100, but the estimate only takes account of global warming driven by known greenhouse gas emissions. "These positive feedbacks with landmasses weren't known about then. They had no idea how much they would add to global warming," said Dr Viner. So yeah... I find it strange that... not only are you arguing that humans have a negligible impact on climate despite the enormous evidence to the contrary across practically every involved research domain, but also that you are somehow using an average of global climate change over the past 8 years to support your views... When that data doesn't average to suggest cooling. Average the trends shown in your graph. 0.01 degree C upward over the past 8 years. Now, yes... once those methane concentrations are released, they will totally eclipse human contributions. However, it is we humans who are the PRIMARY driver toward those thresholds, and that is something we have the power to change... which is why these discussions get so heated. We can do something about it, and it's a total and ignorant waste of time arguing about a questionable 8 year set of data when all of the rest amply demonstrates the cause. It's like arguing evolution with a creationist sometimes, except a failure to accept this particular fact can lead to the demise of the human race, and many of the countless life forms on Earth. As per the models... I do accept there are various faults and limitations, but I'm afraid most of those faults suggest that we've been far too conservative in our estimates. As a general rule, we didn't really account for the quickening from methane in permafrost, nor the cavitations and subglacial erosion making the ice sheets disappear more quickly. Our models missed the mark... yes. They didn't show enough warming or enough ice sheet melt. http://efdl.cims.nyu.edu/publications/refereed/jclimate_nonlinear_warm_08.pdf We have determined that the response of ice shelf basal melting to ocean warming follows a quadratic relation. This occurs because the melt rate is primarily governed by the transfer of heat through the oceanic boundary layer beneath the ice shelf, which is influenced by changes in both oceanic temperature and velocity. As the ocean warms offshore of an ice shelf, both of these quantities increase linearly, leading to a quadratic increase overall. Examination of a range of model configurations shows that altering topography changes the magnitude of the melt rate. <...> The quadratic melt rate dependence should be of interest to scientists concerned about the long-term effects of global warming on Antarctic climate stability as a whole. First, it implies that for a given topography, ice shelves melted by warm waters are more sensitive to temperature changes. Second, if a steady warming of waters offshore of an ice shelf were to take place, then our results imply that melting of the ice shelf base would increase at an accelerating rate. Whether this leads to thinning or collapse of the ice shelf will also depend upon glaciological and meteorological processes, but the fact that the melting increase accelerates requires that some other process counteracts melting in an above-linear fashion to stabilize the ice shelf and, therefore, the ice sheet feeding it. http://www.ggy.bris.ac.uk/personal/StephenPrice/images/images/documents/Price+_JGlac_54no184_2008.pdf Recent observations of increased discharge through fast-flowing outlet glaciers and ice streams motivate questions concerning the inland migration of regions of fast flow, which could increase drawdown of the ice-sheet interior. http://www.springerlink.com/content/t1265r6548477378/fulltext.pdf Another complication is that ice sheets do not grow and decay simply and linearly with global average temperature. During Heinrich events, the Laurentide ice sheet surged into the ocean in response to no evident climate forcing at all. Once an ice sheet forms, its high albedo tends to stabilize it, perpetuating its own existence. However, this effect did not save the Eemian world from 4–5 m of sea level rise in a world only about 1°C warmer than preanthropogenic, nor is it evident at any other time in the past from Fig. 3. In spite of the potential complications, the figure shows a clear correlation between global temperature and sea level in the geologic past. The forecast for the coming century is for only 0.2–0.5 m under business-as-usual (A1B scenario), in spite of a temperature change of 3°C (Solomon et al. 2007). The sea level response to global temperature is one hundred times smaller than the covariaton in the past. The contrast between the past and the forecast for the future is the implicit assumption in the forecast that it takes longer than a century to melt a major ice sheet. There are reasons to believe that real ice sheets might be able to collapse more quickly than our models are able to account for, as they did during Meltwater Pulse 1A 19 kyr ago (Clark et al. 2004) or during the Heinrich events (Clark et al. 2004), neither of which are well simulated by models. Ice sheets are also demonstrating tricks today which models don’t predict in advance, such as accelerating flow (Zwally et al. 2002) and seismic rumbling (Ekstrom et al. 2006) following the seasonal cycle in Greenland. Ice shelves such as the Larsen B on the Antarctic peninsula collapse catastrophically, and the ice streams that flow into them accelerate (Bamber et al. 2007). Recognizing the insufficiency of current ice sheet models to simulate these phenomena, IPCC excluded what they call “dynamical changes in ice sheet flow” from their sea level rise forecast. So, no... I'm not exactly "warmed" by a chart that shows an average upward increase of 0.01 degree C over the last 8 years.

That's simply an unacceptable response. You shared your views, and were asked to support them, to clarify your point since the one you made was broad sweeping and non distinct. If you are unable to support your posts with specifics, then you really need to stop sharing your views in Politics altogether. Unless, of course, you enjoy being dismissed and not taken seriously. I dunno. That certainly doesn't appeal to me, but YMMV.

Since you're unable to precisely define the war, can you at a minimum define the "battlefield?" These are important questions considering the consequences under discussion here.

Indeed. Here's a great talk with Dr. Michael Baum whom Richard Dawkins interviewed for his special . The full uncut interview with Michael Baum is available by playlist here: For those without video access/ability: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/264223 This interview contains a lot of very important information, regardless of how one feels about CAM [Complimentary and Alternative Medicine]. Professor Baum starts by explaining the difference between complementary and alternative medicine. For him, complementary medicine is everything that improves the quality of life of a patient undergoing medical treatments, possibly for life-threatening diseases such as breast cancer. Alternative medicine, on the other hand, seeks to replace scientific medicine. Says Michael Baum: I'm obviously against alternative medicine, because to me, alternative, by definition, means it does not work. If it works, we would use it. As an example of that, he cites a few medicines of herbal origin that are being used for cancer therapy such as vinca alkaloids form periwinkle and taxanes from yew trees. <...> Later on, they talk about what Baum politely calls "post-modern relativism," the idea that everything is but an opinion. I have an opinion, but you have read some other books and you have therefore another opinion and both opinions are equally valid. As a result, we have now alternative medicine, alternative teaching methods, alternative legal advocates, "but," he says "we haven't yet come up with an alternative Boeing 747 pilot". He links this to the MMR vaccine crisis where people are being told by alternologists and are convinced that there is a conspiracy of the medical establishment and the government that, in order to protect themselves, they were willing to sacrifice countless children to autism. "This is simply a lie," he says, and he adds that even among his closest friends, there are people who are not immunizing their children and that these children are now unprotected as a result. <...> Dawkins asks Baum if he can cite a few examples of complementary/alternative therapies for which he does have time. Baum cites art therapy as an example of complementary therapy in which he has invested quite some time. He also cites acupuncture, which is bonkers as an alternative complementary medicine belief system but which does have some value as a complementary therapy, for example in pain management. Still, his belief doesn't seem to go very far. He goes on giving an example of the importance of clinical trials and tells a story about how he was chairing a meeting in Florence, Italy on the role of CAM in the treatment of breast cancer. He was in serious pain at the time, so much so that he was limping. An acupuncturist offered him a treatment. The next day, he was completely without pain, and even visited the Uffizi gallery for a few hours. The interesting part is that she offered the treatment, but that he didn't accept it. Had he accepted it, the result would have been so spectacular that he would have become a convert. A nice illustration of the importance of controlled trials. Baum is also telling Dawkins about how many alternologists always go back to some "golden age" of medicine, and argues that there is no such thing as a golden age of medicine in the past, that the golden age is now, and that it will become more golden if only science can continue. He gives the example of Victorian England where life expectancy was not much more than about 40 years and where 30% of the children died shortly after birth whereas now most children survive, and that we now have life expectancies of close to 80 years, leading us to work longer than in the past. Dawkins and Baum talk about the importance of science education. Baum tells Dawkins that we have a scientifically illiterate population, a scientifically illiterate house of commons and, worse, that they actually take pride into their scientific illiteracy. Scientists have an important task here, he says, and children should be taught the scientific method from early secondary school in order to have a scientifically literate population. <more at the link>

I know, and agree with your point (as well as the well articulated one by Sisyphus above). However, let me clarify my point. If you're worried about fish, find another energy source which doesn't require big mechanical whirly-gigs to sit in the water. That's the larger point I was making.

Moo - I'm pretty sure you're after something like the National UFO Reporting Center, which has just such a database: http://www.nuforc.org/ Direct link to the online database: http://www.nuforc.org/webreports.html

Yeah, but all that's the map, not the territory.

There are three factors at play here: 1) La Niña has resulted in cooling to some extent, while the El Niño phenomenon made 1998 especially hot. 2) He's arbitrarily choosing a hot year as the starting point for the time scale, one of the hottest years on record, which makes it look as if we've been cooling. Once you go out for 2 or 3 decades, the trends is rather obviously upward. The "it's been cooling claim" is representative of cherry-picked data and arbitrary graphing time scales, not of an actual trend in our global yearly average temperature. 3) It's been steady (and even slightly upward), not cooling. See below for a visual and evidence based support of my points #2 & 3:

This is a five year old thread... </CaptainObvious>

What is this natural cause? The human cause is incredibly well supported, and will only be displaced by CLEAR data to the contrary. I accept your contention that there are sources of error in the measurements, however, I reject as non-sequitur your conclusion that these errors are enough to overturn anthropogenic origin.

From the link I shared in post #2: The brain uses chemicals to transmit information; the computer uses electricity. Even though electrical signals travel at high speeds in the nervous system, they travel even faster through the wires in a computer. A computer uses switches that are either on or off ("binary"). In a way, neurons in the brain are either on or off by either firing an action potential or not firing an action potential. However, neurons are more than just on or off because the "excitability" of a neuron is always changing. This is because a neuron is constantly getting information from other cells through synaptic contacts. Information traveling across a synapse does NOT always result in a action potential. Rather, this information alters the chance that an action potential will be produced by raising or lowering the threshold of the neuron. Computer memory grows by adding computer chips. Memories in the brain grow by stronger synaptic connections. From another page at that same site: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html Following birth, the brain of a newborn is flooded with information from the baby’s sense organs. This sensory information must somehow make it back to the brain where it can be processed. To do so, nerve cells must make connections with one another, transmitting the impulses to the brain. Continuing with the telephone wire analogy, like the basic telephone trunk lines strung between cities, the newborn’s genes instruct the "pathway" to the correct area of the brain from a particular nerve cell. For example, nerve cells in the retina of the eye send impulses to the primary visual area in the occipital lobe of the brain and not to the area of language production (Wernicke’s area) in the left posterior temporal lobe. The basic trunk lines have been established, but the specific connections from one house to another require additional signals. Over the first few years of life, the brain grows rapidly. As each neuron matures, it sends out multiple branches (axons, which send information out, and dendrites, which take in information), increasing the number of synaptic contacts and laying the specific connections from house to house, or in the case of the brain, from neuron to neuron. At birth, each neuron in the cerebral cortex has approximately 2,500 synapses. By the time an infant is two or three years old, the number of synapses is approximately 15,000 synapses per neuron (Gopnick, et al., 1999). This amount is about twice that of the average adult brain. As we age, old connections are deleted through a process called synaptic pruning. <...> The capacity of the brain to change with learning is plasticity. So how does the brain change with learning? According to Durbach (2000), there appear to be at least two types of modifications that occur in the brain with learning: 1. A change in the internal structure of the neurons, the most notable being in the area of synapses. 2. An increase in the number of synapses between neurons.

But none of those limitations you've cited have anything to do with science or the scientific method itself. Each are obstacles with the system under study or measuring device probing that system, not the process of inquiry. You're certainly free to disagree, I just wanted to point out where your explanation for that disagreement appears lacking.

... the study of matter and the changes it undergoes.

No, not really.