JohnB

Essay, in that context I'm sorry. I didn't realise that you were still looking at the OP and I thought we had moved to an "increasing rate of sea level rise", which of course the ice caps have little to do with. I read and responded to your post #6 on the premise it was on one subject, when it was (sort of) on two. From your post we can we conclude that you do not think that we are in danger of disasterous sea level rise in the next decades? IOW there is nothing to little to worry about on that front? And it's not about sowing confusion, it's pointing out the very real fact that scary stories and predictions of ecological and climate disaster have been with us for what 70 years now and so far not one prediction has come true. Not one, nada, zip, zilch. Now there is a track record of prediction worth listening to I don't think. Let's say that there was a bloke who gave you a hot tip for the Saturday horse races. And every week you backed the horse he said and every single week the horse failed to come in. How many years will you continue to follow his advice before you decide his track record is too poor to listen to? And what is it about the human psyche that makes so many people want and need to believe that we are living in the "End of Days" for one reason or another? Seriously, I've lost count of how many times the world was supposed to end since 1970.

Fair comment John. What we can say is that Gilgamesh is the earlier version and the entire Biblical flood story is there, but with the names changed. Given that the job of "Scribe" was not really a common one then it is quite reasonable to assume that the early writers of the Bible were aware of the earlier account. To a great degree I agree about the importance of Geology but I do wonder if it can show the information required. For example a flood from a tsunami would be a very transitory flood and may not leave much evidence. I was curious ealier and so I phoned the Gov Dept that deals with tsunamis in Aust to see if they had further information. What is interesting is that the modelling only goes so far. It will tell us how high the wave will be and hoe fast and how far inland it will probably travel, but they stop at that point. There has been very little done apparently on how long it takes the water to drain away, which was the specific information I was looking for. The Seismologist I was talking to had not seen any models about drain rates and it didn't really apply to his line of work, so he hadn't been looking. As I understand it a tsunami is essentially a surface effect and doesn't bring a lot of debris with it to the shore, it picks the debris up after striking the land. So unlike a riverine flood it will not deposit a nice thick layer of dirt to mark its passing. Given that a meteorite strike will probably cause rainfall extremes as well I do wonder how much evidence will be left behind in the geological record to find. The only places for there to be geological evidence are the valleys behind the coasts and these would be in very specific areas, may not have had a lot of debris placed there and what was may have been washed away as the waters subsided and torrential rains lashed the region. While the water places the evidence, it is also very efficient at removing it as well, so there might not be much left to find. But at all times we have to keep in mind the limitations of the vocabulary of these ancient peoples. "Flood" can mean riverine floods as we know them, tsunamis, or simply the actions of the tides and erosion. Many societies only had one word to describe all conditions where the water rises to cover the land (Flood) and so that one word can have multiple meanings. And of course for some things they didn't even have a word. Latin for example has no word for "Volcano", which made Pliny the Youngers effort at describing the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD even more remarkable. His very accurate description of the pyroclastic flow was ignored by science for many years on the grounds that "Volcanoes don't erupt like that", but when we finally saw a pyroclastic flow we saw that they do indeed "erupt like that" and Pliny was very accurate in his account.

I have to agree with Gaylord here. The old legends have to be read in their context. There is no point arguing over the Biblical version because it is simply a copy of an earlier work. Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh has the complete story. Building the boat, the animals, grounding on a mountain and the sending out of the doves. The essential point that most people who deny the possibility of a disaster of this magnitude ignore is the direction from which the water comes. It does not rain and then flood, it floods and then rains. In every account I've read (and I've read more than a few) the seas always rise to flood the land, it is never a river flooding. There is little reason to think that our ancestors were not as smart as we are, but they didn't have certain concepts or vocabulary. But what do the words actually say? A large black cloud with terrifying noise. Bright lights in the sky and the wind and water coming from the south, the sea. Hands up all those who think the Indian Ocean just got hit by a meteor or comet? The accounts are not consistent with a global flood caused by rain but they are consistent with varied accounts of an impact and the following tsunamis. In each case we are reading local accounts of a single event. To be slightly more precise it only requires two impact objects to create all the creation/flood myths, one in the Indian and one in the Pacific Ocean. Another point to consider is that the Biblical account is an outlier in its timeframe. The other legends have the flood lasting only a couple of days at best with the rain continuing for a while, a couple of weeks. 40 days and 40 nights is far longer than the other accounts. (Except the Japanese legends of the month without a Sun during the war of the Gods, which was around the same time) Something that has occured to me that I haven't really seen discussed in the literature is "How long does it take the land to drain after a megatsunami?" We've all read the estimates or seen movies like Deep Impact so we can visualise the wave coming in, 1,000 feet high at 1,000 mph and that is a lot of water that is going to travel a long way inland. Roman accounts of a tsunami in the Med had it travelling inland some 20 miles. So with that much water, that far inland and being refresh a bit by rain, how long does it take to drain? Reading the old legends with a 20th Century mindset is to do a great dis service to our ancestors. So sorry John, but you are reading the flood myth as a literal biblical creationist reads it and as you say it simply can't have happened. The thing is it can't have happened as interpreted, but it certainly could have happened as described. Disproving an event like a world flood as described by Christianity does not disprove the existence of an event that gave rise to local legends, each describing it as a world flood. They only knew what was within 20 miles of their home, destroy that and you have destroyed their world. In short, while there is no evidence of a flood as the Christians imagine it, there are plenty of reasons to believe that mankind has had some serious disasters in its history. In a similar line there was a town in the Balkans (I think) that disappeared in the 1600s, destroyed by God, or Satan, take your pick. It is tempting to discount the story based on our belief as to the existence of God and/or Satan but this is misleading. The town did exist and after a very loud noise and many bright lights in the sky it disappeared. When nearby towns noticed that nobody had come from the missing town for a while they went to investigate and found a still smouldering hole in the ground. And so we got stories of Divine retribution etc, whereas today we would call it "Meteorite Strike, Ground Zero". Earlier societies tended to place a religious interpretation on any and all events, just because their religious interpretation was wrong doesn't mean that the event didn't happen. And so it is with floods.

This thread has no title? So what? I went through the desert on a horse with no name.

Is it any worse than a Senator that asks if the island of Guam might tip over, capsize if too many people go there? A moron is a moron and stupidity knows no political boundaries.

If that's an example of good political advertising in the US, then you lot are in more trouble than I thought. Almost as funny as the Democrat supporters trying to blame Denvers "high altitude" for Obamas performance. Since airliners, including Air force 1 are pressurised to around the 5-7,000 foot level. I really, really hope that Obama never makes any decisions while flying. How do people who make decisions while flying Business class ever survive? And just as some extra evidence that Cenk from the Young Turks is indeed a brainless dweeb, you can hear him in the background agreeing with Gore. Obama had a bad day. Why not just say so? Why does there have to be a reason why it's not his fault? Sorry but the Dems seem to have a very bad case of Somebodyelsesfaultitis. They never make mistakes or do the wrong thing, it's always the Republicans fault, or something. Why not just admit it, Obama had a bad day and will do better next time.

swansont, I find it interesting if a little disturbing that you find a blog post on an advertising agency website to be equivalent to peer review. Stefan wrote a comment in the literature and it was answered by the original authors. Rather than continue in the literature he then chose to make his claims on a website where he controls all comments and input. Nice. I won't even bother that Stefan claims as backup blog posts from his old co-author Tamino (Grant Foster). I note that in the last paragraph, since there was another paper that Stefan didn't like he now is reduced to casting aspersions on the peer review process. Which is kind of funny since he and the RC crew have previously been staunch supporters. Is it just that all peer review is equal, but some are more equal than others? But to get back to the original point. The 1947 article lists the increase as being 1.5 mm/year and the recent announcement from the CSIRO puts the rate at 1.7 mm/year (note that this is quite below the IPCC AR4 estimate of 3 mm/year, but I digress). The CSIRO also places a value on the error bars of 5 mm/year. The supposed increase is within the measurement error region. Is anybody here really going to argue in favour of a very slight increase in rate, an increase that it can be argued is not even detectable? To use the analogy of a police radar trap for speeders. If the radar is accurate to plus/minus 5 mph can you really argue on a basis of fact that the speed was really 49.4 mph and not 49.5? The great difficulty with sea levels is that we've only had the sats for a few decades. While it is all well and good to use tide guages, they only tell us what the sea is doing relative to that particular piece of land and not what is happening in general. Many areas, especially in the North are still experiencing undulations in recovery from the last great Ice Age. (Isostatic Rebound) If, for example a tide guage tells us that sea levels have risen by 10 cm in the last century, they cannot tell us how much of that is the sea level going up and the land going down. Note that is sea level dropped by 10 cm in real terms but the land where the tide guage sat subsided by 20 cm, then it would show a 10 cm rise. The sea level question is not as cut and dried as many would like to think it is. Now of course we have the sats, but that means a much shorter baseline to compare things to. Essay Or have BS detectors that work, or don't believe the first climate calamity theory that drops on our desk, or are properly sceptical of overblown and unproven claims.... As we were talking sea levels I have no idea at all why you bring the Artic ice into it. It, um, floats you know? On the water? Which means it displaces volume? Which means that if it all melts it will not effect the sea level at all. What's the next diversion? A picture of a Polar Bear? I believe that the opposite, the rejection of reality in favour of a mental construct is called "psychosis". In general though, yes. Although I prefer to say that the theory is wrong or incomplete. This is based on the logical view that if a theory is correct and complete then it will agree with reality. John, if you have a problem take it up with the CSIRO. They are the ones claiming the 1.7 mm/year. I simply compared it to the rate given in 1947 of 1.5 mm/year and note that the difference is so far within the level of instrumental error as to make a case for an increase groundless. By ignoring my point while quoting me, you are indulging in a red herring at best. Frankly and using the old Mk1 eyeball I would agree with you, but that is not what the data released says. Perhaps the problem is with the graph? ElasticCollision. I personally find it worrying that people can have views based on nothing more than fear and ignorance. As I said above the northern ice cap floats. Melting it will not change the sea level, although there is a school of thought that says if you melt the ice the sea level will actually go down. So since the complete melt of the northern ice cap will not change sea levels and will not drown anybody, on what basis do you want to do anything about it? It will not cause the widespread deaths of millions at all. To use your asteroid analogy if it was known that it was going to miss us, would you be demanding that something be done about it? So melting the Arctic ice will not cause widespread disaster, but melting the Antarctic would do so. But the sea ice down there has just set a new record maximum and it appears that the whole Antarctic continent is gaining ice mas rahter than losing it, so it's not about to melt anyway. But a simple question "How many degrees C does the temp have to rise over most of Antarctica to melt the ice cap and flood us all?" Bonus questions "How many degrees warmer than today was the Holocene Optimum some 7,000 years ago and why was it named the Holocene Optimum?" The thing is that climate is always going to change, no matter what we do. If you have a way to control the planetary climate there is a Nobel waiting for you. Climate will change and it will do one of two things it will warm or it will cool. Going from historical and archaeological records we can safely say that warming=good and cooling=bad. People live good lives in warm times and they scrounge for food in cool times due to shorter growing seasons and often too much rain. One of the reasons for the Green Revolution that feeds our planet is the nice warm weather. Am I worried about Climate change? My oath I am. I'm worried that a number of Solar scientists are noting that the Sun is behaving in a very similar way to just before the Maunder Minimum. If we plunge back into something like the LIA it will be a disaster of Biblical proportions. All those nice, ecologically sound windmills that European nations use for power will shut down due to ice load just when people will most need power for warmth. We would see crop yeilds in the Northern Hemisphere drop precipitously, losses of 60-80% across Europe would not be out of the question. European economies are already fragile and those stories from the 1800s about 30 feet of snow in a single night aren't stories. And the big thing is that unless you think that we can control the weather, then there is bloody nothing we can do about it. We will have to attempt to survive and adapt, because that is all we can do. Edit to add. Another point that many ignore because it means asking very hard questions that have no easy answer, is the possiblity that land use change is responsible as some climatologists think. We have changed the face of the planet to grow the food for our population. If land use change is the problem then the answer is obvious, turn a lot of that fertile cropland back into forests. Since that will mean a lot less food to go around.....Who are you going to starve? As a matter of intentional policy to "Save the Planet"? Let me guess that it won't be the nations with a predominantly white population, will it? It would be so nice and easy if it was only CO2 involved and people like me were just foolish deniers who ignore evidence. But the climate isn't easy and neither are the questions or the answers that are needed, or the moral choices. I personally would rather we have to deal with the future climate as it comes than to condemn millions, if not tens of millions to disease, poverty and an early death.

Fascinating. 2 replies both alleging great species extinction yet neither even tries to meet the simple challenge of naming 10 out of the supposed thousands. akh, I have no idea why I didn't keep a link to where I got the numbers from. However the IUCN lists only 801 species as becoming extinct since 1500 with a further 63 as extinct in the wild. So where did you get your figures? Where did 44,838 come from? Since there are between 1.5 and 1.8 million named species already known out of an estimated 10 million or so, your 44,000 is a very low figure. My estimates are confirmed by Aretes first link, the full paper being here. In this they use the figure of somewhere between 1 and .1 species per million per year and I used the 1 in conjunction with a very low estimate of species numbers. (I assumed 2 million) If however there are in fact 10 million and the natural extinction rate is 1 species per million per year then we would expect 10 species to become extinct through purely natural causes every year. Since it has been 500 years since 1500 we can therefore expect 5,000 species to have become extinct. But the official number is less than 1,000. You have a problem. But I'll ask again. Name 10. Arete, argument from Authority is no argument at all. Science goes on evidence and not "Consensus". To use the old saw, there is only one vote and Mother Nature has it. This does not prove the consensus wrong, but the fact that there might be a consensus does not prove the claim correct. And while we are there what is the consensus on? That extinction rates have increased by 100 times or by 10,000 times? I know it's only a little matter of two orders of magnitude, but small things can count. The problem I have is not with the estimate but how it is arrived at. I like this from your first link; In plain English, "to know the extinction rate we have to know how many species there are. We don't know this to any accuracy at all so we will guess and work from there." The work builds on Steadman (reference 10) and goes on to say; And therefore of course there must be 800 odd species of rail that have become extinct. Am I the only one who sees a problem with this type of reasoning? You can't just take a guess at how many species you think should be there and compare that to reality. Similarly when comparing to the fossil record they are assuming that 50% of species fossilise. And this is a good estimate because.....? Even in the literature there is estimate piled on top of estimate and then compared to another estimate of an estimate and supposedly worthwhile conclusions are drawn. This is not science, it is junk science. We see a further example at the WWF site where they ask "How many species are we losing?" In their own words; If there are; -100,000,000 different species on Earth -And the extinction rate is just 0.01%/year -at least 10,000 species go extinct every year. Ooh, alarm, shock, horror. How about something to back up any of those figures? Or is that too difficult? Note that from the estimate given in the first paper you linked to we would expect 100 extinctions/year from purely natural causes, the 10,000 is a guess and nothing more. Part of the problem is that the big numbers are arrived at in a sloppy fashion. Note on the WWF page it says; When we dig we find that numbers like this are getting extrapolated out of all semblence to reality. But let's look at some good, solid consensus. It might be older, but the curreent crop are saying the same old things. From Biodiversity published in 1988, Chapter 6 is about the estimating of species loss. Ehrlich and Ehrlich as usual were insane predicting 50% of species to be gone by 2000. But as they have yet to get a prediction right this is no surprise. I strongly suggest anyone interested look at Table 6.1 to see the estimates for extinction by the year 2000. What we are hearing now is exactly the same. Arete, if you want me to take you seriously on this, could you provide some sort of actual evidence that the estimates being put forward now are any better or more grounded in fact than the estimates we were hearing 30 years ago. iNow, my "flaw" is to not believe the unfounded projection of an unverified climate model? How is that a flaw? On what physical basis or proof do you contend that temps will rise at such a rediculous rate? You're making the claim, how about proving it for a change? In many ways this is my point. You have no proof whatsoever that the modest warming we have had since the LIA has been anything but beneficial to the majority of the planets population. To turn good into bad you've had to rely on mythical "tipping points" to sour the climate. There is no actual, physical evidence that these points exist but they are required to turn beneficial warming into a catastrophe. People will fly the "Consensus" flag of convenience in the full knowledge that if this is the best you've got it's a bloody poor argument. I keep hearing the bulldust "97% believe", but if that is a valid argument then why are you an atheist? I can find a lot more people who will assert there is a God than you can find climate scientists. This, BTW, is exactly why the consensus argument cuts no grass with me. In short, there is a lot of wild claims and rhetoric, but very little hard proof or demonstrable track record in accuracy. Cheers.

8 pages about aircraft windows and not one person has asked the far more obvious question than Romneys; "Why do they put frosted glass in the toilets?" Who is going to look in at 35,000 feet?

Swansont. A diversion really, would you prefer I said "A large but indeterminate number"? The point remains that this is more about flying around the planet and staying in 5 star resorts than actually doing anything. If it was video conferenced, nobody would bother to go. I'm also surprised that you take the attitude that the priests get special dispensation..... If someone truly believed that the increase in CO2 was in reality dooming the planet they would not fly. Having been involved with the staging of international conferences on the organisational side I can state quite clearly that they cost a mint. That would depend on whether you wanted to hit one nation at a time or try for them all under some "International Agreement". Perhaps you could read what powers and funding are being asked for at some of these conferences? It also presupposes that AGW is something more than a means to an end. Essay. You know, the funny thing is that my copy of Mien Kampf was published in New York in 1937. It was a private printing complete with researched footnotes to show exactly where it was wrong. The idea was an attempt to alert the American people as to just what type of lunatic was running Germany. Nobody listened to them either..... Face the facts. There really are Malthusian people out there who think the world would be much better off if 9 out of 10 people dropped dead. Denying their existence doesn't make them go away, it just means you refuse to see them. Concerning Lovelock. Is he closer to my "denialist" position of "there doesn't appear to be much to worry about and the alarmists are overblown" or your "we need to act immediately to stave off catastrophe". He was in your group, he's now in mine, even the article you link to says so. His previous comments include; Civilization in its present form hasn't got long. Florida will be gone altogether, the whole damned place, in not too long. billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable Whereas he now says; "The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened;” "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time ... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that", Do a search if you wish through the climate threads here and see whose arguments his recent statements are closest to. And since I'm the resident "denier" that puts him rather fully now in the "denialist" camp. He's not saying anything that I haven't been saying for bloody years. And there lies your problem. If his is a reasonable stance then so is the stance of the vast majority of "deniers", but you can't see that, can you? Oh, and from your link re "religion" Wow, something else us nasty denialists have been commenting on for years. Who brought left or right into it? Linkola is quite serious and if you want the left to claim his insanity as its own go right ahead. My purpose was to show that rather than left or right, there is an authoritarian segment who are willing to use climate change to advance their own agenda. (Quick Tangent) I don't really believe in the left/right political spectrum as there is no place on it for anarchy and as such cannot be considered a complete and accurate spectrum. I believe that the true spectrum is from anarchy (no government at all) at one end through to statism (total government control) at the other. The traditional left/right are really both in the middle trying to balance social control and collective conditions on the one hand and individual liberties on the other. The only difference is that those traditionally classed as "Left" tend towards collective/state answers slightly more than those on the "Right", but there is really little difference between them. If anarchy was zero and statism was 100, the right would sit at about 45 and the left at about 55 for the most part. However, the statists, those who think old style soviet government and full central planning were really great ideas are hiding inside the "left" and it is these people who will use climate change to advance their political agenda. They will do this by talking about "International Co-operation" and similar buzzwords. You might think I'm foolish or wrong, but just answer one question. Where did all the people who wanted a soviet style government in the West go to when the Soviet Union collapsed? Did they all collectively decide that they were wrong and go home? Or did they join Green parties and work to forward their agendas under the guise of "Environmentalism"? It really isn't about left or right, it's about authoritarianism or individual liberty. The left has Statists that dream of power and controlling lives under the principles of Gaia, they are no better or worse than the Statist on the right who would see us all in chains living under strict "Gods Laws". Environazis or god botherers, their final solution is the same, only their language differs. Even their motivation is the same they both believe that they and they alone know what is best for all mankind. You and I will be "allowed" to live our lives in a state "acceptable" to them. So long as we say nothing and show due deference to their overwhelmingly superior morals and intellect, otherwise things will get "unpleasant". Fast. /Tangent So please keep left and right out of it. Science doesn't have a political side, it just is. Cheers.

Actually I always found this sort of thing interesting. Does it mean that in 400 years the Australian region will be at the bottom of a well of water? Will my descendents go to the beach to marvel at the water wall some distance offshore and wonder why it doesn't flow downhill any more? The more I've learned the less faith I have in the findings for before the satellite period. There is often so much coastal movement that we are right in "best guess" territory. A simple example is that we all know that sea levels have been rising since the last Ice Age and that trend has not stopped, the speed may vary but the rise continues. If we go to Google Earth and look at Lake Traiano in Italy we find it some metres above sea level. (It's near the mouth of the Tiber and is a perfect hexagon, very cool) Now used as a lake and water storage, some 2,000 years ago it was the harbour for the Roman Navy, so sea level relative to the land (and this is the only meaningful metric to use) has dropped by at least 2 metres in that area. The bottom line is that it's gone up in places, down in others and remained pretty stable in other areas. Average these out if you want, but don't try to convince me that the work is anything more than a rough guess. We have to make far too many assumptions about the rise and fall of the land over too long a period in too many areas to be able to claim accuracy with any confidence. However swansont you perhaps missed the bit further down the article? So it's not a regional finding at all, is it? And Vamperes, please. I wouldn't call 3.5 million square kilometers "hardly much left". The Antarctic of course set another record for maximum extent of sea ice. Yes, Antarctica has a large block of ice sitting on land, but out of curiousity how much would the temps have to rise above their current minus 40 odd degrees C for it to melt? A point a lot of people miss is that even if the temp at the South Pole increased by 50 degrees C it would still be minus 20 degrees and the ice won't melt.

Can I just say that if Aretes figures are right in that pic and you've only had 13 cases of voter fraud in 10 years then somebody isn't doing their job. We nail more than that each election. One big difference in the systems is that we have the Australian Electoral Commission whose job is to police the voter records and Electoral Rolls. The AEC sends people out to door knock various areas and record every voter in every house and these names and addresses are compared to the Rolls. When it turns out that 1313 Mockingbird Lane is the local cemetary all names at the address are flagged and heaven help anybody who tries to vote using one of those names. And what is the problem with producing ID to vote? I have to produce my AEC card or a photographic ID to be able to vote. But with no ID, you only have 13 cases of fraud? Somebody is dreaming. No, seriously, that figure must be pure BS. I quote from the AEC report for the 1996 Federal Election in Oz. As in how many "Please explain" letters were sent by the AEC as a result of people being marked off on the Electoral Roll as voting multiple times. So we get 986 people admitting to electoral fraud in one election and you get 13 people in 10 years with 10 times the population? Absolute bulldust. There must be holes in your voter registration systems that you could drive the Missouri through.

Interesting. akh, you claim; Yet you state that your attitude towards those who differ from your opinion is; and and The terms "smug arrogance" and "condescention" come immediately to mind. Don't worry, very few here will have noticed this as they suffer from the same malady. Those who agree with the position are intelligent and reasonable human beings, those who disagree do so due to shortcomings in either their genetics, education or intelligence. But perhaps you should consider that you may not always be correct? Sorry mate, but if that is how you think when you talk to people, then you are no different from the redneck who says "African American" and you can clearly hear the "N*gger" and you shouldn't be surprised at a hostile reaction. But to the OP. Firstly, on what scientific evidence is this prediction based? Is it just a WAG or is there something behind it? But it was probably based on the same report that this National Geographic article was based on. The problem is on page 2. 2 degrees by 2050? Really? That's 38 years from now and will require a warming rate of .526 degrees per decade, or more than 3 times the warming rate of 1975-2000 which was about .16 degrees/decade. Considering that the rate for the last 10 years has two thirds of bugger all what are the odds of the .5 degrees/decade happening? How about it was a WAG based on junk figures. What I do find interesting is the constant unthinking acceptance of "predictions" without a single check as to veracity or logical basis. How have the other predictions worked out? "Artic ice will disappear by 2012", nope, it's still there. 10 million climate refugees by 2010? Apparently they didn't get the memo to become refugees. How about "4 billion to die by 2012"? Either it didn't happen or the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us. Personally I love these "species extinction" guesstimates that people take so seriously. Anytine someone tells me that "10,000 (or whatever many) species became extinct last year", I have a simple question. "Name 10." Since 1500 only 869 extinctions have actually been recorded. The estimated natural rate of extinction is 1 per million species per year. We know of around 2 million of the estimated 5 - 50 million species on the planet so we'll use the 2 million figure. So with natural rates and 2 million species we would expect 1,000 species to become extinct since 1500 due to purely natural causes. The official figure is 869 so frankly I'm having trouble seeing a problem here. (Or at least finding reasonable grounds to believe that anybody could come up with a sensible estimate) But if people want predictions without a factual basis, try this lot; http://www.13moon.com/theories2013.htm Of course they are for next year and you'll have to survive the predicted end of the world (by the Mayan calendar) or the predicted return of Nibiru later this year.

And how many has the Fukushima reactor killed? I can also only conclude that there is a belief in precognition going on since the tsunami was only a couple of years ago and the groups most loudly proclaiming doom and gloom have been doing so for decades and have not changed their anti nuclear stance in all that time. Fukushima has nothing to do with it on any logical or sensible grounds. There are people who simply do not want cheap and abundant power for the masses. Their behaviour is not based on science but on ideology. iNow, many people have anxieties that the planet is secretly ruled by reptillian aliens. I'm not going to let other peoples groundless anxieties rule my life. Go for your life. But before you get too busy cursing my name could you provide some sort of evidence that things are going to get bad? Could you provide some form of evidence that the 3 times amplification that the models require for the gloomy forecasts to come true actually exists in reality? How about a reasonable explanation as to why a system with a feedback amplification of greater that 2.4 has remained relatively stable for millions of years. Any other system with positive feedbacks of that magnitude would have been off at an extreme ages ago as a positive feedback of more than about 1.1 is inherently unstable. In short, rather than the tired and old name calling, how about some scientific proof for a change? "Manufacture" my arse. How about we do the next conference by telepresence over the net instead and see how many bother to attend? "Bugger all" would be my bet. A far better life is in going to conferences and Bonn, Bangkok, Manila, Tokyo, Addis Ababa, Samoa, London, Rio, then back to Bonn isn't a bad start to the year, is it? (and we're only up to May 2012 for that lot). http://unfccc.int/meetings/unfccc_calendar/items/2655.php?year=2012 What? Did you think that there was only one conference every couple of years? You may need to revise your figures. "Government in the future will be based upon . . . a supreme office of the biosphere. The office will comprise specially trained philosopher/ecologists. These guardians will either rule themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based on their ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for the task." - David Shearman, an IPCC Assessor for 3rd and 4th climate change reports David Shearman is emeritus professor of medicine at Adelaide University, secretary of Doctors for the Environment Australia, and an independent assessor on the IPCC. His most recent book (co-written with Joseph Wayne Smith) is The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, (Praeger, 2007) For one, there have been others. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6878 James Lovelock, you know, the guy behind the Gaia theory and recent convert to the sceptical camp? He now says that we don't know as much about the climate as we thought we did. At least on that we agree, but his opinion a couple of years ago; "I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary toput democracy on hold for a while." Finnish environmentalist and philosopher Pentti Linkola, not well known in the West but has some great ideas. Try reading "Twenty-First Century Anti-Democracy: Theory and Practice in the World". Or you could start paying attention to what your leading environmentalists are saying in the media. It's just a thought.

Aaah, thanks guys. As a simple majority is all we need, those tactics don't work. The Speaker calls the vote and that is it. Vote yes, no, or abstain the vote is called and the numbers added, majority wins. The Opposition could walk out if they wanted and it wouldn't make any difference so long as a Quorum remains.

Now ask yourself why people are running around saying that the threat is so dire that we may need to "suspend Democracy" and it is so terrible that it might kill all life on earth, but is not so dangerous as to be worth a single nuclear reactor to help stave off the disaster? How about there is no disaster coming? And there never was. It was a political ploy.

Thanks guys. So he's done "okay" then. iNow could you expand on this a bit as I don't get it. What are these "Parliamentary tactics"? Coming from a nation with a Parliament I do have problems understanding the US system. In a Parliament if you have more votes in the House than the other guy, you win. 300 Congressmen? So long as 151 of them are from your side, you control the House. The same is true for the Senate. Under a Parliamentary system there is no excuse for the Democrats to not have enacted every policy that they campaigned on. They had the votes in the lower House, the Senate and the POTUS. It doesn't matter what the GOP said, they didn't have the numbers. And I don't understand the "delay" bit at all. In a Parliament the Goverment moves the motion for acceptance of the Bill, or it's second reading, or whatever and as they have the numbers when the vote is taken, they win. You can only slow a Bill down by debating amendments to the Bill itself. The amendments get voted on and if passed the Bill is off to the Senate. You're hard pressed to delay something when the government can call for the vote and has the numbers to pass what they want. PS. John, I think "colour" is a lot more important to Americans than to many from Australia. There was a big kerfuffle over a KFC ad a couple of years ago and the Aussies didn't get the problem. We saw an Australia supporter sitting in the middle of a heap of Windies supporters at a cricket match, but Americans saw a white man sitting in the middle of a lot of black people. Plus they have some bizarre taboo concerning black people and fried chicken. (Thor only knows what that is about.)

Nah, give it a week and people will be heading down back alleys to visit a "Steakeasy".

While the topic might start a war it isn't actually intended as such. And as an Aussie I don't have a dog in the US election fight. Compared to Bush II there simply isn't as much about Obama in the MSM outside the US. (Or at least not down under) This leaves one with the impression that he's rather lack lustre and colourless with no real convictions. It also seems that in the early part of his term the Democrats had the Congress, Senate and Presidency and still couldn't achieve anything really earth shaking or worthwhile. Is that an accurate impression? Note I'm not asking about a comparison to his opponents later in the year as it's getting more and more obvious that his opponents are in need of new coats. The ones with the overlong arms. So, is he a good President? Has his first term been a success or not?

Some people like to think that we sceptics simply ignore evidence, or perhaps for spurious reasons we discount it. When we've read the same thing over and over again and it never happens then funnily enough we view that a sane person does and should discount the stories. One of those stories is the whole "The ice caps are melting! We could all drown!" Well, yes we "could", we could also freeze in a sudden ice age or be killed off by a meteorite strike. Lots of things "could" happen. To argue against this point it would seem reasonable to point out that scientists in general are a cautious lot and so use the word "could". Followed shortly by an assertion that if they weren't at least reasonably sure of it they wouldn't make the warning public. I'd like to quote in full a newspaer article, unfortunately I don't have a link to the page. It could have been written yesterday. But it wasn't. The article was at the bottom of the front page of the "Brisbane Telegraph" on Friday Evening, May 30th, 1947. Even the phraseology is the same, if things stay "at the same rate as it is at present" then disaster will ensue. I'm reminded of a story anbout a little boy who yelled "Wolf" a lot. To make things funnier of course, all this worry about warming in 1947 was just before the world temps dropped by some .4 degrees C in the following 30 years. A bout of cooling that had some "scientists" publicly spreading comments about the disaster that global cooling "could" bring. The problem is of course that things don't continue at the same rate, or most things don't. However we can notice some things. Last year for example it was reported here that sea level rise was about 1.7 mm per year. The 1947 article quotes a figure of 1 to 1.5 mm per year. To make for a bit more fun let us introduce the graph from CSIRO the Australian government scientific organisation. So the error bars are + or - 5 mm and the rise in 1947 of 1.5 mm/year compares to the recent period of 1.7 mm/year. Is anybody really going to argue for an "increase" in sea level rise when the difference between the two averages is .2 mm/year or 4% of the error bars? So there is no evidence for an increase or acceleration in sea level rise at all. Just another prediction by GHG theory that fails when compared to actual reality. Oh, and just in case people think I made up the 1947 story, the Telegraph was the afternoon paper and here are some front pages of Saturday mornings papers; The Melbourne Argus. The Canberra Times. Tasmanias The Advocate. You will find versions of the story on the front pages, it was syndicated by A.A.P. And totally off topic; For those who are interested, Trove is part of the National Library of Australia where more and more old documents and newspapers are being digitised. What makes it cool is that you can feed in a date and it will give you all the newspapers and magazines it has released on that date. In what I call a fascinating coincidence there was a train crash in 1947 only a few miles from my home where a number of holiday makers were killed. Any references you see on those pages about a train crash inquiry is actually about that crash. Having a trawl through these old papers can be quite educational. One article mentions that with the introduction of the new "Constellation" aircraft Quantas Empire Airways will be ablr to drop the price of a trip to England from 375 to 250 pounds. When you consider inflation, airfares are a lot cheaper now than they were then. I also note that even though rationing was still on and there were austerity measures, the Federal pollies voted themselves a 50% pay rise. Nice work if you can get it.

Soooo, this person joined just to post a link to news site?

True John. The thing is that we now know that after the first thousand feet it makes no difference. Fall 1,000 feet or 20,000 feet, you hit at the same speed. Even so it still makes the story of Nicholas Alkemade astonishing. And yes, the German Authorities did give him a certificate, signed by the German Kommandant and the ranking British and American officers.

I'd have to agree iNow, that was really my point. Something that Arete totally missed. All those things in the pic are where society created conditions where the business could exist, but the fact that that particular lumber company does exist is due to the owner. (BTW, I think the bloke in the pic is a twit) Put it another way. You can have timber yards and steel mills and shipyards and all the ancillary suppliers you want, but until someone starts a "Cunard Line" you haven't got any Ocean Liners. There has been animal gut and wood around since before man was man, but it took a human to put these things together and make a bow. I must also add that in my list was "Dealing with the Tax Office" and am at a loss as to how that is interpreted as thinking I needn't pay tax. Of course you pay tax, so long as it isn't excessive. I think we are looking at things from differing perspectives. While the infrastructure is required to exist for something to happen, just the existence of the infrastructure is not enough an impetus is required. I look at the impetus. How about we take 50,000 tons of concrete and 50,000 tons of steel. If we wish really, really hard it might become an office block. But it won't. It will only become an office block if someone decides to build an office block. The infrastructure allows for the material to be potentially anything, but for it to become something in reality requires the driver. So society creates the place where things could exist, but the only reason that they do exist is due to the individual. But the bottom line in handing out the awards is that society only gets kudos for allowing things to happen, that they actually did happen is totally due to the individual concerned. Remember that with the exception of the internal combustion engine all the materials and know how were available to build a Wright Flyer for about 400 years. Add to that a long history of rocketry and you would wonder why a rocket powered version wasn't around in the 1700s. Just because conditions are right doesn't mean that things will spontaneously come into being, it takes an individual to make it happen. And in that respect, he or she does do it all on his/her own.

The other point is terminal velocity. IIRC this would be about 185 mph for a jumper or diver. What is the minimum height to achieve this speed? Jumping from a higher point won't make you land any faster. You could also adopt the skydiver spreadeagle pose for most of the way down, reducing the terminal velocity to about 120 mph and change to feet first at the last moment. Either way it will still hurt and possibly push your feet up to somewhere around your lower spine.

An interesting take on left wing thinking. As a business owner, if I didn't "do it myself", then who did it? Who filled out the required forms to register my business? Who ordered the stock? Who organised payment? Who organised to get stock cleared through Customs? Who took the photos? Who made up the catalogue? Who designed the CD cover art? Who deals with ASIC? Who deals with the Tax Office? Who goes and finds the customers? Who takes the orders? Who fills the orders? Who depatches the orders? Who writes the invoices? Who makes sure the clients pay their bills? So who does all this? The business fairy? The only people who have such a simplistic view of the world as yours stopthelies1 are people who have never done it and lack either the ability or courage to try. So to avoid admitting their inferiority, they have to denigrate the achievements of those who are successful. Yes, society is an interwoven tapestry and no man is an island. But every single company out there exists not be magic but because somebody got off his arse and put that arse on the line to start it. To then have that denigrated by some little weed who wouldn't have the balls to try it himself is frankly insulting. All a government can do is create a place where business can exist. The fact that businesses do actually exist is due wholly and solely to those who took the chance and made those businesses exist. Ford exists because Henry Ford decided it would, Apple exists because Steve Jobs decided it would and Microsoft exists because Bill Gates decided it would. In that respect they did do it all on their own. Don't deride the achievements of others because you lack the ability or courage to do what they have done. A final point. Barack Obama was a lawyer. He and his ilk have incomes that are directly based on making it as hard as possible for people or businesses to interact with each other. They produce nothing and contribute in no way to the general wellbeing of the nation. Lawyers are parasites in the true meaning of the word. Lawyers on the government dollar write the most complex laws so that their friends get to "advise" people about those laws on my dollar. Like many before him Obama went into politics. I've never been sure if that is a step up or a step down for a lawyer. About the only real difference is that they go from leeching the private purse to leeching the public one.