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JohnB

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  1. If the education is of value many with degrees will earn more than the average and therefore contribute more than the average through income tax.

     

    Joatmon I think the difficulty is right there. How to define "of value". I'll possibly ruffle some feathers here but the "hard" sciences are called that for a reason, they deal with physical reality and they are hard. You have to think, you have to be smart or you are screwed. You can't just waffle on in engineering like you can in a "Social" science. And how many social workers do we really need or want? Are there University graduates working in Mc donalds? Sure, but jobs based on a degree in Medieval German folkmusic of the 14th Century are a bit thin on the ground.

     

    The idea of fully funded University is great, but people are people and a number will go for the course that they can pass with as little effort as possible, in the most obscure subjects possible, and then demand a government funded at the end. Let's face it, they are voters and the governments will tend to listen. (At least a bit) You'll finish up with the important and hard subjects going without to fund "Fad of the day" circle jerks for morons. You also fall into a "planned economy" trap, how many places for electrical engineers do you fund as opposed to civil construction engineers? How do you know how many you will need in the future? Very messy.

     

    I did hear some time ago and don't know if it is correct (and I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong here) that Bush II when Governor of Texas had a scheme where the top 10% of High School students got a scholarship. I think that this is a great idea and makes a sensible compromise. If the top 10% of each school get the scholarship then it doesn't matter if they are from a silver spoon top range school or just a local public school, every kid gets a fair chance. It means the brightest, regardless of socio-economic grouping gets a break.

     

    Concerning unemployment and people sponging off the system, we call them "dole bludgers" down here. Yes, they do exist and can be quite numerous and the condition is possibly genetic. I say that because we have families on welfare that haven't had a job in generations, let alone years. So they are out there, but the simple fact is that if you have 800,000 unemployed and 100,000 job openings, then 700,000 don't get a job. This is basic maths.

     

    There is also the point that a lot of people miss, and that is that most job vacancies (around 90% IIRC) are filled by people changing jobs and not by people leaving the unemployed pool. So if you have 100,000 vacancies this month and 100,000 vacancies next month, there are only 10,000 new jobs as 90,000 of next months vacancies are because of people changing jobs this month. And of course the older you are and the longer you've been "out of circulaion", the harder it is to compete with those who are changing jobs because they have relevent and recent experience. Unless a society is suffering from a chronic labour shortage, the idea that there are "jobs for anyone that wants one" is absurd.

     

    Rigney, your grandson has two jobs because he showed something to his employers that said that even with a hearing problem he is a cut above the average joe. Don't ask me for a description, it's indefinable, but as a person who has done hiring and firing I can tell you that when you see someone with it, you don't let them go if you can avoid it. It's the difference between the bloke laying stone for $10 per hour and the fellow beside him who is building a Cathedral.

     

    Concerning unemployment in general, both sides of politics like it high, although the Left tends to like it more than the Right. High unemployment means that people bid for the jobs and can be exploited. This is pure cream for Unions as they can "defend the worker" and left leaning politicians can use it as a reason for more "Social Security" programs. (Which is why the left like it a bit more than the right, the right don't want to spend the money on social programs) In times of low unemployment (under 3%) businesses are bidding for the workers time and this means wages and conditions improve in real terms. This is bad news for Unions, nobody needs them and the boss "exploiting the workers" is hard to believe when he's just offered you a $10k pay rise. It's bad news for "Social" people because people with jobs and a future are generally happy and don't want or need a socail worker or their little schemes. The downside is that it does increase upward inflationary pressure.

     

    The reason I say 3% is that this is a percentage of the job pool and not the total population. Once you get to that point, then all you have left are the deadheads. They have brains of purple mush and should not be given a break of longer than 15 minutes as it's too hard to retrain them afterwards. In earlier societies they would have served their nations in the Navy as Galley Slaves or sharkbait or as landfill in large construction projects. These people are the "Slinkys" of the human race, they serve no useful purpose but you still smile as you push them down the stairs. :D

     

    P.S. Moon, did Cenk do a similar article on Democrats receiving welfare? Or did he keep the nickname "Cyclops"? :D

  2. Well Dave, let's use a "true" accounting then.

     

    Firstly you claim

    The coal industry has enjoyed around $345 billion in subsidies so far.

     

    And you reference "ThnkProgress" who are paid activists. I'm sure we'll get a "true" accounting from them. Anyway you speak of $345 billion, but that is since the industry started some 100 years ago.

     

    So what have you got for your money?

     

    The top three oil companies in the United States are ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. According to the SEC filings of those companies, as analyzed by Forbes, ExxonMobils pretax income in 2010 was $52 billion, from which it paid $21.6 billion in income taxes worldwide, leaving a net income of $30.5 billion. That equals a tax rate of 45 percent, which is 10 percent above the statutory corporate rate of 35 percent.

     

    ConocoPhillips earned $19.8 billion in pretax income in 2010 and it paid $8.3 billion in taxes, leaving $11.4 billion in income. That equals a tax rate of 42 percent. Chevron made $32 billion and then paid $12.9 billion in income taxes, leaving a net income of $19.1 billion, which equals a tax rate of 40 percent.

     

    ExxonMobils total tax bill, worldwide, was $89 billion in 2010, comprised mostly of sales and excise taxes. ConocoPhillips, for comparison, paid an additional $16.8 billion in other taxes beyond its income taxes, reported Forbes, and Chevron paid an additional $18.2 billion in other taxes in 2010.

     

    Quite a lot actually.

     

    The oil and gas industry also generates $533.5 billion in labor income, which equals about 6 percent of U.S. labor income, according to the study. The value added to the U.S. economy by the oil and natural gas industry is $1.1 trillion (7.7 percent of GDP), according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

     

    In 2010, the oil and gas industry spent roughly $275 billion on capital projects and since 2000, the industry has invested $2 trillion in American capital projects in resource exploration, acquisition, research and alternative energy moving America towards energy independence and cleaner energy, according to API.

     

    $1.1 trillion annually in your GDP and they've almost as much since 2000 on capital projects as they've recieved in "subsidies" in the last 100 years. In dirct taxes they're paying 10 times as much as the annual "subsidies". If you can't see that giving $1 to get back $10 is a good deal, your economic ability is severely lacking.

     

    I notice that on your page, while you complain about subsidies and tax breaks for oil and coal companies you are asking for the very same for yourself, plus large amounts of recycled expensive metal to be given gratis, plus an lot of land, plus time, etc, etc. You also don't actually mention how you intend to create all the hydrogen required for a hydrogen economy. Having done the figures I know why this is. ;) bu maybe you should let everybody else in on the secret? In the interest of "true" accounting?

  3. my point is that there is no right wing type power trying to subvert us I know of but I sure these extreme right wing groups would take the money if it was offered...

     

    I think I'd have to agree Moon, at least to a point.

     

    Left wing groups were in the pay of a foreign power and the argument was that there were right wing groups doing the same. As you point out, there aren't any right wing regimes trying to subvert us so we are now left with the argument that "The right wing would do it too if it got the chance." Yet all of this is nothing more than an attempt to hide from the fact that some left wing groups were treasonous. They acted to subvert their own country and were in the pay and under the direction of an inimical foreign power.

     

    If WW2 had finished as a draw with Hitler in charge of Western Europe and Russia still standing the situation might be different. You'd probably have both left and right wing groups being paid by Moscow and Berlin respectively attempting to influence the US. The fun part would be that they would be trying to infiltrate each other at the same time, which would have been entertaining. ;)

     

    The other thing to remember is that the left wing is more likely to be traitorous. That's not to say that everybody on the left is a traitor, just that in a group you would be more likely to find one. The reason is not left/right but progressive/conservative. Since conservatives don't want change they aren't about to join groups demanding change, are they? However progressives and the foreign power have something in common, they both want the nation to change, maybe not in the same way, but the aim of "change" is the same. Since this puts the progressives and the foreign power "on the same side" as it were, it is more likely that there will be a small percentage who will see nothing wrong in taking money and "advice" from the foreign power.

     

    By the same token your extreme right is a mystery to me. (And, I suspect, most people with an IQ larger than their shoe size) Sometimes they come across as your average run of the mill religious nutjob and then there is some strange cross breeding of the religious nutjob with the neo nazi. (and how that works I just don't get) Britain and us both have some neos, down here they are generally shunned and/or ridiculed but they have more in common with skinheads. The very last place you'd find them is in church singing pious hymns.

     

    The bottom line of course is that if you have a large enough group of people then some of them will take the money, regardless of which side they are from. You could almost say that it's just "bad luck" that there hasn't been a market for right wing subversives for some time and so all the cash has gone into buying left wing ones. ;)

  4. Fundamentally, what is the difference between primary/secondary education which practically everyone accepts should be funded by the state and tertiary education which many people don't think about in the same way?

     

    John, that is a bloody good question.

     

    After thinking on it for a day or so I can only come up with two reasons.

     

    1. People don't mind funding Primary/Secondary schools because it's "for the kids" but once a person get s to Uni they are considered adult and should therefore pay their own way.

     

    2. It smacks a little of "Central Planning" and people might be scared that the Feds will be setting placement limits.

     

    Neither of these strikes me as really being "good enough" as reasons. Especially since Trade/Technical College courses only charge a nominal fee and they are for adults.

     

    The only other possibility I can think of is that if it was free then maybe too many people would be chasing degrees which can mess up an economy. We had a big push for people to get degrees some years ago and it's caused some problems. As of about 5 years ago there was circa $200 billion worth of development stalled. We have plenty of Architects to design things and Engineers to engineer them, but nowhere near enough concretors, plasterers, electricians, fork lift drivers, etc to actually build them. Even now plasterers who do office blocks are booked solid for the next 6 years or so.

     

    Even that doesn't feel right as an answer though.

     

    Anybody else have an idea?

  5. I think the biggest problem is a combination of fears. Fear that someone else will "harvest" your space technology. Fear that someone will build platforms that could be weaponized. Fear that if you give up any rights at all you'll be exploited. All fairly short-term concerns, with almost no thought for long-range consequences. I'd love to see this space debris issue become something that unites us as a planet, as a species, but we need to establish some international law to govern what happens out there. And that's been tough since everyone wants everything with no limitations or restrictions.

     

    Then simply present the Fait Acompli. Send up a module and some jeeps and start hauling stuff in for recycling. If somebody objects then fine, they can have their satellite returned for the recovery costs. Either that or they can build their own station and clean up their own mess. Offer the alternative that for a modest funding amount they could join the ISS and have their own people on board to vet any "sensitive" stuff and remove it before the recycling begins.

     

    What would make life interesting is that the various concerns might be a smokescreen to cover the fact that some nations might not have taken the "non weaponisation of space" too seriously. It would very embarassing for a government to have a dead sat dragged in that had a series of warheads on board.

  6. But since it isn't the one in the dictionary, it's not a lot of use.

    So I used the right definition when I answered.

     

    Incorrect. I gave the dictionary definition back in comment #20 in this thread. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean you get to substitute another meaning and run a strawman. Just to refresh your memory as to the definition I've been using every time;

    One who violates his allegiance and betrays his country; one guilty of treason; one who, in breach of trust, delivers his country to an enemy, or yields up any fort or place intrusted to his defense, or surrenders an army or body of troops to the enemy, unless when vanquished; also, one who takes arms and levies war against his country; or one who aids an enemy in conquering his country. See Treason.

     

    I haven't checked their data yet but if the NSA are calling people "traitors" because they redefine the word then I'm not going to waste my time doing so.

    I'm going to ask you (again) to name the people who actually harmed either the USA or its citizens.

     

    Stop trying to move the goalposts. My argument has at all times been that those who were knowingly in the pay and under the direction of Moscow during the Cold War can be called traitors. Whether they did harm or not is immaterial to that. Note that Americans have a term for a traitor "Benedict Arnold", his actions were considered treasonous even though his plan to surrender the fort at West Point did not come to fruition. All that is required under the definition is to "aid an enemy in conquering his country" even if the attempt fails. Regardless of success or failure it is the act of aiding that defines the traitor.

     

    If you aren't going to check the references, then why ask for them? First you ask for names and I supplied them. But you didn't like the place that collated the names so I supplied a direct link to the documents so that you could read the originals for yourself. That you haven't bothered to even look at them is obvious since if you had you would know that the majority of the links are to the translations of the actual intercepts themselves and not to the NSA evaluations of those intercepts. So they don't show who the NSA define as agents or traitors, they show who Moscow themselves named as agents and therefore traitors. If straight from the horses mouth isn't good enough for you, then don't bother people with requests for proof.

     

    That would depend entirely on what they actually did. I might call them a resistance movement if they acted in support of the Jews in Germany at the time.

     

    Yes, I'm sure the regime in Berlin would have been funding such organisations in 1941. And Lord Haw Haw was a british patriot.

     

    (Incidentally I think a "who has the most useless politicians?" competition would be difficult to judge because we all have some staggering contenders, and it's off-topic anyway.)

     

    You brought up useless politicians as a supposed proof of right wing groups operating in a similar fashion to the left wing front organisations and it blew up in your face. I ask again, can you name a single right wing front organisation that was operating in Western nations and recieving funding and direction from an inimical foreign power?

     

    And just to be absolutely clear and prevent any further conflating of different groups, even at the height of the Cold War being a socialist or even hard line Stalinist Communist in America or anywhere else in the West does not make a person a traitor or treasonous. That is nothing more than a political difference of opinion. It is the act of taking funding and direction from the foreign power that crosses the line into treason.

  7. IIRC the context was that there was missing energy in the budget. Which, from thermodynamics, must cause warming. Temperatures should have gone up even more than they have, which is not the same as saying that temperatures have not gone up at all.

     

    Sorry, but no. The full email is;

    Hi all

     

    Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

     

    Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)

     

    The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

     

    That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC are tracking PDO on a monthly basis but it is highly correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The PDO is already reversing with the switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for first time since Sept 2007.see[2]http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitoring_c urrent.ppt

     

    "Where the heck is Global Warming?" and going about setting records for cold days is not saying the temps should have gone up more than they did, it's asking why it's so bloody cold. But confusing weather and climate isn't a first for him so it's no surprise. BTW, if you want a great example of cherry picking note how this blogger points out the judicious omissons from Trenberths presentations concerning ACE. In the time of Katrina the increasing ACE was produced by Trenberth as "proof" of his assertions, of course we all know that it is now at historically low levels and strangely enough he doesn't mention it any more, not since about 2007 in fact. Was it Popper or Feynmann who said that all evidence should be presented and not just the bits that support your argument? :P

     

    So what's causing the overall warming — the increase in minima — over this time? The energy has to come from somewhere.

     

    You mean where can we find a couple of W/m-2 in forcing increase? Have a look at post #41 in this thread where I tracked down the various reconstructions used by the IPCC. Papers that show an increase in solar forcing larger than the estimated increase in nett forcing since 1850 or earlier would be;

    Bauer 2003

    Bard et al 2000

    Lean 1995

    Hoyt and Schattern 1993

     

    Collectively these papers and others put the increase in solar forcing since the Maunder at between 3 and 10 W/m-2. How these estimates got "smoothed" into the IPCC figure of .5W/M-2 is beyond understanding since the IPCC itself doesn't say.

     

    If however we take the estimates as correct then even after adding in the CO2 forcing the final result (circa 2W/m-2) to account for the warming also demonstrates that the feedbacks in the climate system are nett negative and not positive. This means that rather than the 1.1 degrees for a doubling of CO2 being amplified into 3 or more degrees (It's assumed to happen magically due to water vapour but nobody has demonstrated the effect exists in the lab or the real world, but this increase is required to make the climate models work) we can expect slightly less than 1.1 degrees for a doubling of CO2 as a maximum result of CO2 forcing. Since the effect of CO2 is logarithmic then by now we should expect to see about .7 to .8 of a degree warming. Which is quite oddly exactly what we do see.

     

    To put it all together.

     

    Solar increases since the Maunder have led to an increase in temps of .5 degrees per century. It owuld have been more but the negative climate feedbacks reduced it to this figure. Superimposed on this is a 60 year cyclic fluctuation which supplies warming and cooling events. The increase in CO2 has however modified the cycle in that the cooling cycles are less and less effective. By retaining heat, the atmosphere can't get as cold as it should. This is shown by the reduction in cooling, 1880-1910 was about -.4 degrees, 1940-1970 was about -.2 degrees and 2000-now is about nothing.

     

    The prediction from this is that using 2003 as a starting point (only to avoid 1998 and the rather wild swings the following 4 years) we can expect zero to very, very mild warming up until 2025 or so and then warming again at around .16 degrees per decade through to 2050 or so. This is provided the Sun doesn't do something odd (like go unusually quiet) and since it spends most of its time impersonating a billiard ball I wouldn't write that off either. :P

  8. Rigney, what a lot of people miss is the time factor. We live on a young planet. The Universe is old enough for a planet to form, give rise to life, have that life develop intelligence and advance 10 million years past us. Then blow their Solar system to dust and have it recombine and go through the entire process again all before our Sun even formed.

     

     

    Why would they want to talk to us?

     

    I have no problem with the idea of visitors, it doesn't crash my worldview. I don't want to disparage the great work done by our science community over the last couple of hundred years but I simply can't accept that we are so smart as to have discovered the ultimate "Laws" in so short a time. I fully expect that sometime in the future Einstein will be modified just as Newton was.

     

    Moon, I use the two value system to try to remove my emotional reaction from the problem. I think of it as a version of the old Holmes saying "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

     

    Once you have eliminated all known "natural" explanations for the sighting/object, then what you have left is that the object was "manufactured". Most people baulk at this because they know damn well that if "somebody made it" then that "somebody" wasn't from around here. This means that they will believe physically impossible explanations rather than challenge their preconceptions.

     

    The "slow moving meteor" is one example. Another is the "official" explanation for the Valentich incident in Australia. The explanation for the 1978 sighting in New Zealand is also worth a chuckle. A double sighting with the objects filmed by the news crew onboard the aircraft while the local Air Traffic controller was watching the action on radar. The explanation is that the film crew saw "moonlight reflected of cabbage leaves" while the ATC radar was actually reading "the planet Venus". I believe that this is the first time that Venus was clocked doing 300 mph in Earths atmosphere, but there you go. :D

     

    Similarly to believe the explanations about Roswell you have to believe that the head of military intelligence on the only base with nuclear weapons could not tell the difference between a balsa wood and tinfoil weather balloon and a crashed aircraft/spacecraft.

     

    I've also been reading about this topic for a long, long time and the evidence to me points in only one direction. Some of the sightings are of real, physical objects that exhibit performance abilities far beyond what is capable for human craft.

  9. IOW, they haven't dropped, as the cyclical hypothesis demands. Which was my point.

     

    And they haven't been going up either, which was my point. The thing I do find interesting is that in a warming world it is generally not the maximums that increase but the minimums. This has the effect of raising the average temps. Which is why the average can be higher than in the past but actual high temp records can be set long ago. I've wondered elsewhere if the same thing doesn't happen to climate in general. The drop in 1880-1910 is much greater than in 1940-1970 (Roughly) so it seems reasonable to wonder if the increase in CO2 isn't effecting the "minimums" of the cycle. If this idea is correct we would expect the downslope of the current "cooling" cycle to be less than the cooling from 1940-1970. And since the cooling from 1940-1970 wasn't much we would expect the current "cooling" to be about nothing., which is what we are seeing.

     

    While this would relegate CO2 to a more minor forcing than natural ones, it does very simply explain the observed temp trends since 1850.

     

    If his budget is wrong, someone should demonstrate it. But that doesn't change what he was complaining about, and it wasn't that warming had stopped.

     

    Actually there are other "budgets" around that use different factors;

    http://www.google.com.au/search?q=energy+budget+of+earth&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGHP_en-GBAU479AU480&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=NHQHUOKMC8aOiAe67eTuAw&ved=0CEEQ_AUoAQ&biw=1999&bih=887&sei=4nQHUOK2L42TiQfcusT3Aw

     

    The main difference between Trenberths budget and others is the very large back radiation from the greenhouse effect. This is sometimes calculated to be even larger than the total incoming Solar radiation and if you look at a few of the diagrams you'll see values from 324w/m-2 through to 340w/m-2. Notice that this difference is 10 times the total estimated increase in energy since 1850.

     

    His statement was "We cannot account for the recent lack of warming....." I do not see how "lack of warming" can be construed to mean "continued warming", so yes it was that warming had stopped. (or leveled off, plateaued, whatever you want to call it.)

     

    I would like to add, and this is one of the reasons I'm so sceptical about the "certainties" of climate science a comparison of some figures.

     

    The entire change in forcing since 1850 is estimated to be 1.6 W/m-2 + or - but it's a change of around .8% in energies. To quote from Trenberths Energy Budget paper;

     

    TOA values are known within about ±3% or better, except that the net is (or was) 0.85 ± 0.15 W m−2 (Hansen et al. 2005), and surface fluxes are constrained within 5% except for solar-reflected, LH, and LW, where errors may be as much as 10%.

     

    Errors can be plus or minus 10% but we can "with confidence" say what percentage of the .8% increase is attributable to what forcing? The errors are so much larger than the effect as to make this claim rediculous.

     

    I mean a cops radar gun is accurate to plus or minus 10% but he can tell you were exceeding the speed limit by .25 MPH? Somebody is joking.

  10. Actually the "recycle" idea has been around SciFi literature for some time. In the case of the current ISS we would need to ship up some extra shielding for a start so that it didn't have to move all the time. Let's face it, we either ship up shields or more go juice.

     

    Then we ship up the recycler module and a "jeep" or three. The module would melt down old satellites and allow the metal to be reformed. Remember that there isn't just satellites up there, but quite a few shrouds and nose cones too. (Migh even be some big old bits of Apollo and Gemini as well.

     

    A "Jeep" is the bare minimum rocket. It has a frame, fuel tanks, engines and inertial guidance. And a grappel. When junk is detected the jeep goes for the retrieval and brings it back to the ISS for recycling. The station can then start making it's own shielding at a far lower cost than shipping it up from Earth.

     

    And there absolute tons of the stuff up there. To quote from Space dot com;

    Euroconsult forecasts that the increased average weight of a commercial geostationary satellite will occur especially at the upper end of the scale. Among the current crop of commercial telecommunications satellites under construction are several consumer broadband and mobile voice and data spacecraft weighing well over 13,277 pounds (6,000 kg).

     

    Euroconsult found that 3 percent of commercial satellites currently on order and scheduled for launch by 2011 will weigh more than 14,330 pounds (6,500 kg) at launch. Between 2012 and 2018, the report says, 13 percent of all commercial telecommunications satellites will weigh more than 14,330 pounds, while another 27 percent will weigh between 12,125 pounds and 14,330 pounds (5,500-6,500 kg).

     

    Envisat weighs in at 17,636-pounds and is the biggest around. The ISS weighs some 450 tonnes but we are pretty much launching more than that every year and we must be coming close to that figure for sats going zombie each year. Thousands of tons of highly refined metal that is already in orbit. All we need is the craft ot retrieve and the fuel for course corrections.

     

    But for this to happen there would have to be the political will and commitment to remain in space on a permanent basis. An acceptance that it isn't just for an experiment, or to see what is there, but the natural next step on our journey away from the planet that gave us life.

  11. "Can you name some? I expect that they do exist but I'd like to see some proof that right wing groups exist that take funding and direction from foreign powers. "

    Ooh! What happened there? did someone somehow redefine "traitor" as meaning those that "take funding and direction from foreign powers. "?

     

    Lets go back to the dictionary shall we?

    Traitor: a person who betrays another, a cause, or any trust.

     

    So, for example, that might mean anyone who says the health service is safe in their hands, but, having got into power, seeks to privatise it.

    How about the current Prime minister of the UK?

     

    He was, I think it's fair to say, involved in right wing groups as a student.

     

    Nice try on the bait and switch. I only used traitor in connection with one definition. I provided you with a list of 200 people who took money and direction from an inimical foreign power during the Cold War but that wasn't "good enough". So I supplied you a direct link to the NSA where you could peruse the documents and see for yourself. Similarly I gave you a list from the US Attorney General of "front" organisations that were operating in the West while funded and directed by Moscow.

     

    And the best you can come up with in a response is a politician who doesn't keep a promise? Shit, would you like some of ours? We've got a Prime Minister that could stand in the shade of a corkscrew. Hell, take the redheaed twit and we'll throw in 5 scottish union organisers for free.

     

    You asked me to "name names" and I did. How about you providing some proof of right wing groups that werre or are operating in Western nations with funding and under direction by a foreign power. Come on mate, you're a Pom. You seriously don't think that a group in say, 1941, that was recieving funding and direction from Berlin wouldn't be considered "Traitor"?

  12. Democrats give money away to poor people...

     

    Republicans give money away to the rich....

     

    And that is exactly why you guys have problems. Too many people believe this fallacy to be true. If it means campaign dollars or whatever else, then Democrats will very happily give money to the rich as well. Look into your sugar subsidies, who is getting the money and from which side the Senators are from that make sure those rich continue to benefit.

     

    Why don't people understand that both sides are made up of Politicians? These are members of a sub species caused by the illigitimate coupling of a lawyer with a used car salesperson and barely classify as human and are only extremely rarely "sentient" or "Sapiens". For the love of Thor you have Republicans who think the planet is 6,000 years old and Democrats who wonder if islands will capsize if too many people go to it. The knowledge of reading and writing, especially proper, joined up writing is beyond most of them. They will do or say whatever they have to to gain or keep power. That is how the game is played by both sides.

  13. What hiatus? 11 of the 12 warmest years on record have been since 2000. How is that "misleading"? Over the last 10 years there should have been some very noticeable cooling, if this cyclical hypothesis is correct. It's not there.

     

    Compare the period say 1993-2003, it was warming. Since 2003 at least it's done no warming. The temps plateued. To try to run the slope out to 2012 is like taking the last 20,000 years and running the warming out to the present rather than the actual end of the Ice Age. By your argument, we are still "warming" after exiting the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago. And if your all powerful CO2 idea was right there should have been quite noticable warming. It's not there either. Oh wait, I'm sorry, I forgot the magical "aerosols" that let you have any answer you want.

     

    You see I'm having trouble keeping up with the stories and how it's supposed to work. The decrease in aerosols led to warming from CO2, but the lack of warming since 2000 odd is due to the increase in aerosols. That was the increase that the IPCC noted as going from 73 to 54 TgS yr–1 between 1980 and 2000. But that's a decrease and should have led to warming since 2000, but it didn't because.........Oh yes, that's right, SO aerosols are actually twice as strong a forcer as we thought and so even though the amount reduces the cooling effect can increase.

     

    Have a look at the graph. Any way you want to slice it the temps have been hanging around the .2 anomaly since at least 2003. They haven't gone anywhere even though CO2 has continued to increase.

     

    I recall the comments, and how they are quite dishonestly represented out of context. IIRC, that discussion has already taken place. Jones did not say that warming has stopped — he was discussing statistical significance — and Trenberth's comment was on the lack of instrumentation.

     

    Not quite, and not dishonest. Trenberths comment was about instrumentation. Since there was a lack of warming, and based on his "Energy Budget" the energy was "missing" (it still is BTW) he complained that there was no instrumentation to show where the missing heat had gone. Of course there is the simple idea that his "budget" is wrong and the missing heat doesn't exist and therefore hasn't gone anywhere. IIRC the latest theory is that the missing heat has passed from the top of the ocean to the 3,000 m level without passing or registering on any ARGO bouy as it went past. Incredibly handy that the models "show" the warming is occurring in the one place that our instruments can't check isn't it? It does make sense though, every other place the models "showed" the heat had gone to our instruments could check and we found the heat hadn't gone there. The abyssal depths were the only place left for it to be hiding.

     

    It's like ancient cultures putting their Gods into the sky. They have to be there because if they were "over the mountain" some silly bugger would walk over the hill and have a look.

     

    What data? I was talking about pollution and CFCs. Air and drinking water quality and the ozone layer were all negatively affected by human action, and improved with further human action. We are not powerless to affect nature.

     

    My apologies, I thought we were talking about global climate, you were just talking about crap in a creek and local air quality. :D

  14. I finally had the time to watch those two. They are certainly some of the best I've seen, going through the whole shebang without any hype.

     

    The sections talking about the whys and why nots of what went on in the 50s and later is logically and well presented. The psychological look at why so many in the science field have a "gut" rejection of the idea is also interesting.

     

    The parts of the second vid concerning the Fermi Paradox are extremely well argued. "Why haven't they made contact?" "Why should they? What do they have to gain except our destruction?"

     

    I thoroughly recommend these vids to anybody with even a passing interest in the subject.

     

    There is, I believe only one way to evaluate the phenomena and it should be done on a case by case basis with a series of two value questions. The answers to each question are complete and mutually exclusive;

     

    Q1. Is the reported "object" real or imagined? (These ar the only possibilities.) With a simple visual sighting we cannot rule out "imagined" but if there is corroborating evidence from other observers, films, radar, etc then we can call it "real".

     

    Q2. If real, is it a natural or manufactured object? Again mutually exclusive. A bit harder here as it could be a natural phenomenon that we simply don't understand or know how to describe. But I think we can assume that if it is clearly seen and shown to have "non natural" characteristics then we can conclude it to be "manufactured".

     

    Q3. If manufactured, who made it? The only possibilities are either "human" or "non human" construction.

     

    And that is where peoples minds grind to a halt. They would rather believe that the large silvey object that just flattened their water tower was a rogue cloud of swanp gas because they know that if it was manufactured, then it could not possibly have been made by us. They bypass common sense and logical analysis because they emotionally reject where the logic will inevitably lead them.

     

    To wit. Rather than being some sort of "favoured by God" and "Lords of Creation" we are low man on Totem Pole and could be squashed like a bug if other races so desired. Realisation of insignificance hurts some egos. :P

  15. (And I do realise the controversy around the effectiveness of cloud seeding (particularly in regards to solving water issues), however it has been reported to have caused rain before to some extent by various sources which is enough to demonstrate the point

     

    And I can name at least two witches who you never allow to call water in a circle because every time they have done so the area they were in was flooded. We have zero control over the weather and cloud seeding can only work if nature provides all the correct conditions first. A similar situation to the old joke about the scientist that tells God man is now his equal. God suggests he prove it by fashioning life from dirt and so the scientist picks up a handful and starts working. God says "Uh uh. Make your own dirt." :D

     

    This resulted in increased UV transmittance NOT increased temperature. Whilst they are greenhouse gases I was under the impression that they are not nearly as important as CO2 H2O and methane?

     

    The importance is not as a GHG. Climate is a very complex system and one part of this complexity is that incoming UV is "converted" at the surface to outgoing IR. So if the UV increases then so does the temperature. This is why arguments about the lack of variability of Solar output are often moot. It's not whether the total solar radiation has changed or not, but whether the composition has changed. If there is a decrease in frequencies that don't change to IR at the surface and an increase in those that do, then even though total output is the same, there will be a warming effect.

     

    People who argue that incoming radiation is holding steady at about 1364W/M-2 are only looking at half the story.

     

    I do wonder if the composition thing is part of the answer to why we get Ice Ages etc. Clouds and WV are very effective at blocking IR, just note how the temperature drops when a cloud passes in front of the Sun on a hot day. Solar radiation that is more in the IR than UV shining onto a cloudy world won't have a lot reaching the surface and things would get cold pretty quickly. It takes the UV to penetrate the clouds and become IR to keep the planet warm. If it's 5 degrees cooler on a cloudy day and we are only 1 degree above "Little Ice Age" temps it doesn't take a lot of cloud to make life difficult.

  16. The magic is in the cherry-picking. Pick the trough and a following peak to show an increase. Pick your exact points to fine-tune the value.

     

    I would have to argue that choosing any point except the peak and trough would be cherry picking. If I'm looking at an amplitude I use the peak and trough, not some arbitary point on the curve.

     

    Cyclical? Only if you don't have the same period. Why does the first cycle only have a 19-year increase? And the last one, despite the arrow ending when it does, at 40 (and counting)? I can show a polynomial fit if you give me enough terms.

     

    Due to the sparsity of instruments in the period 1850-1860 I personally have doubts about that part of the curve. The period of warming could have been longer (and is IIRC in the CRU graphs) but doesn't show properly due to lack of data. I can't agree with the 40 (and counting) as I'm averse to such "creative" accounting. As was pointed out in this article some time ago the slope from 1975-1998 is .166 degrees yet the slope from 1975-2009 is only .161 degrees. The lesser slope over the longer period is due to the hiatus in warming since about 2000. So to say the warming period is "still" going on is misleading to say the least.

     

    If you don't think the warming period stopped, then you're pretty much on your own on that. Everyone else from Phil Jones to Kevin Trenberth has said it stopped some time ago. Remember the "travesty" comment? "We can't account for the lack of warming....."

     

    And I'll save you the time. Here's the 4th order polynomial from 1979 onward (Sorry it's so big);

    UAH_LT_1979_thru_June_2012.png

     

    I thought the powerless against nature theory took a hit with all the pollution that we had, that finally required the EPA in the US, and also with the CFC levels affecting the ozone. We've shown we can affect nature.

     

    I don't think the data shows that at all. Between 1980 and 2000 as the above quote from AR4 shows, America reduced its output from 12 to 8 TgS yr-1 a reduction of only 4 Tgs yr-1. During the same period Asia increased from not much (although there seems to be a lack of actual data on this) to 17 Tgs yr-1. Given the massive industrial expansion throughout Asia in the last 30 years the increase in their output more than compensates for the reductions made by the West. The problem is that aerosol amounts are not actually measured but are estimated from fossil fuel consumption. Unless you get right down to who burnt what amount from where along with a decent analysis of each different type of coal etc available, then all you get are very wide estimate marks. This was shown by the IPCC estimate which is pretty much + or - 20%.

     

    And the actions of the US are really obvious in the records as well;

    June-US-sfc-temps-USHCN-vs-ISH-PDAT-1973-2012.png

     

    Yep, I can really see that temperature rise since you cleaned up the air..........Oh, wait......

     

    So temps must have soared since you cleaned up the air, the States must have set a lot of new records for warmth recently;

    state_records.jpg

     

    Okay, well at least the 2000s must be high on the list of record setters, right? I mean you've just had (or are having) a heatwave;

    state_records_table2.jpg

     

    swansont, I just don't see that the data supports a causal relationship concerning the aerosols. By first order logic and "Rule of Thumb" you would expect something but the actual reductions weren't that much at all worldwide, only 15% or so, so it's a long bow to draw to say that this had such a major effect. And it's very obvious that it had no appreciable effect at all in the USA. And I really can't see how the claim could be made that cleaning up the mess in the West could have a global but not local (regional) effect. That would make no sense at all.

     

    I've also hit comments recently but haven't been able to find a confirming paper, that human CFCs might not have been as important as we once thought, which puts us back into the "powerless" category. Don't you find it a little odd that people are claiming great effects on the climate system from miniscule changes to a trace gas when we can't even make it rain when we want? We can influence the entire system, apparently to destruction yet cannot influence any weather phenomenon in any way. With the possible exception of a meteor strike we have exactly zero ability to effect any natural disaster in any way, but we can modify the entire system.

  17. Since the warming started in around 1850 how in hell is showing the temp rise from 1850-2010 "Cherry picking"? It's the entire period of interest. Ans if that is "Cherry Picking" what do you call it when people only look at the period 1980-2000?

     

    What the graph shows is that the three periods of warming since 1850 have exactly the same slope, .160/decade. Of these three warmings the first is supposed to be totally natural, the second is a mix of both natural and Anthro influence and the third is supposed to be almost entirely anthro. What it also demonstrates is that the simplest answer, that there is a 60 year oscillation around a baseline rise of .5degrees/century provides the closest match to the actual temperature record. IIRC the correlation is around .85. To go the anthro route you have to believe that quite a lot of unrelated things just happened to happen at exactly the right time and with exactly the right influence in a manner of such fine precision as to virtually prove the existence of God.

     

    I'd really like someone to explain the magical process by which the three warmings are identical even though the causes vary so much because it ain't in the literature. Is there some magical limiting factor that stops warming from being more than .16 degrees? I doubt it because the long records show that world temps have changed a lot faster than that. So why are the three the same? Co-incidence? Here's a thought. Maybe the anthro influence is much smaller than we thought and most of the rise since 1850 has been natural. There's ascary theory, that mankind is relatively powerless against the forces of nature.

     

    and pollution effects that cause cooling that were reduced in the 1970s

     

    Of course the same pollutants were climbing sky high out of Asia at the time so I guess only Western pollutants are bad? sulfates are the ones we are concerned about here and are discussed in Section 2.4.4.1 of AR4.

    Estimates of global SO2 emissions range from 66.8 to 92.4 TgS yr1 for anthropogenic emissions in the 1990s and from 91.7 to 125.5 TgS yr1 for total emissions. Emissions of SO2 from 25 countries in Europe were reduced from approximately 18 TgS yr1 in 1980 to 4 TgS yr1 in 2002 (Vestreng et al., 2004). In the USA, the emissions were reduced from about 12 to 8 TgS yr1 in the period 1980 to 2000 (EPA, 2003). However, over the same period SO2 emissions have been increasing significantly from Asia, which is estimated to currently emit 17 TgS yr1 (Streets et al., 2003), and from developing countries in other regions (e.g., Lefohn et al., 1999; Van Aardenne et al., 2001; Boucher and Pham, 2002). The most recent study (Stern, 2005) suggests a decrease in global anthropogenic emissions from approximately 73 to 54 TgS yr1 over the period 1980 to 2000, with NH emission falling from 64 to 43 TgS yr1 and SH emissions increasing from 9 to 11 TgS yr1. Smith et al. (2004) suggested a more modest decrease in global emissions, by some 10 TgS yr1 over the same period.

     

    Note the wide range of the estimates mentioned, from 66.8 to 92.4 TgS yr-1. So plus or minus about 20% we've got that figure nailed down. We can't get aerosols nailed down to within 20% but we can with "high confidence" say that X% of the .8% change in forcing since 1850 is due to those aerosols. Gotta love post modern science.

     

    Many people like to point to the aerosols figures and say "See, we cleaned up the air and the temps went up" but we didn't clean up the air as the IPCC admits. Smith et al 2004 suggest the emissions were reduced from 73 TgS yr-1 by only 10 TgS yr-1 which is around a 15% reduction globally for the period 1980-2000, hardly cleaning up the air. You have to believe in a very finely balanced climate system to think that such a small change in SO2 emissions could have such a large effect. Of course, if you believe the climate system is so extremely finely balanced and fragile you then have to explain how, with all the perurbing factors (including very large meteorite strikes) it hasn't been thrown permanently out of kilter sometine in the last 4 billion years. And so we come back to magic and the "Will of God" keeping the fragile balance of nature, otr some such malarky.

  18. Three words:

     

    Drunken

    Dinosaur

    Jousting

     

    Hmmmm, and the funny thing is that I was just talking today to an electrical/mechanical engineer who had just retired and was looking for a hobby project. ;)

  19. iNow, it probably is as simple as he is (or seems to be) a straight shooter. In the bit with the reporter or whoever it was questioning him, he dismissed the stupid question as stupid. (Of course you can't find "Attack America" in a book written in the 8th Century. If you could even you would be considering conversion. :D ) He was able to follow up with dates and places.

     

    He was just doing what people do when someone claims Christianity is a religion of peace. The only logical response is "Since when?"

     

    The incident in Iraq (I remember reading about it at the time) has both good and bad points. It probably was the wrong thing to do, but if you are short on time and the lives of your men are at risk..... Right or wrong, the incident shows that when the chips are down he values the lives and safety of his men above rules or his own advancement. Sort of indirectly saying that he'd rather risk a court martial than lead his men into an ambush that he could have avoided. Noblesse oblige is something that conservatives respond to.

     

    Consider the stereotypes of the "Leaders" of the two sides. The right wing leader is depicted as "Gung Ho" and all "Follow me men, let's get them!" while the left wing leader is depicted as saying "Onwards comrades! Viva la revolution!" while crouching behind a rock wearing the only really arrow proof helmet.

     

    The more somebody resembles the first stereotype, for want of a better term, the "John Wayne" type, the more conservatives like them. I don't know a good term for it, "style" maybe? But it's the difference between a leader that says "You are hereby ordered to invade Hell and capture Satan" and the one who says "I'm going to Hell to kick Satans butt. Who's coming with me?" Only one of those statements works in the Dukes trademark drawl. :D

  20. John, as I've repeatedly used terms like "in the pay of a foreign power" or "under the direction of a foreign power" and have at no time commented on left wing groups in general, then yes you are being obtuse. You are deliberately taking comments pertaining to a subset of left wing groups and attempting to say that I'm applying them to all left wing groups.

     

    I say to both you and Moontanman that I have at all times used only the dictionary definition of "traitorous". I don't give a pair of fetid dingos kidneys what definitions others use and I expect as a simple matter of courtesy that my words are read as I write them and without implications derived from some useless freaking american extreme right wing agenda.

     

    If you want to reply to whatever glen beck or similar would say then go to a forum that he frequents, but at least be honest and reply to what I actually say and not what you infer I said.

     

    Because the universities are also where the traitorous right wing groups recruit.

     

    Can you name some? I expect that they do exist but I'd like to see some proof that right wing groups exist that take funding and direction from foreign powers.

     

    BTW, how are you going with the intercepts? Getting a good list yet?

     

    Moontanman;

    And my point is that traitors are more likely to be defined by the conservatives, anyone who disagrees with them risks being labeled a traitor. They care not for the dictionary definition...

     

    Again we are dealing with fundamentally different ideas here. In the US being in the employ of a foreign power has nothing to do with being labeled a traitor... all you have to do is disagree with some part of their ideology and you are a traitor, they tend to make up their own definitions as they go along and generally fail to make that distinction...

     

    As I said above, I think it only common courtesy that my words be read as I write them and not interpreted through the lens of what some american right wing BS artist says. I have repeatedly and specifically used the term "traitorous" to mean organisations that were funded and directed by a foreign power inimical to the West.

     

    Bluntly, if you wish to discuss something with me, then discuss it with me and don't try to use my comments as some sort of proxy for american conservatives. I don't care what american conservatives (batshit crazy or otherwise) say and mean, my comments are what I say and mean and I do expect them to be taken as such.

     

    Being secrete in no way determines that you are a traitor or selling out the country, sometimes it just means you have to hide from conservative bastards that want to stop you from undermining their efforts to sell the country out on a huge economic level.

     

    Quite true, but irrelevent. you said that there weren't "Reds under the bed" the simple truth is that there were. Sorry, but you were wrong.

     

    Trying to secure universal heath care makes you a communist traitor...

     

    Exactly. And as you may have noticed from threads on that very issue, I'm a "Communist traitor". :D I'm still trying to work out whether to laugh or be insulted at the american right calling Australia a "Socialist" or "Communist" country. On the one hand it is quite insulting due to our strong anti communist stance but on the other it is so incredibly stupid that you just can't frame an adequate response.

     

    Frankly from the outside both sides over there are in deep sh*t. The conservative gene pool is in dire need a large dose of chlorine and the progressives....... Well any bunch that can control the Congress, the Senate and the Presidency and still fails to get its Bills through would have to be the very definition of "useless".

     

    We are indeed operating on different sides of the world JohnB

     

    Yup. One of the problems with international forums is that we have to keep reminding ourselves that just because someone is from the "left" or "right" they aren't from my "left or right". ;) I know that our left wing are batshit crazy but I live in hope that this is a local phenomena.

     

    I just can't shake the idea that your right and our left were fighting each other to be first through the door on the day that "Stupid" was being handed out.

  21. I don't know whether to curse or thank you. :P

     

    You're about to chew large amounts of my time, but the uploader on youtube has a real trove of classic 1940/50s movies. Realplayer is running hot downloading them. :D

     

    And his website has the first 9 eps of the original "Lone Ranger"!!!! Awesome.

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