Strange

So computers aren't real. Cars aren't real. Animals aren't real. Trees aren't real. Stars and planets aren't real. Nothing is real. This doesn't seem like a very useful definition of the word "real" as it appears to have no referents.

No, I never said that. A cannonball is barely affected by the atmosphere so I have no idea what you are talking about. No, I never said that either. Judging by the rest of your post I think the answer to the question in the thread title may be in the affirmative.

While poverty is still a big problem it is worth noting that you only need an income of about $32,000 to be in the top 1%. So not especially rich. Also huge improvements have been made, and hopefully will continue to be made, in tackling poverty, health and education in the rest of the world.

But, as this is model is based on general relativity, you have to use the appropriate definition of acceleration, not the "common sense" one.

I am slightly disappointed. I thought we had an example of that rarest of beasts, the female physics crank. I have only encountered one before but then it turned out she was just trying to push her (late) father's personal theory and because she understood even less science than he did, she was not able to explain it or answer any questions about it. It sounds like we have a similar situation here. So the female psychoceramicist remains a myth ...

It is an informal definition, not a mathematical one, so in that sense it is wrong. This is where you are showing your disrespect to the hundreds of mathematicians who have worked to clarify these concepts (and the millions of students who have worked to understand them) - by dismissing them out of hand because their work does not jibe with your intuition and you are too lazy to learn. Did you stop at that point? Or did you make an attempt to learn something? Did you get as far as page 9:

The paper is all about evidence confirming the merging of galaxies and their black holes. That is how galaxies grow. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/691/2/L142/meta It is also about elliptical galaxies and therefore not relevant to our galaxy. You really should read more than the title of these articles.

The trouble is, because you post links and quotes with no comment, one can only assume that you are doing it because you agree with them. It would be helpful if, when you post something, you were to say "I agree with this because ..." or "I disagree with this because ..." Note the "because" part is important. So far you have given no meaningful reasons for your scepticism. OK, you have said that you doubt the models. But how familiar are you with those models? How familiar are you with other widely used models? Do you have a good (rational, well-informed) basis for doubting climate models above all others? Or is it just that some of your favourite writers and pundits doubt them? No. The messenger is being blaemd for the way she presents her message (or fails to). You have played the "why am I being attacked" card. Happy New Year to you too! And to everyone else.

But this is what I don't understand: if you don't think CO2 is responsible for climate change, why do you think new technology is required?

If that does happen, it might just slow down some of the effects of CO2. Which would obviously be welcome, to buy a bit of time if nothing else. But then the Sun's output will rise again and we will be back on the same track.

Being able to have a set with no members (often represented as {} ) is fundamental to set theory and therefore nearly all of mathematics. What is it then? Of course there is. I have no plutonium in my house. There is an absence of plutonium in my house.

I haven't heard that before. But there many cases of modern researchers doing this. For example: http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery

I wrote a much longer reply initially (because there is so much nonsense in this post). But let's just focus on this: What does this have to do with religion? In other words, what connection does religion have to "a husband and wife having a child"?

Yes. Not suicide.

Almost any explanation based on things that are known to exist must be better than one that relies on something that is not known to exist. Saying it is"Aliens!!1! is about as useful as saying it is unicorns, Santa Claus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

And it was answered the other day. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/89493-smoke-and-mirrors/page-8#entry898694

I suppose it depends how you define volume (this is not necessarily well-defined for an atom or molecule). One common concept is the van der Waals volume which looks to be about 0.5 x 10-27 m3 (Based on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene#Molecule)

過労死は自殺ではない。 Karoushi is not suicide.

Gosh. I wonder if that is because this is the "Philosophy" forum ... And the OP is notoriously sloppy in his use of words (among other things). In this case (as in many others) it made one of his questions meaningless. What do you think he was comparing rich people with? Badgers? I assumed they were two completely independent questions with no apparent connection between them. You have made a connection that I would never have thought of and might make for an interesting study. Incidentally, I said nothing about the dopamine question because it is not something I know anything about. I'm pleased to see that someone who does know something about has provided an illuminating response.

Wikipedia has a good article. Not surprisingly, most (all?) of them are fluorine compunds.

I certainly did not intend to do that. I hate that attitude. It is often used to argue against making post-mortem organ donation an opt-out decision ("oh it's not really a donation unless its voluntary"). Well, I'm sorry, organ donation isn't about making the donor feel good, it is about saving lives. I was simply pointing that the OP had not defined "best" and therefore his conclusions were ludicrous. I suspect you are wrong. But no doubt any examples of "altruism" will be claimed to be not "true altruism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

We can't control the environment but we can affect it (for better or worse). For example, if a volcano releases huge quantities of toxic gas or dust we can't stop it. But we can manage our own contributions. The same is true of the climate, which is obviously affected by the environment. Why do you think it has changed in the past if not because of changes in the environment? (For example, volcanoes releasing large quantities of gas and dust.) So why do you exclude this one aspect of the environment from our requirements to be responsible citizens of the planet? And why do you believe that the climate is so much more beyond our control than anything else?

You seem to have missed the point which, as I understand it, was that the combination of several factors make it harder to remain rational. Nothing was said about any other connection between the factors. But, of course, not all pain is purely physical. There is often a psychological component as well.

You are right, but I was only trying to clarify the definition of zero as the empty set (as used by Sato) rather than a member of a set, for the benefit of someone who is not familiar with formal mathematics terminology. (I hope you haven't caused even more confusion with your clarification!)

I didn't say you misused or misrepresented it. I jut pointed out that it is a product of modelling. And you have expressed a lot of scepticism of models. It seems slightly hypocritical to attack climate science by using the models that you think are its weakest point. You do realise that the graph you used does not show the collected data? It shows that data interpreted via models to generate a temperature record. (None of that data is actual temperatures.) Why don't you think the same uncertainty applies to reconstructions of past climate change (where we have a lot less data) as you think applies to our understanding of the current climate? Climate change is ongoing. But is not random. It is caused by (and has always been caused by) a number of different factors. The amount of radiation from the sun, the amount of cloud cover, the amount of various gases in the atmosphere, volcanoes, how much ice there is (complicated feedback mechanisms there) and many other factors. Why do you think that attempting to understand the role of all these different factors is disrespectful? Do you think that any attempt by science to understand (and model) the natural world is disrespectful? And no, we are not in control, but like all the other components of the natural world, we can affect the world. It is, surely, responsible to try and understand what effects we might have? And then to reduce that, where possible. We have done that with acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, reducing the amount of waste going to landfill, reducing the spread of potentially invasive species from one country to another, and so on. These have all required modelling to identify the problem and possible solutions. Were these all disrespectful to nature? Climate science will not determine the future. But it can help us understand what might happen in the future so we can make better choices. How will people be able to plan to adapt and cope if we don't use climate models to try and understand what is happening? Without that, people will not be able to start taking action until the effects become apparent. By then it may be harder and more expensive to make the required changes.