While its true that the earth is getting warmer

So is mars, jupiter, and the rest of the solar system

We don't drive cars on those planets.

Its because the sun goes through cycles.

http://www.livescience.com/environme...s_warming.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...s-warming.html

The earth has also been dramatically cooler in the past, as we all know.

It wasn't cars and humans that melted the glaciers that formed the great lakes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

All that the man-made global warming myth is about is doing things like creating carbon taxes, cap and trade, and further centralizing control over nations and people

dusting, its occam's razor - reading that article it seems like the "sun" could be blamed for it; while with global warming, we have the cause staring us in the face

edit; pirates could also be the cause of warming too

I won't turn atak's thread into a debate about this. I just wanted to respond to atak's statement. However, I think you're horribly misusing occam's razor here.

heh; its been misused everywhere

can't argue with that

The Earth has been cooler. The Earth has been warmer. Both undeniable. Read my post again: the question is what's doing it, what effect it will have, and whether, if the effect is bad, we can do anything about it. Even if it were true that the Ice Age glaciers melted as fast as they're doing now, it wouldn't matter: there were no people around at the time to have their homes flooded, their crops destroyed, and so on. Bagladesh, which will soon be mostly under water if the trend continues, didn't have a population of 160 million. Even if it were part of a natural cycle, that would be cold comfort to the billion people who would be displaced for a few millennia.

As I said above: I can personally see the change in certain things in my own lifetime. These are things that intuition, which is admittedly flawed but means something, should say wouldn't change rapidly. Glaciers and icecaps receding a hundred or a thousand times faster than it is physically possible for them to grow may be normal, but probably not.

If this kind of wild fluctuation were normal, there would have been far more extinctions over time than we think there have been. There have been only tow or three times in the history of the Earth when its flora and fauna changed as rapidly as it is now doing, and we don't know whether those "sudden" changes took place over a few hundred years or a hundred thousand.

The details are not known, but when 95% of the climate scientists in the world, from a dozens of countries, agree that something unusual is going on, vast global conspiracy is not the most likely explanation.


Meanwhile, I'm about the last person on Earth who would hide or fudge the truth to benefit some subset of the population — and my own data say it's happening. Birds are nesting differently, flying differently. Polar bears are not able to eat when they used to be. The world is tilting, and anyone who looks closely can see it happening.

You are officially welcome in my well any time. This is great.

What do you think about Bill Belichick's decision to go for the first on 4th down with 2 mins left in the game instead of punting it?

I agree with Dustin.

Consensus does not have anything to do with science.

It may be that man is influencing global temperature but the layered explanation which relies upon inference upon assumption upon modelling in a relatively new branch of scientific study - does not merit the level of certainty espoused by promoters of this theory.

The basic argument that is being used is not reliant upon Occam's razor. It is the "precautionary principle" that lays at the heart of the proposition that we need to do something about our way of life.
The fact that it is going to require fundamentally regressive pricing structures and compulsory enforcement of a draconian regulatory environment should give us all pause for thought.

Just as man made God in his own image, it should suprise none that we seek a anthropocentric explanation for changing weather patterns - now that God is dead in elite thought.

is the movie 2012 true... is the world really going to end

This is all great. I have to do a debate on Climate Change for IR class.

Well, since we're politicking anyway, let's lay some things out there. My views:

• Taxes should be higher. Very high, on rich people. Not only because it works, but also because I believe large disparities in wealth are bad in and of themselves.
• Inheritance taxes should be approximately 100%. Privilege is bad — it causes people to resent each other, and in some case can be inefficient (though that's much less important). It should not matter who one's parents were.
• Americans' insistence that they should be allowed to own whatever guns they want is absurd. private gun ownership should be unlawful for essentially everyone. However, and here's the part on which no one will disagree, this is not an issue that's critical to work out in the next generation or two, and therefore I will live without argument with the status quo.
• Abortion is good. If a potential child's parents think it would be better if it weren't born, they're probably right. However, Roe v. Wade is not only badly written, it's not at all clear that it's right as a matter of Constitutional law. I believe the decision will be at the very least substantially weakened in the next couple decades.
• The state should offer everyone decent health care and education, free of charge. (If you give me what I want regarding taxes, I can see changing on this one.) It should also ensure that every child has enough to eat and a decent place to live. As for adults, they make their choices, including if they wish the choice not to work and therefore to starve.
• Our (US again) history in terms of race relations is stupidly bad, but private actors should be allowed to discriminate in whatever way they want. (This applies to race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, handicaps, everything.)
• Government, on the other hand, should not be permitted to discriminate on the above bases at almost any time or for almost any purpose. Don't ask, don't tell — you're out the day I take office.
• There should be a draft, of 100% of the population. Not for military purposes per se, though that would be an option — the point would be that everyone has to serve, say, two years doing something hard and unpleasant, for essentially zero wages, in the service of the greater good. Failure to do so would mean not being granted the privileges of citizenship.
• No country should support a country militarily unless it supports its fundamental approach. If Kuwait, say, is our ally, we'd better be comfortable with how the country treats its citizenry.

That's a start. What the hell, have at it — but let's not forget that this is a well, and I still have lots to say and, as far as I know, plenty of question to answer.

I saw a study recently of NFL coaches' decision to go for it on fourth down, and the result was clear that they are terrible at this decision. Leaving aside end of game considerations, it is rational to go for it much, much more liberally than any coach does — up to 4th and 7 at some parts of the field. the theory, which is much harder to prove, is that they don't want to make decisions that will stand out when the result is bad, even when the decision-making process to get there was correct.

Given that, I'd say that if a decent coach is arguing for going for it more often (in a different situation, admittedly), he's probably right. Also, my intuition (wish is way worse than his regarding football, I certainly hope), says he's right.

So there you have it. Go for it.

Um... probably not quite that soon. What was the cause that was advanced?

The followup to the kayaking story:

I didn't get my shoulder fixed right away. The following year I really, really wanted to do the Burnt Ranch Gorge run on the Trinity river — that's a class IV+ run that's known to be particularly dangerous. But I couldn't find anyone who could go, the one time the water was running high enough. So I went alone. And when I got to the river, there was no one else putting in (a mild surprise, as it's an incredibly beautiful and fun run that isn't runnable very often), I put in alone, and set out on my own down a run that I'd never seen.

Dustin can probably tell you that given my skills and physical state, this was about as dangerous as Russian roulette.

My shoulder was utterly trashed by then and my boating was bad, and more importantly I had no idea what was coming next. The three big rapids on the run are nasty, nasty, nasty, and full of those lovely undercut rocks, and I didn't even know when they were coming. Very luckily, another party put in after me and caught up to me. They knew the run, and I was able to make it without incident. But that was the last significant kayaking run I ever did, as it became clear that my shoulder couldn't handle it. (I had it reconstructed after that, but never went back to boating except to do a bit of teaching and playing in class III stuff.)

The point of all that ties into the question of whether I would give up my bipolar disorder. That was bipolar disorder that sent me out on a search for death. Had I not learned to control it (which I now have — I suppress essentially all of my thrill-seeking instincts) I would either be dead, or be likely to die some accidental death. Bipolar disorder kills people. It causes them to commit suicide, to get addicted to drugs or alcohol and overdose or run into trees, or to do idiotic and dangerous things like the above. that there are people who have it who thinks it is good is proof, to me, that people are very bad at estimating risks and doing cost/benefit analysis.


Meanwhile, I learned. I had to. The atakdog you all know is (most of the time — I've had trouble lately) calm and cool and rational when others are fighting or being ridiculous, and it's because I learned that I had to keep everything in check or I'd destroy everything, possibly literally. I am scrupulously honest because once upon a time I had trouble telling truth from falsehood. I have a code of honor that no reasonable person could hold himself too because poor impulse control caused me to do mean things to people. Maybe in that sense it's all worked out well, as I am sure I am a better person for having been through it all. But being a good person and being happy are not synonymous; I'm still trying to figure that part out.

The medical followup: eventually I got my shoulder reconstructed, though the surgeon said he didn't know how to fix the biceps tendon. (Actually, he said in a few years the techniques would exist.)

Two years later, I suffered a third degree separation of the same shoulder (separation ≠ dislocation: it's a different joint) in a touch football game necessitated another operation. I have a fair amount of metal in my shoulder, and there's a hole where a piece of my collarbone used to be. The fix wasn't perfect, and I have trouble throwing things — for example, teaching my boy to skip stones has me in pain for a couple days afterward.

The first shoulder operation, though not the second, was a bigger deal than my spinal surgery (fusion at C6-7), which surprised me quite a bit. (My only real surgery beyond those was when I was in high school, to repair damge from a crushed trachea I suffered in a wrestling match. I wish I could get surgery to fix my nose, which I hate since it changed shape as a result of the break, but I'm told it can't really be done.)

are the poles going to switch in 2012?

Point 1) Working hard so that your offspring have a better life is a good incentive to work hard. There are obvious other suggestions to this that I hope you reconsider if you ever become the ruler of the country or world.

2) This won't work because women will just go get knocked up when their time comes.

I'm no kayaker at all btw and only went several times at all this past summer, because some friends of mine in Missouri have gotten into it big time.

But all of the rivers that are really anything around there are in Arkansas.

I did however kayak on the Mississippi, which, while it doesn't have much rapids or rocks to trap you under, could probably kill you in some other ways

and great stuff btw

yeah, tax inheritance at 100% and incentive drops, productivity and innovation and risk taking drops

[x] in before someone realizes atak is a commie.

Re bipolar disorder sending you out in search of death...

You commented in a previous thread about a desire to deliberately get bitten or stung by poisonous animals, and shared a few stories about handling snakes and suchlike. Activities which certain passionate nature-lovers indulge in, but most of the rest of us would categorize as pure self-destruction.

Do you attribute those indicents and desires to the nature-loving, or the bipolar?

omg omg omg omg

lets tax everyone to death and then take their guns away so they can't revolt

then we'll kill off 95% of them

Bucky?

If you are honest with everyone, you will always know you were right even when things don't work out.

He's learning the importance of honesty as well as I can teach him: this summer we were in a meeting with a counselor and he was asked what the rules were at his hoes. At his mother's, he said there weer lots of things he couldn't do. What about with me? At first he said there were no rules at all, then when pressed, he said "Well, I guess just don't lie to Dad."


We had two possibilites picked out... but then in our post-partum exhaustion (it was a very long labor, and I was intimately involved in every second of it — she even said that I was her brain the entire time) they each seemed wrong. The name he wound up with popped into my head out of nowhere — no family connection, no real famous peiople with it, nothing. yet it was right — everyone has always thought so. (Yeah, I know, they're being nice.)

It's not a totally bizarre name, it's just uncommon enough I don't want this thread to come up in a Google search.

The really odd thing about his name is his surname: it's my mother's maiden name. His mother didn't like hers, I don't particularly love mine, and we didn't want to choose, so we picked a name we each liked. My grandfather, who cared about such things, had had three duaghters and the name had died laong that line, so he would have been pleased had he lived a couple years longer — but it was also particularly appropriate because for a while we lived with my grandmother (same side), who was alone in the woods after he died. She is the kindest person who has ever lived and loves nothing more than to help children, but K is special out of all her grandchildren and great grandchildren, of whom there are many, because with us there she had a chance to be closely involved in raising him — and he has her name.


Certainly, and it seems he may have — he's very clearly my son, including in some not-so-good way. But in a very important sense it will be better than it was for me, because his father knows. I was not correctly diagnosed until my mid-thirties, but he and I have already talked about the possibility. (He's 12.)

See extended answer somewhere in this thread.

Taking one's meds is hard for bipolars when they're manic, as you obviously realize. But for me the problems have been more that they don't work well, or have clearly intolerable side effects — he dulling of the highs isn't something that's bad, mainly because my highs simply aren't any fun. I do crazy things, but not because I'm elated, it's more because I'm anxious or angry or just flat-out crazy. (Not any more — I really have suppressed those things so well that not only don't I exhibit them, I don't often feel them, or at least not the worst of them.)


Basil, I suppose. But I don't cook often enough to matter.


When I do cook, I do either soups (a really heavy bean soup that is for no one but me, or a vichyssoise that is straight out of my old Joy of Cooking but that doesn't mean it isn't great) or risotto. Risotto al finocchio (fennel) is the best, but given a trip through the produce department I can whip up any number of combinations that are delicious — but that's cheating because risotto is so inherently great that as long as you know how to get the texture right, no one's ever complaining about it.

pls dont turn this into poiticking. if you want someone to argue about guns with PM me, don't ruin the well.