Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 7:36 PM, wrote: > My integrity is not the issue, > Yes it is, since you made an error in your reading of the Royal Society/National Academy of Sciences paper, and instead of admitting the error you simply ignore the issue even when I repeatedly question you about it. > for someone who states- > *This all falls under "gossipy political speculations about human > motivations", I'm not interested in dragging this stuff into a conversation > about natural science* > Not sure what connection you think there is between this statement of mine and "integrity". Would you respect my integrity more if I made up unfalsifiable fantasy narratives about the nefarious motives of conservatives and global warming deniers to counter your equally unfalsifiable fantasy narratives about the nefarious motives of liberals and environmentalists? > Again, its science when its on your own terms, and it suits your > ideology. > Not at all, as I said to John Clark I treat it as the default position that whenever scientists in a field of natural science express confidence about ANY technical claim in their field, and there doesn't seem to be substantial disagreement among them, then my starting assumption is that they are most likely right about this claim (an assumption I would only be likely to change if I acquired enough knowledge the field to understand the detailed basis for the claims myself and find technical reasons to doubt them, or if I found out that some substantial number of other scientists disputed the claim). This is a blanket view of all natural science claims that has nothing to do with political ideology, for example I have no patience with the view (all too common among those on the left) that GMOs are a dangerous health risk since all the scientific experts I've seen say that extensive study has shown no more health risks from GMOs than from crops created through selective breeding. Anyone who does NOT adopt this blanket view of scientific claims is almost certainly filtering their evaluations of science through their personal ideology, and lacking respect for the importance of detailed technical understanding when evaluating scientific issues. I suspect your understanding of the detailed evidence behind many other scientific claims, like estimates of the age of the universe in cosmology, is just as poor as your understanding of the evidence surrounding global warming, but I imagine you don't put forth fantasy narratives of cosmologists peer-pressuring each other into accepting each other's models and wildly exaggerating the strength of the evidence for their theories, presumably because you have no ideological reason to dispute the idea that the Big Bang happened 13.75 billion years ago. Unless you are equally skeptical about *all* scientific claims whose technical basis you don't understand, you have a clear double standard--mistrust the scientists when their claims conflict with your ideology, but trust them when there is no such ideological conflict. > Your nuclear energy remediation proposal will be violent opposed by your > green chums, so it becomes, effectively, no answer. > Certainly there are plenty of "greens" who oppose nuclear power (and examples like Fukushima show the risks are not to be scoffed at, although they are mainly risks to human health rather than environmental risks), but also plenty of greens who have come around to the view that nuclear power is a lesser evil when compared to fossil fuels, see for example this article that details many leading environmentalists who have become more nuclear-friendly (I suspect the number would be higher if we had thorium reactors, which should be significantly safer): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/23/AR2009112303966.html Meanwhile, you completely ignored my point about it being well within the range of possibility to get all our energy from solar. > I will prove your prediction correct with pure volition. I read the Nature > realclimate link, article and my take away is its a struggle to try to > figure out where the IPCC predictions went wrong? Was it el nino, heat > sinks in the Pacific, etc. > I'm glad you at least looked at it, but as with the Royal Society/National Academy of Sciences paper, your understanding of what you read seems to be quite poor (perhaps because you read with the attitude of "looking for flaws" rather than just trying to understand what's being argued). No one says the cooling is because of El Niño, but rather because La Niña has replaced El Niño for a while (part of a long-term cycle called 'pacific-decadal oscillation'), and the La Niña stage is thought to be ASSOCIATED WITH more heat being stored in the pacific, not a separate phenomenon that could be construed as a conflicting explanation. From the link at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/12/the-global-temperature-jigsaw/-- "Leading U.S. climatologist Kevin Trenberth has studied
Re: The Dalai Lama's Ski Trip
On 13 Mar 2014, at 7:44 am, John Mikes wrote: > Kim, during my escapades in 1944 anti-nazi underground I met a bum in Nazi > uniform who p[roclaimed: "I was SSOOO happy when I killed those Jews" > I s that really the MEANING OF LIFE? > JM Happiness is an emotion. When all the nonsense and debate and philosophical navel-gazing have run their course, the simple fact remains that happiness is a QUALE. In other words, if you feel happy then you are happy. If killing Jews or killing Americans or killing whales and dolphins, killing flies and cockroaches is what floats your boat then that is indeed an on-ramp to happiness for whomever has worked out how to purchase happiness in this way without incurring any personal cost to themselves. I am perfectly certain that a great many humans derive a degree of happiness from destroying the lives of other humans. This has been happening since Adam wore short pants, anyway. The question of whether or not MY happiness is something that has no cost for YOU is an entirely different matter. By the way, the phrase "The Meaning of Life" is probably best left as a Monty Python movie title. But, I would contend, happiness has a lot to do with it. PS another phrase best left as a fairy story or a bad song title by the Sex Pistols (to momentarily confuse concurrent threads!) is "Money Cannot Buy Happiness". I say bullshit. Happiness is a quale, remember. Buy something that makes you happy. Money will buy cannabis, for example. If you inhale briefly the smouldering incense of burning cannabis you WILL become happy. And, in roughly 7.5 seconds. Kim Kim Jones B.Mus.GDTL Email: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au Mobile: 0450 963 719 Landline: 02 9389 4239 Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com "Never let your schooling get in the way of your education" - Mark Twain -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Dalai Lama's Ski Trip
On 3/12/2014 2:14 PM, LizR wrote: On 13 March 2014 09:47, John Mikes mailto:jami...@gmail.com>> wrote: Liz, please! don'[t you think "pursuit of happiness" is indeed "UNHAPPINESS"?? Why would a happy person pursue happiness? I would not vote for 'unhappiness' as the meaning of life, although it looks like it frequently. It's closer to a meaning than "happiness" imho. "Acheving happiness" could be a purpose, at least, although personally I still don't consider it a meaning. I'm not sure what sort of meaning life /could/ have. Meaning is generally something that is interpreted by a conscious entity, extracted from information, so the idea that life has a meaning more or less presupposes the existence of a God or something similar to whom our lives have some meaning (or at least purpose). Monty Python parodied this in "The Meaning of Life" by the way, although I forget what the exact meaning of life turned out to be. (It was along the lines of "take plenty of exercise, don't eat too much fatty food..." etc) "Meaning" implies referring to something else; a symbol means something when it stands in for it. Similarly for "purpose". You can have purposes, but they don't "mean" something. I think the right way to frame this kind of "ultimate" question is "What do you value?" Most people have different things they value. When they have enough leisure then they seek stimulation. Sometimes they want solace, sometimes companionship. There is no one "ultimate value", even for one person, much less for "mankind". Brent "People want their lives to have purpose without having to provide it themselves." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Tegmark and UDA step 3
Hi Bruno >> >> >>But that can only be a 3-1 description. She handles the 1p by a >> >> >>maximization of the interests of the copies, and that is equivalent >> >> >>with the FPI, without naming it. >> >>Funnily enough Bruno, if I was opportunistic I would just about accept >> >>that. I mean personally, I would argue that the vocabulary used is >> >>identical between you and Greaves and she explicitly denies your >> >>probability distribution from the first person perspective. >>I doubt this, as in the iterated self-duplication, her method get equivalent >>as justifying the "probability talk", even the usual boolean one. There is a difference between your account and the accounts of others mentioned. Theirs are attempts to over come charges of incoherence by positing some mechanism for deriving bare quantities that can act in the place of probability; yours is not. You write as if there genuinely are actual classical probabilities from the first person perspective. You don't appear to recognize that there is a problem in doing that. Even worse, you present the alleged existence of classical probability from the first person as some kind of surprising discovery. You try and turn a vice into a virtue. Any theory in which all outcomes definitely occur 'objectively' but only one gets experienced within any observation, though all outcomes are experienced in one observation or another, must have an account in which probabilities are derived in a non standard non classical way. Why? Because classically probability is based on the assumption of a disjunction between objective outcomes not a conjunction between objective outcomes. Alternatively, one can live with classical probability of 1 that all outcomes will be observed, and discuss how decisions would be made 'as if' the usual probabilities obtained. Either approach is just the first step in making a coherent account of probability in an Everetian picture or a TofE. But you don't do either. Ignoring a problem is not the same as solving it, surely? It seems to leave your account incomplete or perhaps even just incoherent. It looks to me as though Deutsch, Wallace, Saunders and Greaves are all on the train rushing towards the destination and you've been left on the platform going: 'Huh? Its just vocab isn't it?'. But its obvious that if you say Alice predicts spin up with a probability of 0.5 and others say she would predict spin up with probability 1, as Greaves does, even if she gets her 0.5 elsewhere, then there are most definitely structural differences between your accounts. Its not just vocab. Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:31:29 -0700 From: gabebod...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3 On Tuesday, March 11, 2014 10:38:23 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:OK. Me too. But modern physics has a strong mathematical flavor, and consciousness seems more to be an immaterial belief or knowledge than something made of particles, so, if interested in the mind body problem, the platonic perspective has some merit, especially taking into account the failure of Aristotelian dualism. That's an interesting topic, to be sure. Does comp actually help at all to solve the hard problem? When I think about it qualia, I have five main questions that I'd want a philosophy of mind to propose answers for. 1. What are qualia made of? 2. Why do patterns of ions and neurotransmitters crossing bilipid membranes in certain regions of the brain correlate perfectly to qualia? 3. How is a quale related to what it is about, under normal circumstances? What about when a quale is caused by artificially stimulated neurons, dreams, hallucinations, sensory illusions, mistakes in thought or memory, etc? 4. How can qualia affect the brain's processes, such that we can act on their information and talk and write about them? 5. How could we know that belief in qualia is justified? How could our instinctive belief in qualia be developed by correct and reliable brain processes? Chalmers' ideas, for example, involve answers to 1-3 that sound reasonable, but they stumble badly on 4-5. Comp and other mathematical Platonist ideas seem to me to give interesting answers to 2-4 but flub 1 and 5. -Gabe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.co
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
Seems to me that you are presenting an idealised world in which the elite behaves rationally. History shows this is far from true, with rulers partying or ordering the building of huge statues while while their crops failed, and insisted up until the last minute that nothing was wrong and business could continue as normal. The archaeological evidence is everywhere, according to Ronald Wright. On 13 March 2014 12:44, wrote: > You are presenting an idealized world view that scientists, that are > incorruptible, reasoned, unemotional, and lacking character flaws. That > can never enforce a conformity amongst themselves. Nobody in or out of > science is raving for dikes to be built along the worlds coastlines, or > moving to clean energy (that actually works), so that is not happening, and > I wonder why? > -Original Message- > From: Chris de Morsella > To: everything-list > Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 5:36 pm > Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating > > > > -- > *From:* "spudboy...@aol.com" > > >>Chris, unless you have of cash to influence politicians, or are > working as a climatologist and looking forward to a job in some > governmental agency, its all goose eggs. Your premise is that IPCC is > accurate, but there's a discrepancy, in what governmentals are saying and > proposing. > > Dude -- please. The graph of rates of extinction over time; the data on > species extinctions (past & current) has nothing to do with the IPCC > nadda, zilch. If you could please get this to somehow make it past the fog > of your ignorance that would be helpful. > > You have a strange idea of how science works. Thousands of field > biologists, working over many decades and even centuries now -- have > contributed to a growing body of basic data on species, including a census > (by far most species have never been discovered and are not cataloged yet). > This is where the raw extinction data is coming from... biologist field > assays & surveys. The IPCC has nothing to do with this at all. Inform > yourself before shooting your big mouth off. > > > >> My guess is they, > > Your "guess" is worse than useless... it is unfounded, ideologically > driven drivel... and I will leave it at that. To say anymore is merely > wasting words. > > Chris > > > like yourself, are calling danger to the dreadful climate change > man-bear-pig (South Park episode) but that danger doesn't seem to be > manifesting as predicted. You never asked me what I would do if AGW-Climate > manbearpig were true, and I was a governmental or mental. But from your > comments I clearly, got the message that you were disinterested/amused and > wanted to see how the riff raff would take your baiting. I baited back, and > so forth and so on sig transit Gloria Mundi ad naseum. You are > disinterested because you know what you want, and wanted obedience to your > faith. I grok that. You never provided any ideas yourself, beyond > conservation, when your fellow allies in academia, concluded that changing > energy systems won't mean a thing ( I disagree). So just let the EPA Nazis > have their way, and all will be fine :-) I, of course, disagree. > > > > > > Of course, I heartily agree that you are most disagreeable... the kind of > giant of clear headed human intellect, who responds to facts with > fulminations trailing off into nonsensical strings of words... a kind of Tea > Party inspired stream of consciousness. > I wouldn't expect anything less of you; nor more And that's the rub now, > isn't it? > Chris > > -Original Message- > From: Chris de Morsella > To: everything-list > Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 1:00 am > Subject: RE: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating > > > > *From:* everything-list@googlegroups.com [ > mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] > *On Behalf Of *spudboy...@aol.com > > Sorry Chris, in a world of nasty, stubborn, skeptics, unwilling to > genuflect at the great, green Gaia, expect lots of disagreeable people like > me. What you have put forth does not line up well with cause and effect, > but rather, ideology. I'll pass, thank you. > Of course, I heartily agree that you are most disagreeable... the kind of > giant of clear headed human intellect, who responds to facts with > fulminations trailing off into nonsensical strings of words... a kind of Tea > Party inspired stream of consciousness. > I wouldn't expect anything less of you; nor more And that's the rub now, > isn't it? > Chris > > > -Original Message- > From: Chris de Morsella > > > > > > -Original Message- > > From: everything-list@googlegroups.com > [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com ] > > On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com > > > > > > >>Jesus, Chris. You must think that people all fit into nice little shoe > >>boxes, > > easily, applied taxonimies. Yea vearilly, no. > > > > No just people, like you, who make non-sensical assertions such as:
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
You are presenting an idealized world view that scientists, that are incorruptible, reasoned, unemotional, and lacking character flaws. That can never enforce a conformity amongst themselves. Nobody in or out of science is raving for dikes to be built along the worlds coastlines, or moving to clean energy (that actually works), so that is not happening, and I wonder why? -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella To: everything-list Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 5:36 pm Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating From: "spudboy...@aol.com" >>Chris, unless you have of cash to influence politicians, or are working as a >>climatologist and looking forward to a job in some governmental agency, its >>all goose eggs. Your premise is that IPCC is accurate, but there's a >>discrepancy, in what governmentals are saying and proposing. Dude -- please. The graph of rates of extinction over time; the data on species extinctions (past & current) has nothing to do with the IPCC nadda, zilch. If you could please get this to somehow make it past the fog of your ignorance that would be helpful. You have a strange idea of how science works. Thousands of field biologists, working over many decades and even centuries now -- have contributed to a growing body of basic data on species, including a census (by far most species have never been discovered and are not cataloged yet). This is where the raw extinction data is coming from... biologist field assays & surveys. The IPCC has nothing to do with this at all. Inform yourself before shooting your big mouth off. >> My guess is they, Your "guess" is worse than useless... it is unfounded, ideologically driven drivel... and I will leave it at that. To say anymore is merely wasting words. Chris like yourself, are calling danger to the dreadful climate change man-bear-pig (South Park episode) but that danger doesn't seem to be manifesting as predicted. You never asked me what I would do if AGW-Climate manbearpig were true, and I was a governmental or mental. But from your comments I clearly, got the message that you were disinterested/amused and wanted to see how the riff raff would take your baiting. I baited back, and so forth and so on sig transit Gloria Mundi ad naseum. You are disinterested because you know what you want, and wanted obedience to your faith. I grok that. You never provided any ideas yourself, beyond conservation, when your fellow allies in academia, concluded that changing energy systems won't mean a thing ( I disagree). So just let the EPA Nazis have their way, and all will be fine :-) I, of course, disagree. Of course, I heartily agree that you are most disagreeable… the kind of giant of clear headed human intellect, who responds to facts with fulminations trailing off into nonsensical strings of words… a kind of Tea Party inspired stream of consciousness. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you; nor more…. And that’s the rub now, isn’t it? Chris -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella To: everything-list Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 1:00 am Subject: RE: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com Sorry Chris, in a world of nasty, stubborn, skeptics, unwilling to genuflect at the great, green Gaia, expect lots of disagreeable people like me. What you have put forth does not line up well with cause and effect, but rather, ideology. I'll pass, thank you. Of course, I heartily agree that you are most disagreeable… the kind of giant of clear headed human intellect, who responds to facts with fulminations trailing off into nonsensical strings of words… a kind of Tea Party inspired stream of consciousness. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you; nor more…. And that’s the rub now, isn’t it? Chris -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com >>Jesus, Chris. You must think that people all fit into nice little shoe boxes, easily, applied taxonimies. Yea vearilly, no. No just people, like you, who make non-sensical assertions such as: because they can hear tweety birds in their backyard, the global extinction rate cannot possibly be at 10,000 times the average background rate of extinction on this planet, because otherwise how could there still be tweety birds for our scientific observer to hear? Recent studies have estimated that there are around eukaryotic 8.7 million species on the planet -- and this is just the eukaryotic species (and then there are many millions of additional species of Archaea, Bacteria and all those proto-alive viruses). How many of these species do you think you can see in your backyard? Doe
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
Its fascinating to think of an ice world 400 million years before the rise of the dinos. -Original Message- From: LizR To: everything-list Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 5:34 pm Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating Snowball earth appears to have been due to a feedback loop (once you glaciate a significant amount of the planet, the rest follows). I don't know what the trigger was, however. A supervolcano is possible, blocking sunlight over a long enough period. On 13 March 2014 05:56, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 2:17 PM, wrote: >>> I think on the scale of 4 billion years the sort of margin we're talking >>> about is that necessary to keep water liquid on the surface. >> At least twice in the last 4 billion years water WAS kept below the freezing >> point at the surface, from the pole continuously to the equator and we had >> a snowball Earth. It happened once about 1.5 billion years ago and again >> about 700 million years ago; why it happened and once it did how things ever >> warmed up again is not well understood, just like most things in climate >> science. > I knew you'd say that. So what if there are two periods or more when liquid > water wasn't free running. Does that alter the fact that liquid water has > been *roughly* in situ over billion years while the sun warmed 20%? Do you > actually dispute that this is something that needs explaining? No and I don't claim to know all the answers, I'd like to know why the Earth turned into a snowball from pole to equator .7 billion years ago but from 1.5 to .7 billion, when our star was even weaker, it did not and despite a weaker sun things were much warmer. Apparently the climate machine is a bit more complicated than what some would have us believe. > Several posts up, you obviously did not know about the sun warming issue. BULLSHIT! I would be willing to bet money that I know more about the evolution of stars, both on and off the main sequence, than you do, and probably one hell of a lot more. >>> You keep throwing out eratic graphsyou do know they are provided by >>> climate science? >> So you think climate scientists are putting out "eratic graphs" but >> nevertheless based on what they say you think the human race should be >> forced to be put on a starvation energy budget that will impoverish the >> world and kill billions of people. And this is the moral high ground? > I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. That's a pity because you're the one who said climate science are producing "eratic graphs". > They are doing science. The discussion about what needs to happen is a > separate matter. Yes, and the question about what has happened is a separate matter from what will happen, and one question is far far more difficult to answer than the other because the past is always clearer than the future. > Fuck off I love you too. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
My integrity is not the issue, for someone who states- This all falls under "gossipy political speculations about human motivations", I'm not interested in dragging this stuff into a conversation about natural science Again, its science when its on your own terms, and it suits your ideology. Your nuclear energy remediation proposal will be violent opposed by your green chums, so it becomes, effectively, no answer. I will prove your prediction correct with pure volition. I read the Nature realclimate link, article and my take away is its a struggle to try to figure out where the IPCC predictions went wrong? Was it el nino, heat sinks in the Pacific, etc. The point is that your team is fumbling about trying to look what went wrong, and in the mean time, supporting energy starvation, so as to make progressives feel better. I don't know. What you and your team propose, are not solutions, fixes, remediation, but complaints, as the excuse to glom more power. They will never abide uranium and thorium, and I suspect you knew this before you typed it. Its intellectually dishonest by wholly consistent with ideological thinking. I thought you did engineering once upon a time, but people make their own choices. -Original Message- From: Jesse Mazer To: everything-list Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 4:25 pm Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 2:52 PM, wrote: Autism, schmatism. Let me address this situation in concise terms, and if you want to discuss, we can discuss. But you refuse to discuss the Royal Academy/National Academy of Sciences paper, apparently (I take this as a sign that you probably recognize from my comments that you misread it, but don't have the intellectual integrity to admit when you've made an error). Here goes- 1. The models to date have not predicted successfully. Well, yes they have, for example the first graph in the article at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/2012-updates-to-model-observation-comparions/ shows what the "CMIP3" dataset, which was based on collecting the predictions of a number of different climate models, predicted for 2000 on. The gray area shows the range in which 95% of the model simulations stayed within, and the black line is the average prediction of all the simulated runs, you can see that the actual climate as remained well within the gray area. Even simpler climate models going back as far as 1988 have proved pretty accurate, for example see the article at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/ about Hansen's 1988 temperature predictions using a number of different emissions scenarios--the first graph shows that actual emissions proved to be closest to the emissions scenario he labeled "scenario B", and the second graph shows that the actual observed temperature up to 2007 (when the article was written), shown in red and black, hewed pretty closely to his predicted temperature for "scenario B" in blue. As for the recent "pause" in the warming trend over the last 15 years, this article has good discussion: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/12/the-global-temperature-jigsaw/ One thing they note is that the models themselves predict pauses on those timescales should happen occasionally, as shown in a graph of one simulated run of a CMIP3 model in Fig. 2. They also note that the "El Nino Southern Oscillation" (ENSO) seems to be a major factor in the pause, along with some other factors like the recent low in solar activity and increased volcanic activity, and Fig 3 shows the "data after adjusting for ENSO, volcanoes and solar activity by a multivariate correlation analysis"--apparently when they attempt to subtract these recent changes out using some statistical techniques, the adjusted temperature in red would actually have been fairly steadily rising over the past 15 years. And here's another relevant article which discusses the growing consensus on the causes of the pause, saying "A very consistent understanding is thus emerging of the coupled ocean and atmosphere dynamics that have caused the recent decadal-scale departure from the longer-term global warming trend": http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/02/going-with-the-wind/ I predict, however, that you will duck any detailed quantitative discussion of what the models predict since you only talk about science as an afterthought, you are mostly focused on gossipy political speculations about human motivations. 2. We have not as of this day, a technology to replace the dirty with the clean on energy. Nuclear power could certainly do it (although obviously that comes with its own risks distinct from global warming), and there's more than enough solar energy hitting the US to supply energy needs. Here's an article discussing a hypothetical proposal to supply *all* the U.S.'s
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
From: "spudboy...@aol.com" >>Chris, unless you have of cash to influence politicians, or are working as a >>climatologist and looking forward to a job in some governmental agency, its >>all goose eggs. Your premise is that IPCC is accurate, but there's a >>discrepancy, in what governmentals are saying and proposing. Dude -- please. The graph of rates of extinction over time; the data on species extinctions (past & current) has nothing to do with the IPCC nadda, zilch. If you could please get this to somehow make it past the fog of your ignorance that would be helpful. You have a strange idea of how science works. Thousands of field biologists, working over many decades and even centuries now -- have contributed to a growing body of basic data on species, including a census (by far most species have never been discovered and are not cataloged yet). This is where the raw extinction data is coming from... biologist field assays & surveys. The IPCC has nothing to do with this at all. Inform yourself before shooting your big mouth off. >> My guess is they, Your "guess" is worse than useless... it is unfounded, ideologically driven drivel... and I will leave it at that. To say anymore is merely wasting words. Chris like yourself, are calling danger to the dreadful climate change man-bear-pig (South Park episode) but that danger doesn't seem to be manifesting as predicted. You never asked me what I would do if AGW-Climate manbearpig were true, and I was a governmental or mental. But from your comments I clearly, got the message that you were disinterested/amused and wanted to see how the riff raff would take your baiting. I baited back, and so forth and so on sig transit Gloria Mundi ad naseum. You are disinterested because you know what you want, and wanted obedience to your faith. I grok that. You never provided any ideas yourself, beyond conservation, when your fellow allies in academia, concluded that changing energy systems won't mean a thing ( I disagree). So just let the EPA Nazis have their way, and all will be fine :-) I, of course, disagree. Of course, I heartily agree that you are most disagreeable… the kind of giant of clear headed human intellect, who responds to facts with fulminations trailing off into nonsensical strings of words… a kind of Tea Party inspired stream of consciousness. >I wouldn’t expect anything less of you; nor more…. And that’s the rub now, >isn’t it? >Chris -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella To: everything-list Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 1:00 am Subject: RE: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating From:everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com Sorry Chris, in a world of nasty, stubborn, skeptics, unwilling to genuflect at the great, green Gaia, expect lots of disagreeable people like me. What you have put forth does not line up well with cause and effect, but rather, ideology. I'll pass, thank you. Of course, I heartily agree that you are most disagreeable… the kind of giant of clear headed human intellect, who responds to facts with fulminations trailing off into nonsensical strings of words… a kind of Tea Party inspired stream of consciousness. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you; nor more…. And that’s the rub now, isn’t it? Chris -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com >>Jesus, Chris. You must think that people all fit into nice little shoe boxes, easily, applied taxonimies. Yea vearilly, no. No just people, like you, who make non-sensical assertions such as: because they can hear tweety birds in their backyard, the global extinction rate cannot possibly be at 10,000 times the average background rate of extinction on this planet, because otherwise how could there still be tweety birds for our scientific observer to hear? Recent studies have estimated that there are around eukaryotic 8.7 million species on the planet -- and this is just the eukaryotic species (and then there are many millions of additional species of Archaea, Bacteria and all those proto-alive viruses). How many of these species do you think you can see in your backyard? Does it begin to dawn in your head why I don't take you seriously at all? For, if you confuse such kind of anecdotal BS for science you are profoundly ignorant of what science is, both in its ideal sense and even to quite an extent in its imperfect day to day practice. And when you mix your profound ignorance of science -- based on how you rely on laughably non-scientific "surveys" as the rather flippant and non-thinking basis for -- in this particular case -- your assertion that the extinction rates cannot possibly be that high, because you have song
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
Snowball earth appears to have been due to a feedback loop (once you glaciate a significant amount of the planet, the rest follows). I don't know what the trigger was, however. A supervolcano is possible, blocking sunlight over a long enough period. On 13 March 2014 05:56, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 2:17 PM, wrote: > >> >>> >>> I think on the scale of 4 billion years the sort of margin we're talking about is that necessary to keep water liquid on the surface. >>> >>> >> At least twice in the last 4 billion years water WAS kept below the >>> freezing point at the surface, from the pole continuously to the equator >>> and we had a snowball Earth. It happened once about 1.5 billion years ago >>> and again about 700 million years ago; why it happened and once it did how >>> things ever warmed up again is not well understood, just like most things >>> in climate science. >>> >>> >> >> > I knew you'd say that. So what if there are two periods or more when >> liquid water wasn't free running. Does that alter the fact that liquid >> water has been *roughly* in situ over billion years while the sun warmed >> 20%? Do you actually dispute that this is something that needs explaining? >> > > No and I don't claim to know all the answers, I'd like to know why the > Earth turned into a snowball from pole to equator .7 billion years ago but > from 1.5 to .7 billion, when our star was even weaker, it did not and > despite a weaker sun things were much warmer. Apparently the climate > machine is a bit more complicated than what some would have us believe. > > > Several posts up, you obviously did not know about the sun warming >> issue. >> > > BULLSHIT! I would be willing to bet money that I know more about the > evolution of stars, both on and off the main sequence, than you do, and > probably one hell of a lot more. > > >>> You keep throwing out eratic graphsyou do know they are provided by climate science? >>> >> >> So you think climate scientists are putting out "eratic graphs" but >>> nevertheless based on what they say you think the human race should be >>> forced to be put on a starvation energy budget that will impoverish the >>> world and kill billions of people. And this is the moral high ground? >>> >> >> > > I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. >> > > That's a pity because you're the one who said climate science are > producing "eratic graphs". > > > They are doing science. The discussion about what needs to happen is a >> separate matter. >> > > Yes, and the question about what has happened is a separate matter from > what will happen, and one question is far far more difficult to answer than > the other because the past is always clearer than the future. > > > Fuck off >> > > I love you too. > > John K Clark > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Dalai Lama's Ski Trip
On 13 March 2014 09:47, John Mikes wrote: > Liz, please! > don'[t you think "pursuit of happiness" is indeed "UNHAPPINESS"?? > Why would a happy person pursue happiness? > I would not vote for 'unhappiness' as the meaning of life, although it > looks like it frequently. > > It's closer to a meaning than "happiness" imho. "Acheving happiness" could be a purpose, at least, although personally I still don't consider it a meaning. I'm not sure what sort of meaning life *could* have. Meaning is generally something that is interpreted by a conscious entity, extracted from information, so the idea that life has a meaning more or less presupposes the existence of a God or something similar to whom our lives have some meaning (or at least purpose). Monty Python parodied this in "The Meaning of Life" by the way, although I forget what the exact meaning of life turned out to be. (It was along the lines of "take plenty of exercise, don't eat too much fatty food..." etc) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: truth of experience
On 13 March 2014 04:33, Bruno Marchal wrote: > Hello Terren, > > On 12 Mar 2014, at 04:34, Terren Suydam wrote: > > Hi Bruno, > > Thanks, that helps. Can you expand a bit on <>t? Unfortunately I haven't > had the time to follow the modal logic threads, so please forgive me but I > don't understand how you could represent reality with <>t. > > Shortly, "<>A" most "general" meaning is that the proposition A is > possible. > > Modal logician uses the word "world" in a very general sense, it can mean > "situation", "state", and actually it can mean anything. > > To argue for example that it is possible that a dog is dangerous, would > consist in showing a situation, or a world, or a reality in which a dog is > dangerous. > > so you can read "<>A", as "A is possible", or possible(A), with the idea > that this means that there is a reality in which A is true. > > Reality is not represented by "<>A", it is more "the existence of a > reality verifying a proposition". > > In particular, <>t, which is "t is possible", where t is the constant > true, or "1=1" in arithmetic, simply means that there is a reality. > You mean <>t asserts there is a reality in which the relevant proposition is true (e.g. one in which the dog is dangerous) ? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Dalai Lama's Ski Trip
Liz, please! don'[t you think "pursuit of happiness" is indeed "UNHAPPINESS"?? Why would a happy person pursue happiness? I would not vote for 'unhappiness' as the meaning of life, although it looks like it frequently. JM On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:40 PM, LizR wrote: > Happiness isn't a meaning. He should have said "the pursuit of happiness" > or something to at least be in the ballpark of giving something that could > be construed as a meaning. You might as well say few organisms strive for > death, so life is the meaning of life (which would probably be more > accurate, actually). > > > On 9 March 2014 12:18, Kim Jones wrote: > >> Hang about. The jolly old joyful Dalai Lama is correct. The meaning of >> life is happiness. Is there any point disagreeing with that? I mean, which >> life forms strive for sadness? >> >> Kim >> >> Kim Jones B. Mus. GDTL >> >> Email: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au >> kmjco...@icloud.com >> Mobile: 0450 963 719 >> Phone: 02 93894239 >> Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com >> >> >> *"Never let your schooling get in the way of your education" - Mark Twain* >> >> >> >> On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:56 am, ghib...@gmail.com wrote: >> >> >> On Sunday, March 2, 2014 2:08:39 AM UTC, Liz R wrote: >>> >>> I feel there's a category error here somewhere... >>> >>> I wonder what the Dalai Lama would make of "Brave New World" ? >>> >> >> I think he'd make another killing out of it, on the LA lunch circuit . I >> don't really buy that guy. Don't see a lot in the eye. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Dalai Lama's Ski Trip
Kim, during my escapades in 1944 anti-nazi underground I met a bum in Nazi uniform who p[roclaimed: "I was SSOOO happy when I killed those Jews" I s that really the MEANING OF LIFE? JM On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:18 PM, Kim Jones wrote: > Hang about. The jolly old joyful Dalai Lama is correct. The meaning of > life is happiness. Is there any point disagreeing with that? I mean, which > life forms strive for sadness? > > Kim > > Kim Jones B. Mus. GDTL > > Email: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au > kmjco...@icloud.com > Mobile: 0450 963 719 > Phone: 02 93894239 > Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com > > > *"Never let your schooling get in the way of your education" - Mark Twain* > > > > On 8 Mar 2014, at 11:56 am, ghib...@gmail.com wrote: > > > On Sunday, March 2, 2014 2:08:39 AM UTC, Liz R wrote: >> >> I feel there's a category error here somewhere... >> >> I wonder what the Dalai Lama would make of "Brave New World" ? >> > > I think he'd make another killing out of it, on the LA lunch circuit . I > don't really buy that guy. Don't see a lot in the eye. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 2:52 PM, wrote: > Autism, schmatism. Let me address this situation in concise terms, and if > you want to discuss, we can discuss. > But you refuse to discuss the Royal Academy/National Academy of Sciences paper, apparently (I take this as a sign that you probably recognize from my comments that you misread it, but don't have the intellectual integrity to admit when you've made an error). > Here goes- > 1. The models to date have not predicted successfully. > Well, yes they have, for example the first graph in the article at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/2012-updates-to-model-observation-comparions/shows what the "CMIP3" dataset, which was based on collecting the predictions of a number of different climate models, predicted for 2000 on. The gray area shows the range in which 95% of the model simulations stayed within, and the black line is the average prediction of all the simulated runs, you can see that the actual climate as remained well within the gray area. Even simpler climate models going back as far as 1988 have proved pretty accurate, for example see the article at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/about Hansen's 1988 temperature predictions using a number of different emissions scenarios--the first graph shows that actual emissions proved to be closest to the emissions scenario he labeled "scenario B", and the second graph shows that the actual observed temperature up to 2007 (when the article was written), shown in red and black, hewed pretty closely to his predicted temperature for "scenario B" in blue. As for the recent "pause" in the warming trend over the last 15 years, this article has good discussion: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/12/the-global-temperature-jigsaw/ One thing they note is that the models themselves predict pauses on those timescales should happen occasionally, as shown in a graph of one simulated run of a CMIP3 model in Fig. 2. They also note that the "El Nino Southern Oscillation" (ENSO) seems to be a major factor in the pause, along with some other factors like the recent low in solar activity and increased volcanic activity, and Fig 3 shows the "data after adjusting for ENSO, volcanoes and solar activity by a multivariate correlation analysis"--apparently when they attempt to subtract these recent changes out using some statistical techniques, the adjusted temperature in red would actually have been fairly steadily rising over the past 15 years. And here's another relevant article which discusses the growing consensus on the causes of the pause, saying "A very consistent understanding is thus emerging of the coupled ocean and atmosphere dynamics that have caused the recent decadal-scale departure from the longer-term global warming trend": http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/02/going-with-the-wind/ I predict, however, that you will duck any detailed quantitative discussion of what the models predict since you only talk about science as an afterthought, you are mostly focused on gossipy political speculations about human motivations. > 2. We have not as of this day, a technology to replace the dirty with the > clean on energy. > Nuclear power could certainly do it (although obviously that comes with its own risks distinct from global warming), and there's more than enough solar energy hitting the US to supply energy needs. Here's an article discussing a hypothetical proposal to supply *all* the U.S.'s energy needs with solar, with a price tag of about a trillion dollars (pricey obviously, but no more so than the Iraq war which didn't bankrupt us and probably wasn't a major cause of the recession): http://web.chem.ucsb.edu/~feldwinn/greenworks/Readings/solar_grand_plan.pdf > 3. The elites of the world would be ordering thousands of dams/dikes all > over the world, in order to save their own asses-if your IPCC guys were > really true and, or, on time! > 4. The elites are not behaving in this way, but they are declaring a > disaster. If there's no disaster at hand, they are not building dams along > the coastlines of the world, then I grow suspicious. > 5. Apparently, many progressives/greens want to promote energy starvation, > even though they have no technology, except their Amory Lovins type > conservations crap from 25 years ago. > 6. Which leads me to believe that because its cherry-picked data from > scientists who would have no career if they didn't go along, it is the > ideology of the progressives and the elites-mostly 1 in the same. > This all falls under "gossipy political speculations about human motivations", I'm not interested in dragging this stuff into a conversation about natural science (but it certainly supports my speculation that you are much more comfortable with obsessing about why people do the things they do than you are with discussing anything more impersonal like science and math). Jesse -- You
Re: truth of experience
On 3/12/2014 8:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hello Terren, On 12 Mar 2014, at 04:34, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Bruno, Thanks, that helps. Can you expand a bit on <>t? Unfortunately I haven't had the time to follow the modal logic threads, so please forgive me but I don't understand how you could represent reality with <>t. Shortly, "<>A" most "general" meaning is that the proposition A is possible. Modal logician uses the word "world" in a very general sense, it can mean "situation", "state", and actually it can mean anything. To argue for example that it is possible that a dog is dangerous, would consist in showing a situation, or a world, or a reality in which a dog is dangerous. so you can read "<>A", as "A is possible", or possible(A), with the idea that this means that there is a reality in which A is true. Reality is not represented by "<>A", it is more "the existence of a reality verifying a proposition". In particular, <>t, which is "t is possible", where t is the constant true, or "1=1" in arithmetic, simply means that there is a reality. "t is possible" looks like a category error to me. "A is possible" means A refers to the state of some world. I don't see that "t" or "1=1" refers to some world, they are just tautologies, artifacts of language. This, Aristotle and Leibniz understood, but Kripke enriched the notion of "possibility" by making the notion of possibility relative to the world you actually are. Somehow, for the machine talking in first predicate logic, like PA and ZF, more can be said, once we interpret the modal box by the Gödelian "beweisbar('p')", which can be translated in arithmetic. First order theories have a nice metamathematical property, discovered by Gödel (in his PhD thesis), and know as completeness, which (here) means that provability is equivalent with truth in all models, where models are mathematical structure which can verify or not, but in a well defined mathematical sense, a formula of classical first order logical theories. For example PA proves some sentences A, if and only if, A is true in all models of PA. If []A is provability (beweisbar('A')), the dual <>A is consistency (~beweisbar('~A'). <>A = ~[]~A. ~A is equivalent with A -> f (as you can verify by doing the truth table) <>A = ~[]~A = ~([](A -> f)) Saying that you cannot prove a contradiction (f), from A, means that A is consistent. So "<>t" means, for PA, with the arithmetical translation ~beweisbar('~t'), = ~beweisbar('f'), that PA is consistent, and by Gödel *_completeness_* theorem, this means that there is a mathematical structure (model) verifying "1=1". So, although ~beweisbar('~t'), is an arithmetical proposition having some meaning in term of syntactical object (proofs) existence, it is also a way for PA, or Löbian entities, to refer, implicitly at first, to the existence of a reality. But why should the failure to prove f imply anything about reality? Brent Of course, when asked about <>t, the sound machines stay mute (Gödel's *_first incompleteness_* theorem), and eventually, the Löbian one, like PA and ZF, explains why they stay mute, by asserting <>t -> ~[]<>t (Gödel's *_second_* *_incompleteness_*). This is capital, as it means that []p, although it implies <>p, that implication cannot be proved by the machine, so that to a get a probability on the relative consistent extension, the less you can ask, is <>p, and by incompleteness, although both []p and []p & <>p, will prove the same arithmetical propositions, they will obey different logics. More on this later. When you grasp the link between modal logic and Gödel, you can see that modal logic can save a lot of work. Modal logic does not add anything to the arithmetical reality, nor even to self-reference, but it provides a jet to fly above the arithmetical abysses, even discover them, including their different panorama, when filtered by local universal machines/numbers. As there are also modal logics capable of representing quantum logic(s), modal logics can help to compare the way nature selects the observable-possibilities, and the computable, or sigma_1 arithmetical selection enforced, I think, by computationalism. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3
On Tuesday, March 11, 2014 10:38:23 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > OK. Me too. But modern physics has a strong mathematical flavor, and > consciousness seems more to be an immaterial belief or knowledge than > something made of particles, so, if interested in the mind body problem, > the platonic perspective has some merit, especially taking into account the > failure of Aristotelian dualism. > That's an interesting topic, to be sure. Does comp actually help at all to solve the hard problem? When I think about it qualia, I have five main questions that I'd want a philosophy of mind to propose answers for. 1. What are qualia made of? 2. Why do patterns of ions and neurotransmitters crossing bilipid membranes in certain regions of the brain correlate perfectly to qualia? 3. How is a quale related to what it is about, under normal circumstances? What about when a quale is caused by artificially stimulated neurons, dreams, hallucinations, sensory illusions, mistakes in thought or memory, etc? 4. How can qualia affect the brain's processes, such that we can act on their information and talk and write about them? 5. How could we know that belief in qualia is justified? How could our instinctive belief in qualia be developed by correct and reliable brain processes? Chalmers' ideas, for example, involve answers to 1-3 that sound reasonable, but they stumble badly on 4-5. Comp and other mathematical Platonist ideas seem to me to give interesting answers to 2-4 but flub 1 and 5. -Gabe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
Hers where clarification is needed. The Permian extinction took the better part of 2million years according to geophysicists and geochemists. Volcano city, rather than the 66 million year old Dinosaur Killer. However, there was the great 55 million year old extinction as well, which was not to be believed as heavy as the Permian or the Comet. That too, took a period of 500K years. I am interested in possible fixes or trade offs. How do the progressives plan to attempt remediation of species web collapse, what do they propose? What I have seen is they ignore these questions and instead seek human die off and global poverty. They never admit it, because then they can't claim to do good for the poor, middle classes, Joe Sixpack. They are like the Fabians, whose flag is, humorously, a wolf in seeps clothing. See! We're doing it to save the world! Yeah. -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella To: everything-list Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 11:40 am Subject: RE: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark On Behalf Of LizR >> I must admit I've heard the extinction rate is way higher than usual - >> asteroid / methane burp high. (Although if it's us or them, as I said, >> that's a different story...) >Liz – it is not hearsay [...] There is substantial, incontrovertible evidence >that the extinction rate has literally spiked through the roof. >>That's not just hearsay it's idiotic. 66 million years ago 2/3 of all >>species, not individual animals but entire species, became extinct quite >>literally overnight, and 252 million years ago it was even worse, the >>extinction rate was 90%. What we're experiencing now is not even a burp. You do not know that those extinction events happened overnight – in fact you are wrong on that. The asteroid may have impacted off of the Yucatan overnight, but it could have taken decades and even hundreds of years to play out, and to us looking back from 66 million years it would all seem like it happened in an instant of time. Know one knows what caused the Great Permian Extinction – there are hypothesis, but the argument is still unsettled. That extinction event could have taken many thousands of years to run its course – maybe even tens of thousands of years. Overnight? How many nights is that? Besides a few numbers, about other extinction events in the very distant past you have stated nothing more than your opinion colored by multiple adjectives. Unless you have some – factual -- basis to dispute that the available data suggests that the current rate of species extinction – going on right now in our contemporary times – is around 10,000 times the average background rate (species go extinct every year and have been for as long as there has been life, but it is the rate at which this is happening that has spiked through the roof)… unless you have a fact based argument… you have nothing but your anger and hatred of greens, which may work for you, but is not science based. You, I and everyone cannot see it for what it is, because we live a mere hundred years (if we are lucky) – we are within a blip in time. You speak of events from scores or hundreds of millions of years ago. How would it have looked to a contemporary. We see the KT boundary as marking an instant in time, but how long in years did it take for the two extinction events you mentioned to play out. It seems like an instant in time to us, because we are at such far remove from it. And people do not recognize that we are living in the midst of another great extinction event because our temporal perspective is day by day – and not decade by decade and century by century. If you are going to dispute the data – you will need to dispute the data. > That this is so should really make thinking people question why? It's no great mystery why some animals become extinct today, it's because 7 billion large mammals of the exact same species have spread from the pole to the equator, and that has never happened before. It would have been amazing if a event like that didn't cause a few animals to join the 99.9% that have already gone extinct in the last 3 billion years. It is not a few animals John—despite what you choose to believe – we humans have triggered and are the cause of what is the beginning stages of a great extinction event. You deny this -- with vehemence – but the data supports the claim that the current extinction rate is around 10,000 times the usual levels. You choose to call that “a few animals” – I find it amazing, what ideology will make otherwise smart people do and say. Chris John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+u
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
Chris, unless you have of cash to influence politicians, or are working as a climatologist and looking forward to a job in some governmental agency, its all goose eggs. Your premise is that IPCC is accurate, but there's a discrepancy, in what governmentals are saying and proposing. My guess is they, like yourself, are calling danger to the dreadful climate change man-bear-pig (South Park episode) but that danger doesn't seem to be manifesting as predicted. You never asked me what I would do if AGW-Climate manbearpig were true, and I was a governmental or mental. But from your comments I clearly, got the message that you were disinterested/amused and wanted to see how the riff raff would take your baiting. I baited back, and so forth and so on sig transit Gloria Mundi ad naseum. You are disinterested because you know what you want, and wanted obedience to your faith. I grok that. You never provided any ideas yourself, beyond conservation, when your fellow allies in academia, concluded that changing energy systems won't mean a thing ( I disagree). So just let the EPA Nazis have their way, and all will be fine :-) I, of course, disagree. Of course, I heartily agree that you are most disagreeable… the kind of giant of clear headed human intellect, who responds to facts with fulminations trailing off into nonsensical strings of words… a kind of Tea Party inspired stream of consciousness. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you; nor more…. And that’s the rub now, isn’t it? Chris -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella To: everything-list Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 1:00 am Subject: RE: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com Sorry Chris, in a world of nasty, stubborn, skeptics, unwilling to genuflect at the great, green Gaia, expect lots of disagreeable people like me. What you have put forth does not line up well with cause and effect, but rather, ideology. I'll pass, thank you. Of course, I heartily agree that you are most disagreeable… the kind of giant of clear headed human intellect, who responds to facts with fulminations trailing off into nonsensical strings of words… a kind of Tea Party inspired stream of consciousness. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you; nor more…. And that’s the rub now, isn’t it? Chris -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com >>Jesus, Chris. You must think that people all fit into nice little shoe boxes, easily, applied taxonimies. Yea vearilly, no. No just people, like you, who make non-sensical assertions such as: because they can hear tweety birds in their backyard, the global extinction rate cannot possibly be at 10,000 times the average background rate of extinction on this planet, because otherwise how could there still be tweety birds for our scientific observer to hear? Recent studies have estimated that there are around eukaryotic 8.7 million species on the planet -- and this is just the eukaryotic species (and then there are many millions of additional species of Archaea, Bacteria and all those proto-alive viruses). How many of these species do you think you can see in your backyard? Does it begin to dawn in your head why I don't take you seriously at all? For, if you confuse such kind of anecdotal BS for science you are profoundly ignorant of what science is, both in its ideal sense and even to quite an extent in its imperfect day to day practice. And when you mix your profound ignorance of science -- based on how you rely on laughably non-scientific "surveys" as the rather flippant and non-thinking basis for -- in this particular case -- your assertion that the extinction rates cannot possibly be that high, because you have song birds in your backyard mix it in with your heartfelt vocation towards preaching your Tea Party screed... to anyone and everyone (as if you were a talking point conveyance mechanism) it begins to become rather unpleasant for me at least. Not everyone, spudboy, just you. Chris -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella From: "spudboy...@aol.com" >>Yes indeed! And the acid rain is a-pouring down, and everyone's face is a-sizzlin and a-popin from the sulphur, and the Ozone hole is a-lettin in the gamma rays, and the BP oil spill has a-wiped out all the shrimp, and the Germans is now a-making all their Mercedes with sunlight, and the oceans is a-risin, and a makin me a-drown, here in Ohio, and the spotted owl is a knocking over liquor stores cause we destroyed their natural habitat, now they're on food stamps! You know, one time the little boy will cry wolf, and you will be right, but nobody will listen, because as an act of green fait
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
Autism, schmatism. Let me address this situation in concise terms, and if you want to discuss, we can discuss. Here goes- 1. The models to date have not predicted successfully. 2. We have not as of this day, a technology to replace the dirty with the clean on energy. 3. The elites of the world would be ordering thousands of dams/dikes all over the world, in order to save their own asses-if your IPCC guys were really true and, or, on time! 4. The elites are not behaving in this way, but they are declaring a disaster. If there's no disaster at hand, they are not building dams along the coastlines of the world, then I grow suspicious. 5. Apparently, many progressives/greens want to promote energy starvation, even though they have no technology, except their Amory Lovins type conservations crap from 25 years ago. 6. Which leads me to believe that because its cherry-picked data from scientists who would have no career if they didn't go along, it is the ideology of the progressives and the elites-mostly 1 in the same. Vanevar Bush said: The validity of a science is its ability to predict. How's your hockey stick doing? Regards Mitch -Original Message- From: Jesse Mazer To: everything-list Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 12:04 am Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating So, no response to my question about whether the paper I linked to was the one you were talking about, and my pointing out that p. B8 of the paper clearly indicates that it'll make a major difference to the temperature in 100 years whether we reduce emissions or carry on with business as usual? As for your comments, all I can say is that you seem to be one of those people who's only interested in thinking about issues in personal, narrative terms--us vs. them conceptions of which "side" supports a given position, speculations about the personal motivations people may have for taking the positions they do, etc. Discussion of more impersonal approaches to understanding the world, approaches based on math and quantitative evaluation of evidence, seems to be something you're entirely uninterested in. Sometimes I think we would have a much saner world if the average person was just, say, 5 points higher on the "autism quotient" scale ( http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html )... On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 2:48 PM, wrote: My point is Jesse, yes the truth is repeatable, is that the rich and their kept politicians, do behave in the short run, or as class-hero, John Maynard Keynes, said: in the long run, we're all dead. I maintain that their behavior is aligned with a great exaggeration, rather then a great dilemma. It's not like they do not partake the same bread with most of the media. Example, the NY Times is majority owned, by billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, and both Helu and pinchie Sulzberger, dine from identical world views. My view is that we are alive now, for a while, focus, then, on the issues, at hand. However, the rich and their pet pols know a good scheme when they see one. Or, as Henry Kissinger once noted, power is the greatest aphrodisiac. -Original Message- From: Jesse Mazer To: everything-list Sent: 11-Mar-2014 14:03:15 + Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 12:33 PM, wrote: Thrre was a report judt last week released by the NAS and the UK Royal Society indicating that switching power sources will not help. You're just repeating yourself, did you actually read my response? I asked if you were talking about the report at http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf , which was released by the Royal Society and NAS on Feb. 27 (I don't know if you'd call that "last week")-- just tell me "yes" or "no", please. If your answer is "yes"--and I'm pretty sure that the NAS and Royal Society didn't release any OTHER climate reports besides this one in the last couple weeks--then as I already explained before, it's clear you simply didn't understand it well (or didn't read the entire thing), since while the report did say on p. 22 that CO2 levels wouldn't drop quickly if emissions were halted, p. B8 also clearly shows that temperature wouldn't rise much beyond present levels in an "aggressive emissions reduction" scenario, whereas it would rise to levels that would likely be pretty catastrophic for human civilization in a "business as usual" emissions scenario. Secondly, the behavior of pols and the super rich are not consistent with this new report, or fears of an insurging ocean. Most politicians and super rich, like most people in general, have a bias towards preserving their near-term interests over long-term issues (especially issues that are only likely to become really serious after their death). The effects of climate change aren't fast enough that they're likely to have much effects on a politician's reelec
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 2:17 PM, wrote: > >> >>> I think on the scale of 4 billion years the sort of margin we're >>> talking about is that necessary to keep water liquid on the surface. >>> >> >> >> At least twice in the last 4 billion years water WAS kept below the >> freezing point at the surface, from the pole continuously to the equator >> and we had a snowball Earth. It happened once about 1.5 billion years ago >> and again about 700 million years ago; why it happened and once it did how >> things ever warmed up again is not well understood, just like most things >> in climate science. >> >> > > > I knew you'd say that. So what if there are two periods or more when > liquid water wasn't free running. Does that alter the fact that liquid > water has been *roughly* in situ over billion years while the sun warmed > 20%? Do you actually dispute that this is something that needs explaining? > No and I don't claim to know all the answers, I'd like to know why the Earth turned into a snowball from pole to equator .7 billion years ago but from 1.5 to .7 billion, when our star was even weaker, it did not and despite a weaker sun things were much warmer. Apparently the climate machine is a bit more complicated than what some would have us believe. > Several posts up, you obviously did not know about the sun warming > issue. > BULLSHIT! I would be willing to bet money that I know more about the evolution of stars, both on and off the main sequence, than you do, and probably one hell of a lot more. >>> You keep throwing out eratic graphsyou do know they are provided >>> by climate science? >>> >> > >> So you think climate scientists are putting out "eratic graphs" but >> nevertheless based on what they say you think the human race should be >> forced to be put on a starvation energy budget that will impoverish the >> world and kill billions of people. And this is the moral high ground? >> > > > I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. > That's a pity because you're the one who said climate science are producing "eratic graphs". > They are doing science. The discussion about what needs to happen is a > separate matter. > Yes, and the question about what has happened is a separate matter from what will happen, and one question is far far more difficult to answer than the other because the past is always clearer than the future. > Fuck off > I love you too. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark On Behalf Of LizR >> I must admit I've heard the extinction rate is way higher than usual - asteroid / methane burp high. (Although if it's us or them, as I said, that's a different story...) >Liz - it is not hearsay [...] There is substantial, incontrovertible evidence that the extinction rate has literally spiked through the roof. >>That's not just hearsay it's idiotic. 66 million years ago 2/3 of all species, not individual animals but entire species, became extinct quite literally overnight, and 252 million years ago it was even worse, the extinction rate was 90%. What we're experiencing now is not even a burp. You do not know that those extinction events happened overnight - in fact you are wrong on that. The asteroid may have impacted off of the Yucatan overnight, but it could have taken decades and even hundreds of years to play out, and to us looking back from 66 million years it would all seem like it happened in an instant of time. Know one knows what caused the Great Permian Extinction - there are hypothesis, but the argument is still unsettled. That extinction event could have taken many thousands of years to run its course - maybe even tens of thousands of years. Overnight? How many nights is that? Besides a few numbers, about other extinction events in the very distant past you have stated nothing more than your opinion colored by multiple adjectives. Unless you have some - factual -- basis to dispute that the available data suggests that the current rate of species extinction - going on right now in our contemporary times - is around 10,000 times the average background rate (species go extinct every year and have been for as long as there has been life, but it is the rate at which this is happening that has spiked through the roof). unless you have a fact based argument. you have nothing but your anger and hatred of greens, which may work for you, but is not science based. You, I and everyone cannot see it for what it is, because we live a mere hundred years (if we are lucky) - we are within a blip in time. You speak of events from scores or hundreds of millions of years ago. How would it have looked to a contemporary. We see the KT boundary as marking an instant in time, but how long in years did it take for the two extinction events you mentioned to play out. It seems like an instant in time to us, because we are at such far remove from it. And people do not recognize that we are living in the midst of another great extinction event because our temporal perspective is day by day - and not decade by decade and century by century. If you are going to dispute the data - you will need to dispute the data. > That this is so should really make thinking people question why? It's no great mystery why some animals become extinct today, it's because 7 billion large mammals of the exact same species have spread from the pole to the equator, and that has never happened before. It would have been amazing if a event like that didn't cause a few animals to join the 99.9% that have already gone extinct in the last 3 billion years. It is not a few animals John-despite what you choose to believe - we humans have triggered and are the cause of what is the beginning stages of a great extinction event. You deny this -- with vehemence - but the data supports the claim that the current extinction rate is around 10,000 times the usual levels. You choose to call that "a few animals" - I find it amazing, what ideology will make otherwise smart people do and say. Chris John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: truth of experience
Hello Terren, On 12 Mar 2014, at 04:34, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Bruno, Thanks, that helps. Can you expand a bit on <>t? Unfortunately I haven't had the time to follow the modal logic threads, so please forgive me but I don't understand how you could represent reality with <>t. Shortly, "<>A" most "general" meaning is that the proposition A is possible. Modal logician uses the word "world" in a very general sense, it can mean "situation", "state", and actually it can mean anything. To argue for example that it is possible that a dog is dangerous, would consist in showing a situation, or a world, or a reality in which a dog is dangerous. so you can read "<>A", as "A is possible", or possible(A), with the idea that this means that there is a reality in which A is true. Reality is not represented by "<>A", it is more "the existence of a reality verifying a proposition". In particular, <>t, which is "t is possible", where t is the constant true, or "1=1" in arithmetic, simply means that there is a reality. This, Aristotle and Leibniz understood, but Kripke enriched the notion of "possibility" by making the notion of possibility relative to the world you actually are. Somehow, for the machine talking in first predicate logic, like PA and ZF, more can be said, once we interpret the modal box by the Gödelian "beweisbar('p')", which can be translated in arithmetic. First order theories have a nice metamathematical property, discovered by Gödel (in his PhD thesis), and know as completeness, which (here) means that provability is equivalent with truth in all models, where models are mathematical structure which can verify or not, but in a well defined mathematical sense, a formula of classical first order logical theories. For example PA proves some sentences A, if and only if, A is true in all models of PA. If []A is provability (beweisbar('A')), the dual <>A is consistency (~beweisbar('~A'). <>A = ~[]~A. ~A is equivalent with A -> f (as you can verify by doing the truth table) <>A = ~[]~A = ~([](A -> f)) Saying that you cannot prove a contradiction (f), from A, means that A is consistent. So "<>t" means, for PA, with the arithmetical translation ~beweisbar('~t'), = ~beweisbar('f'), that PA is consistent, and by Gödel completeness theorem, this means that there is a mathematical structure (model) verifying "1=1". So, although ~beweisbar('~t'), is an arithmetical proposition having some meaning in term of syntactical object (proofs) existence, it is also a way for PA, or Löbian entities, to refer, implicitly at first, to the existence of a reality. Of course, when asked about <>t, the sound machines stay mute (Gödel's first incompleteness theorem), and eventually, the Löbian one, like PA and ZF, explains why they stay mute, by asserting <>t -> ~[]<>t (Gödel's second incompleteness). This is capital, as it means that []p, although it implies <>p, that implication cannot be proved by the machine, so that to a get a probability on the relative consistent extension, the less you can ask, is <>p, and by incompleteness, although both []p and []p & <>p, will prove the same arithmetical propositions, they will obey different logics. More on this later. When you grasp the link between modal logic and Gödel, you can see that modal logic can save a lot of work. Modal logic does not add anything to the arithmetical reality, nor even to self-reference, but it provides a jet to fly above the arithmetical abysses, even discover them, including their different panorama, when filtered by local universal machines/numbers. As there are also modal logics capable of representing quantum logic(s), modal logics can help to compare the way nature selects the observable-possibilities, and the computable, or sigma_1 arithmetical selection enforced, I think, by computationalism. Bruno On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 2:18 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Terran, On 11 Mar 2014, at 17:10, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Bruno, Sure, "consciousness here-and-now" is undoubtable. But the p refers to the contents of consciousness, which is not undoubtable in many cases. "I am in pain" cannot be doubted when one is feeling it, but other felt sensations can be doubted, e.g. see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2956899/ Such illusions of experience can even be helpful, as in Ramachandran's Mirror Box therapy for phantom limb sufferers, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3468806/ Illusions of experience are evidence that what we experience is of our brains' constructions, like a waking dream, guided in healthy brains by the patterns of information streaming from our sense organs. Exactly: like a walking dream. That's the root of the Bp & p idea, in the Theaetetus. To do the math I concentrate to "rich" (Löbian) machine for the "B", but the idea of defining knowledge by t
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 10:29 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Chris de Morsella > wrote: > >> >> >> *On Behalf Of *LizR >> >> >> >>> >> I must admit I've heard the extinction rate is way higher than usual >>> - asteroid / methane burp high. (Although if it's us or them, as I said, >>> that's a different story...) >>> >> >> > >Liz - it is not hearsay [...] There is substantial, incontrovertible >> evidence that the extinction rate has literally spiked through the roof. >> > That's not just hearsay it's idiotic. 66 million years ago 2/3 of all > species, not individual animals but entire species, became extinct quite > literally overnight, and 252 million years ago it was even worse, the > extinction rate was 90%. What we're experiencing now is not even a burp. > You fail to understand the distinction between the extinction RATE--percentage of species going extinct PER UNIT TIME--and the actual percentage of species that have gone extinct in total (akin to rate of travel in a car, i.e. speed, vs. total distance traveled). "90%" is not a rate at all, it's a total. The argument is that the rate has gone way up from the "background extinction rate" in recent history, and if the rate REMAINS this high for another century or two, then the total percentage of species that go extinct will reach mass-extinction levels, even though it hasn't yet. Apparently there is some controversy about the current rate, see discussion of an optimistic paper by Costello et al. at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130124150806.htm along with the response from some other scientists at http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/mora/Publications/Mora%20036.pdf ...the response notes that the Costello et al. paper presents an estimate (0.001%-0.1% per year) that's very low compared with nearly all previous estimates, and that a previous paper by one of the coauthors of the optimistic paper, Nigel Stork, had compiled a number of estimates which together gave an average of 0.72% per year, and that "Removing all rates derived from species-area relationships, which are currently debated [(12), but see (14)], still yields a mean extinction rate of ~0.22% or ~11,000 species a year if there are 5 million species." Fig. 1 gives some curves showing the TOTAL FRACTION of species that will have gone extinct in the next few centuries if the rates remain at either 0.72% per year (solid red curve) or 0.22% per year (dotted red curve), you can see that about half of all species would go extinct by 2100 if the rate was 0.72% per year, and about half would go extinct by 2300 if the rate was 0.22% per year. Either one would be a near-instantaneous mass extinction on geological timescales. Jesse -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Chris de Morsella wrote: > > > *On Behalf Of *LizR > > > >> >> I must admit I've heard the extinction rate is way higher than usual - >> asteroid / methane burp high. (Although if it's us or them, as I said, >> that's a different story...) >> > > >Liz - it is not hearsay [...] There is substantial, incontrovertible > evidence that the extinction rate has literally spiked through the roof. > That's not just hearsay it's idiotic. 66 million years ago 2/3 of all species, not individual animals but entire species, became extinct quite literally overnight, and 252 million years ago it was even worse, the extinction rate was 90%. What we're experiencing now is not even a burp. > That this is so should really make thinking people question why? > It's no great mystery why some animals become extinct today, it's because 7 billion large mammals of the exact same species have spread from the pole to the equator, and that has never happened before. It would have been amazing if a event like that didn't cause a few animals to join the 99.9% that have already gone extinct in the last 3 billion years. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On 11 Mar 2014, at 22:06, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 1:50 PM, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 3:58 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote: >> because before you initiate a policy that will impoverish the world for many generations and kill lots and lots and lots of people > What "policies" are you talking about that would have these supposed effects? Shut down all nuclear reactors immediately. Stop using coal. Stop all dam construction and dismantle the ones already built. Stop all oil and gas fracking. Stop using geothermal energy. Drastically reduce oil production and place a huge tax on what little that is produced. Don't Build wind farms in places where they look ugly, reduce wind currents, kill birds or cause noise. Don't use insecticides. Don't use Genetically Modified Organisms. Don't use herbicides. Do exactly what the European Greens say. So, like a creationist you're unwilling to accurately depict the beliefs of those you disagree with, and instead you attack a boogeyman that has sprung mostly out of your own fevered imagination. John Clark did this for years when mocking the mechanist First Person Indeterminacy. Some people seems to reason well, but only when the reasoning fits their philosophy. If it doesn't fit, they get in a state of deny, and attack usually they own delirium, that they attribute to those they disagree with. I keep asking myself if they are aware of this strange behavior. Are they sincere, or just irrational. It is quite typical, especially in forum or mailing list discussions. Bruno There may be some radical environmentalists who believe these things, but the mainstream environmental groups (all the ones with any real influence) favor policies that will gradually scale back emissions without causing any abrupt changes in our living standards or power generation. > The EU has been on track in their goals of emissions reductions, already cutting them by 18% from 1990 levels, And Germany alone spent 110 billion dollars to accomplish that, about $660 for every ton of CO2 they're cutting. And the net outcome of that staggering amount of money and effort is that by the end of this century global warming will be delayed by about 37 hours. Did you just made that number up? And why focus only on Germany, when the effects of the entire E.U.'s collective emissions reductions are presumably larger than those due solely to any individual country? Also, I brought this up to counter your wild claim that this would lead to economic depression and starvation-- since it hasn't in the EU it presumably wouldn't in other countries like the U.S., and if the whole world (or even just the U.S.) followed the E.U.'s lead, do you deny that according to mainstream climate models, this would lead to significant temperature reduction from "business as usual" scenarios where no effort is made to curb emissions? Global warming is real and if it turns out to be a bad thing then we're going to have to fix it, but we need to do it in a smart way. > When there is widespread expert consensus on how "sure" we should be about a scientific matter, and I have no expertise in the matter myself, I tend to assume as a default that the scientific experts likely have good grounds for believing what they do. Of course it's possible on occasion that expert consensus can turn out to be badly wrong but [...] There is consensus in the scientific community that things are slightly warmer now than they were a century ago, but there is most certainly NOT a consensus about how much hotter it will be a century from now, much less what to do about it or even if it's a bad thing. The study I linked to wasn't just about the fact that warming has occurred, it was specifically on the question of whether the recent warming is PRIMARILY CAUSED BY HUMAN ACTIVITIES, and it found that 97% of peer-reviewed papers that addressed the issue agreed with the consensus that it was. Obviously pretty much any scientist who agrees with this would also say that human emissions over the next century will have a large determining effect on the temperature in 2100. And note that the only way to reach such a consensus about the cause of past warming is if there is a consensus that climate models are broadly reliable in how they model the effects of various "climate forcings" like greenhouse gas emissions and solar input. Although there is plenty of range in what the models predict about temperatures in 2100 under any specific emissions scenario, if you look at a large number of models the likely temperature range goes up significantly under scenarios where we make no concerted effort to curb emissions vs. those where we do. I would say the precautionary principle applies here, if the higher ends of the likely range for a given emissions scenario are just as plausible as the lower