Some public figures are sufficiently weird, grotesque or just easy enough targets to practically guarantee wall-to-wall coverage here at Balloon Juice. Tom DeLay, for example. Take it to the Supremes, Tom! Schadenfreude historians will write books about the year that DeLay faced indictment, resigned in disgrace, lost three times in court, defended his seat involuntarily and lost by humiliating margins.
But before I get lost in a digression, this post isn’t about Tom DeLay or Cindy Sheehan. Disgraced persona non grata now that his base has abandoned him and his two power centers have moved on to greener Boehners, the Hammer’s endless nerfing is worth watching only for those who enjoy karma in action. Balloon Juice stands waiting for Cindy to entertain us with a Senate run or more hijinks in Texas, but for now not much. Rather, lets look at the growing list of American evangelicals who have embraced the issue of global warming:
86 evangelical Christian leaders have decided to back a major initiative to fight global warming, saying “millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors.”
Before anybody gets disoriented (don’t we like those guys?), via a reader it appears that the list of concerned evangelicals has grown to 87:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said on Thursday the wave of scorching temperatures across the United States had converted him into a believer in global warming.
The view put him at odds with fellow Republican President George W. Bush, who has benefited politically from Robertson’s backing and who has refused to embrace the concept of human-caused global warming.
“We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels,” Robertson said on his “700 Club” broadcast. “It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air.”
Sure, let’s all give Pat Robertson a nice golf clap for getting one thing right in his long, strange public existence. It must have taken nerve, or a declining long-term memory, to turn on the Pat Robertson who accused climate-concerned evangelicals of teaming up with the “far left environmentalists” and call him for the ignoramus that he was. God knows how easy it would be to blame climate change, live everything else, on God’s determination to get even with the gays. So what made Pat stop being Pat? I would love to know the answer.
But as much as I appreciate Robertson’s fortuitously mercurial behavior, his revelation makes the common mistake of confusing climate and weather. The problem with people who look at a long hot spell and declare, oh shit we’re all gonna die! is that they’re always one long cold spell from going right back to thinking that climate change is an invention of the loony left. Blogging about climate in cold months inevitably brings out skeptics preening about local cold spells.
So in order to make the national conversation that much less stupid, let’s refresh the basic meanings of climate and weather. Weather indicates local, short-term phenomena. You can say without contradiction that Death Valley is having extremely wet weather, if you happen to be there during the one day in six years when it rains. Climate is a generalized description of a region that says little or nothing about what might be happening on a particular day/week/month. However, unlike weather climate has absolute control over the broad characteristics of a region – sea ice cover, soil richness, the dominant species of plants and animals. Changing weather will not change how much ice sits on top of Greenland; changing climate will. Unlike weather, you simply cannot say anything useful about climate without having a decent working knowledge of how we measure it.
That hardly means that the situation is hopeless. A reasonably intelligent person can educate himself or herself about climate to the point where he or she can make a fairly accurate estimation of where we stand. Those who have, and particularly those with world-class reputations, realize that humanity has dug itself a very deep hole. I don’t want to dismiss Robertson’s born-again eco-sensitivity, but hopefully his conversion has enough grounding in reality to survive the next cold snap.
Punchy
Personally, like most, I believe fully in the concept of greenhouse gases, and thus warming of the Earth, etc. HOwever, I am a bit stunned at how “off” the hurricane forcasts have been this year. Yeah, yeah….I know…August and Sept. have the greatest number…but we’re 4 days into August, only 3 named storms so far…
Just seems after 2004 and ’05 that we were hitting a upswing. This year…maybe not…
demimondian
Bear in mind that there was, and is, a lot of controversy in the scientific community about each one of the “global warming caused [x]” reports that the media trumpets. There’s a difference between “global warming is likely to eventually cause a boost in the number of hurricanes and in their severity” (about which there’s broad consensus) and “global warming affected the 2005-2006 North Atlantic season” (which is not broadly challenged, largely because there’s no way to falsify it. That does not mean it’s broadly accepted.) and “global warming caused the severity of the 2005-2006 North Atlantic hurricane season” (which is broadly questioned in the scientific community. It might be, but there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the analysis.) Ditto the recent much-hyped nighttime temperature report. It’s an interesting effect, and it’s a plausible causal inference, but the broad press claims of broad scientific acceptance are negligent. After making the same mistake that many times, you’d think the papers would get it right.
It may take a lawsuit on the part of some author to get the papers to start taking scientific reporting as seriously as they take gossip reporting.
Punchy
You’re referring to the cause-effect relationship of storms and global warming here, specifically, right? B/c with climate change in general, there is broad scientific acceptance.
Andrew
Wait, I thought Robertson wanted hurricanes to kill all the sodomites?
demimondian
Actually, I referring to this week’s new global warming warning: the global climate change had raised night-time temperatures. That’s likely to be true, but, currently, there’s no consensus behind it yet, and certainly not in the way the press is playing it. (One healdine read: “Can’t sleep becuase it’s too hot? Scientists tell you why.”)
Tim F.
This is actually one of the firmer predictions of global climate models. The reason is fairly simple – the heat balance during the daytime is dominated by solar input so an increase in retention would have to be relatively severe to become noticeable. During the night, however, retention of heat becomes the major factor and a moderate increase in reflected upper-atmosphere infrared would become much more noticeable. Think about why cloudy nights are warmer (clouds act like a local greenhouse) and why humid environments stay warmer at night than deserts while daytime temperatures can be similar.
Steve
The problem is that very few people have a good understanding of causation and probability, which is why the casinos in Vegas can afford all those pretty chandeliers.
Andrew
I have always though that they teach the wrong maths in American high schools.
You don’t need geometry, trig, and pre-calc.
People need accounting and basic probability/statistics (balance your checkbook, and don’t gamble, respectively).
Oh, and all high school physics should revolve around driving a car.
demimondian
Yes, Tim, I know. In fact, in the very next sentence of the posting from which you quoted, I wrote:
One article, no matter how well based in historical termal trends doth not consensus make, and it is still just one article.
Just as the burden of proof from an population study of the cause of a disease is much higher than the burden when there’s a forward prediction of the course in a single individual, and just as the burden of proof in a between-subjects design is much higher than the burden of proof in a within-subjects design, so the burden of proof in a retrograde trend study is much higher than the corresponding burden in an anterograde study. The result is reasonable, but one analysis does not prove causality.
demimondian
I’ve always thought that high school math courses whould include a segment on proof theory, Andrew. Oddly, for some reason, I’ve been unable to explain my interest in modal probability logics to many others. And all the ones I’ve been able to explain it to have eventually become mathematicians.
From this, I conclude that acquiring an interest in modal probability logics turns people into mathematicians.
Punchy
Bite your tongue. It goes both ways. If I can recognize an obvious advantage thru the use of superior sports insight/knowledge, I can (and do) win at sports betting consistently. I do agree completely that if people knew their odds at roulette, slots, and various gimmick table games, they’d refuse to play them. But they occasionally win…damn that operant conditioning. There ought to be a shrine to B.F. Skinner somewhere on the Vegas strip…
Didn’t mean to thread-jack, Tim. Back to global warming…what about the double-whammy of replacing grass (CO2 user) with concrete (heat retainer) in all these new cities? Seems to doubly exacerbate the prob…
Punchy
And nerds.
demimondian
Actually, Skinner merely popularized the term and introduced a consistent model organism.
Did you know, by the way, that the rate of reward for many slot machines in modren casinos is inversely proportional to the frequency with which the level is pulled? Random reinforcement theory was applied to the return curves, yielding a higher return to the house.
demimondian
Hmm. Punchy, on the basis of considerable scholarly knowledge of the matter, I would, quite literally, bet you that either (a) you make very few bets, and those with fanatics, or (b)you are wrong. Most “non-sporadic” gamblers believe that they make money, just as most consistent drivers think they’re better than 50% of the other drivers out there, and, just as in the case of drivers, they are wrong.
Punchy
Please explain further…I don’t understand. “rate of reward” is the money returned as a function of time, but doesn’t factor in how MUCH money is returned.
And how can the rate be higher if the lever is pulled less often? Rate, having the temporal component, involves the length of time one plays. Are you implying that one stands a better chance at return the less they play? Doesn’t it thus logically follow that you win the most with one pull than 20?
I agree you stand to lose more the more one plays. But I cannot figure how you’d win more by playing less….What am I missing?
demimondian
Ah, no. To an animal learning type, rate of reward is the average total amount of reward returned over a specified time interval or in response to a fixed number of rewarded behaviors.
In the case of a slot, a reward is a payout. I can give the same size payouts less and less frequently, provided that they are randomly provided, and maintain a constant rate of lever-pull. That means the mark pays me more…err, I mean the subject works harder for each payout.
Tim F.
Google the “urban heat island” effect. You put your finger on why (among a few reasons) cities are often ten degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside.
Steve
That sounds like a myth to me. It’s almost certainly illegal in New Jersey and Nevada, for one thing.
srv
This is why all this global warming namby-pamby tree hugging won’t solve anything. The nominal human can’t balance their own checkbook and would rather just keep pulling that lever. Any examples of other species under outside climatic stress all getting together to minimize their own impact? Nope. They just evolve.
I, for one, embrace our future tundra overlords.
demimondian
No. It’s legal; in fact, it was pioneered in Vegas. The payout has to average out to a certain rate. The casinos do not have to provide a constant return, just the averaged return.
Nutcutter
Yes. And don’t let yourself be bamboozled by liars who figure and figures cobbled up to lie.
And be able to understand the difference between climate, and weather.
Of course, trying to get the viewers of 700 Club to understand the difference between climate and weather would be like trying to teach a dog to be a DBA.
demimondian
I don’t know about that. THe number of monkey MCSE’s allegedly out there is supposedly pretty high….
Nutcutter
Well, sure, but look at who wrote the tests.
demimondian
The MCSE exams were written by the Mozilla Foundation?
Nutcutter
The “M” in MCSE stands for Mozilla?
Who knew?
demimondian
Yeah. MCSE stands for “Mozilla Crap Software Employer”. What did you think it meant?
Nutcutter
Besides, you show me a monkey who can explain the difference between an inner join and an outer join, and I’ll show you a moneky who is a Democrat.
Nutcutter
I’ll show you a
monekywhois acan spell Democrat.Punchy
I’m still not getting this. Does total mean total number of rewards, or total amount of rewards?
In animal models (from what little I remember), this is done with food rewards. One pellet, for example. But in a casino, there’s TWO variables–the number of rewards, AND the monetary amount of each. Therefore, designers must balance both the reward size and frequency, whereas animal study designers only design the frequency.
I honestly am lost where I’m going with all this. I’ll just end by saying that casino games designers have a crapload of statistics to crunch, and I don’t envy their job.
Perry Como
But you repeat yourself.
Nutcutter
My Cousin the System Enjunear?
Well, at my employer, it means a guy who knows a lot less than he thinks he does. Get the ticket first, and the experience to show what to do with it, maybe later, or maybe never.
Nutcutter
I’m right there with ya. I will do pretty much anything for pellets.
SeesThroughIt
As do I. I look forward to blasting across the alkali flats in a nuclear-powered, monkey-navigated…well, I digress.
The Other Steve
It’s called the Urban Heat Island, it has to do with concrete and may impact global climate, but it’s not caused by global climate.
The Other Steve
Ok, not clear on what you mean here. My experience on the slots is that your rate of reward is proportional to the number of chances you play.
That is, on some machines there’s a button that says ‘bet 2 coins’, but you only got one line to win off of. Your better off going with 1 coin, because the only way you win at slots is to hit the big jackpots and you need more opportunities not bigger payouts.
Then some machines allow you to bet 3 coins, but there are 3 lines to payoff on. So there you are better off betting all 3 coins.
That’s my take, on limited casino betting. My goal is to take my $60 and let it last me all night long so I can get free watered down drinks. :-)
demimondian
The individual food pellets are typically fairly small, and the reward is a collection of pellets. As a result, one can independently vary the amount of each reward and its frequency. At the end of the day though, your last sentence is the important one:
Well, except for the fact that I *do* envy their jobs…but, as you’ve already observed, I’m a nerd.
Nutcutter
Well, uh, you can have elevated nightime temps coming from multiple factors, including global warming, and HIE.
The number and interrelationship of factors is one of the things that makes it so easy for naysayers to find “flaws” in the global warming arguments. The average person doesn’t get that sort of thing unless you take a lot of time to teach the complexities, and of course, he takes the time to learn them.
Which takes us back to the 700 Club. Are people who want to think that Katrina was brought on by the sins of New Orleans residents going to take the time to learn the arcana of multiple causes and effects?
Like Tim suggested, first cold day, Pat will announce that global warming is over. God is rolling it back thanks to the piety of his followers, or some crazy shit like that.
Steve
This surprises me. My understanding is that the result of each play has to be random, period.
Regulations of the Nevada Gaming Commission and State Gaming Control Board
It’s true, of course, that the payout percentage can only be measured by taking a long-term average, but I don’t think you can make it dependent on how often the machine gets played or when the jackpot was last hit. And if the overall amount paid out is the same, why would this benefit the casino, anyway?
demimondian
If the individual trials were statistically independent, then, yes, that would be true. But suppose I lowered your expected reward on the next trial when you won, and raised it when you didn’t win? Now that proportionality goes out the window.
When you gamble in a casino, you’re dealing with people who are payed very, very well to…well, to not put to bald a point on it, rip you off, and who have millions of man-years of data to extrapolate from. You better believe that they’re out to get you, ‘cuz they are.
demimondian
Higher occupancy rates at the slots. If I can get you to sit there for twice as long, I need half as many slots.
Steve
Usually, your odds are better if you play the maximum number of coins, because the jackpot is proportionately higher. For example, with 1 coin the jackpot might be $1000, with 2 coins it might be $2000, but with 3 coins it might be $5000. Check out any machine and this will usually be the case for that top payline.
The result is that your expected value is slightly higher if you always give yourself a chance to hit that $5000 jackpot. The fact that you get fewer plays by playing the max coins increases your variance slightly, but doesn’t affect your expected value.
The Other Steve
Depends. While there are a lot of people with MCSE who don’t know as much as they think they do, there is an even larger proportion of people without MCSEs declaring that people with MCSEs don’t know what they are talking about, who actually really don’t know what they are talking about.
The post a lot on slashdot, and they use Linux and think they are really smart and don’t realize that there are some of us who started using Linux back in 1992, mastered it, and have long since abandoned it. :-)
Steve
That only works as long as no one knows what the casino is up to. Once they do, then no one stays put, everyone is always hunting for a machine that hasn’t been played lately. As I said, I still don’t think it’s legal to set up a machine this way.
Nutcutter
My God, they’re almost as bad as politicians!
The Other Steve
Yeah, but it burns through $60 a whole lot faster.
demimondian
Look carefully at those regulations. “The mathematical probability of a symbol appearing in a position in any game outcome must be constant.” It doesn’t cay, anywhere, that the joint probability of a pair of symbols needs to be constant, only that the individual probability needs to be constant. In particular, it does not say that “repeated trials on such a machine need to form a independent identically distributed (Martingale) process.”
That’s a loophole I could drive a truck through.
demimondian
No. It works as long as people are willing to get drawn in. Once you walk in there, you’re somebody’s meat, sucker.
Pooh
Yes, and er, no respectively. Gambling is ok if either A) you have an edge (see, e.g. online poker, where Nut’s hypothetical Democratic Monkey would probably have a substantial overlay in lower limit games) or B) you treat it as an entertainment expense – I expect to lose at craps, but I also expect that it will be fun while it lasts…
Nutcutter
Sure, I agree … I’d state the whole problem more generally: The IT world is populated by a significant number of people who know a lot less about what they are talking about, than they think they do, or than other people think they do.
Is there another “profession” out there that is so vulnerable to quackery? I don’t know, but I’d be surprised if there is.
demimondian
We ought to move this to the open thread. I’m moving over there — you’ve just made one of my favorite statistical gambling errors.
Steve
If I built a machine your way, you’d be able to detect a pattern based on previous game outcomes and methods of play. You’d know which machines were more likely to hit based on which ones had been played or hit recently.
demimondian
Punchy
Sounds like a gay dance club in South Beach.
This is why I stick to sports betting. I’d like to think that Vegas has no control over the outcome of these sporting events, save probably boxing and maybe NASCAR…
Tsulagi
Activist judges!! Practically forcing poor Tommy to move back to that hellhole called Texas to live with his wife. Don’t those judges realize he’s answered God’s call to be a lobbyist in the big void left by Abramoff? There’s only a few short years left in this administration to be able to make the really big bucks. Those judges must hate America.
Nutcutter
Being drunk is the key, for me.
demimondian
Good point. Well, they’ve blocked my simple averaging hack (raise the probability when you lose, lower it when you win), but they certainly have NOT required that the behavior not be time-dependent. Hell, the simple addition of a electric eye *still* gets me around the regs.
If the gaming comission wants to insist that the results be a Martingale, then that’s what they should do. It’s easy enough to require a confidential audit that requires such behavior. I take the silence of the regulations as speaking volumes.
Pooh
Depends on the game and the stakes, me boy…
Paul L.
Schadenfreude historians do not seem to write books about how those who predicted global cooling and the population bomb in the 70s/80s were wrong.
Pooh
Well, certainly a niche for you to fill! Enlighten us.
Steve
If the gaming comission wants to insist that the results be a Martingale, then that’s what they should do. It’s easy enough to require a confidential audit that requires such behavior. I take the silence of the regulations as speaking volumes.
Believe me, there are plenty of regs that I didn’t include…
If each play has to be an independent random event, though, I truly don’t see how you get around that.
Nutcutter
True. If only Edison had stopped after the first 100 tries at making a light bulb, we wouldn’t have all those fucking power lines all over the place now.
The whole secret to the future is to quit the first time you get something wrong.
demimondian
Actually, they do. They also write books about how demagogues repeatedly lied about the widespread acceptance of those predictions, and about how the wider community of scientists weren’t deceived by the compelling but poorly supported early simulations.
Paul, you’re a loser, and not just in this debate.
demimondian
GOod point, and one to which I have an answer. I’m taking this out of the current thread, and moving to this one, which has the desirable property of being open.
Perry Como
Slot machines have a position on abortion?
John D.
If you mean the collective EV is negative, then yes, I agree. It’s how the casino makes any money at all off of poker. Money has to flow to the house in some form or fashion.
If you mean that the player’s individual EV is negative, I disagree. It’s more a matter of individual talent. I can beat a rake of 5-6% (and I avoid rated games like the plague, solely due to my style of play), while my brother consistently beats a 4% rake but struggles at the 5-6% area, while cleaning up on rated games. (Effectively, I win larger pots but much less frequently, while he scarfs up many more smaller pots). Factoring in the rake/rate into the EV requires a lot of handlogging and a decent mathematical understanding, since most rakes nowadays are stated as “10%, maximum $4” or some variant thereof.
John S.
Paul L., yet again, proves that he only believes what his wingnut masters tell him by regurgitating this often slain zombie talking point.
By the way, now that Israel admitted to having killed civilians in Qana, are you still waiting for “more facts” before you decide to keep peddling your Qana=Jenin=hoax tinfoil hat theory?
Nutcutter
Under Darrell Rules, facts don’t matter.
Aaron Adams
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/i_must_be_some_kind_of_purist.php
Paul L.
Israel did this immediately after the bombing occurred. Is the investigation complete?
Of course the victims are now in a mass grave. So the point may be moot. Do you admit that Hezbollah “sexed up” Qana to the media. That they paraded the same corpses in front of the cameras time and time again and distorted the number of dead. Of course everything Hezbollah does wrong (firing rockets into civilian areas and hiding behind civilians) gets a pass.
I guess I can be like you and mention in every thread that the left was wrong about Fitzgerald to Seek Indictment of Rove.
So the media “sexed-up” global cooling and the population bomb like they are doing with Global Warming/Climate Change now?
Link to such book. I take it Paul R. Ehrlich has been disgraced and is a laughing stock.
No wait
Ehrlich has been recognized for his work with the following awards:
I think this statement about Andrew Sullivan covers the arguments I get here at Balloon Juice
Punchy
Tim, what do you think of this?? Hyperbole, or plausible? Scary, if true. If the Amazon starts to go, I’m guessing it’ll be a domino effect…
Pooh
Yup. I play[ed] mostly limit so the calculations were in terms of BB/HR, IIRC that works out to about 15bb/hr in rake (less in online, since the rake is generally in the 4% range, slightly more at limits under 2/4)
The rake is still significantly less than the vig at horses our sports, (plus I’d imagine that it is probably easier to get a better handle on your true EV at poker than at the other two. EasIER, since we’re still talking 50k+ hands just to be able to ballpark. Of course in online play 50k hands is less than a month, playing full time…)
The Other Steve
Amen.
Hey, but there’s a lot of money to be made in cleaning up the shit they leave behind.
Pooh
Law.
John S.
Does anyone else want to play with Paul L.?
I’m busy at work and do not have the time, desire or energy to respond to his usual overwhelming stupidity. However I find this attempt to save face:
This moronic statement:
And his Andrew Sullivanesque persecution complex to be particularly amusing.
John D.
Dear God.
I wouldn’t *touch* a game that was raked anywhere near that high. Hell, I wouldn’t set foot in a casino that had that rake on anything.
Good pro cash game (i.e., non-tournament) poker players will, if lucky, net ONE BB/hr, post-rake and blinds/antes. Low-limit games like $2-$4 average about 2.5-3.5 BB/hr “expense” (um, only quick source I can find is the rec.gambling.poker FAQ)
About the only place I could see going above 5 BB/hr rake is California low-stakes “No-Fold’em Hold’em” (for brick and mortar casinos) or online micro-limit games.
John D.
Sure.
The whole “new-age” movement, holistic medicine, religion, etc.
When you get to define the rules, you can game the rules.
John S.
Oh, and let’s not forget Paul L.’s apparent devotion to a fellow Paul, Paul L. Erlich.
I wouldn’t go that far, but he certainly has critics:
Paul Ehrlich has never been right. Why does anyone still listen to him?
And has some said crazy shit:
Not to mention losing his infamous bet with American economist, Julian Simon.
Actually, he sounds like your kind of guy, Paul L.
Oh, and all of this information came from the selectively edited Wikipedia article Paul L. presented to show how “credible” Ehrlich is.
Perry Como
The same reason people still listen to Cheney?
Pooh
Sorry was talking about the table not per player (and FWIW, the 1bb/hr thing is IMO massively conservative for what a good player can win in med/low limit games these days with a modicum of game selection…)
What say we move this discussion to the open thread above?
Darrell
There is no scientific consensus that “humanity” is a significant cause of global warming. There simply isn’t. As for correlation between CO2 levels and global temperature patterns, there’s no clear-cut cause and effect relationship there either.
jg
Let it go people, don’t engage.
Pooh
Points for consistency. God isn’t even on your side anymore Senator, why do you hate Christmas?
Nutcutter
Possibly, but could New Age Medicine have produced anything like the Denver Airport Baggage System?
One of the most embarassing failures of technology in our time. Not that there aren’t a hundred other examples out there on that scale, or a zillion at a smaller scale.
I think my favorite is General Motors’ investment in technology when it got into bed with Ross Perot.
But there are so many examples out there.
From a review of “Up and Running” by R.Walton, Harvard Business Press, 1989.
Darrell
I think most conservatives look to Pat Robertson like most libs look to Al Sharpton. Occassionally both have something worthwhile to say, but more often they’re like the crazy aunt in the attic.
Nutcutter
Sorry, here’s a link to the Denver Airport story.
Darrell
Global warming? or cooling trend? Depends on the time frame
chriskoz
Darrell, is it that you don’t understand the topic? (it is indeed a complicated subject) or is it that you are unwilling to understand?
The “cooling trend” argument you are trying to use above demonstrats your complete lack of understanding on the topic. Nobody has ever claimed that warming/cooling hasn’t happened in the past. But, the fact that is has occured in the past hardly affects the evidence that points to the fact that current temperature trends are, at least in part, being affected by man’s activity.
To not understand the difference seems to me to come from either a basic lack of knowledge/understanding or a willful attempt not to listen to the facts. Which is it Darrel? (Oh… I almost forgot… I guess a third option is that it’s all an “Arab lie”)
Darrell
Key points from the article
Darrell
I have a big problem with how so many of you define “in part” with regards to what extent man’s activities have affected global temperature patterns. Hence, my citations above.
Perry Como
Consider it the 1% Doctrine applied to science. Or, in the case of human effects on global warming, the 90% Doctrine. Or is it 49%? 51%?
All I know is if there is a 1% chance that a country can do us harm, war is the only option. However, if there is not a complete consensus among every scientist that humans are contributing to global warming, we should ignore it completely.
Nutcutter
That would be the Darrell Doctrine.
It’s …. so rational. Why do you hate rationality?
stiknstein
So what made Pat stop being Pat? I would love to know the answer.
Pat will always be Pat.
1] Find a cause.
2] Take it up cause God told you to.
3] Use it to raise money.
4] If it doesn’t pan out…Go back to #1
Pooh
Can I quote you on that next time you try to tar me with the opinions of Ward Churchill?
Steve? Book it.
chriskoz
Darrell, I placed the “in part” there to recognize the humans are NOT the only factor. (so that dumbasses don’t try to claim that scientists are ignoring natural affects and fluctuations.)
But the consensus is that humans are having a significant impact.
The “no consensus” link you posted is humorous… but worthless. A list of PhDs by itself says nothing about the state of real climate research and understanding. I’ve seen too many PhD’s spout crap on topics they know nothing about and think that thier PhD gives them some sort of credibility. And unfortunately, for those with poor reasoning skills… it does. (I’m looking at you Darrell) In addition, the weak arguments on that site have been debunked so many times it’s silly.
I think I’m going to go with the conclusions of the peer reviewed community. (Peer review is kinda a key component of real science.)
Nutcutter
Darrell knows all about it, he’s a Scientologist.
chriskoz
In that case… I guess the question is… What were L. Ron’s
thoughtsvisions on global warming?Perry Como
Excess friction caused by the release of Thetans.
chriskoz
Damn… if only there was a way to “clear” the world of those nasty heat generating Thetans. But, I bet something like that might cost a lot of “clams”.
Nutcutter
E-meters. That’s the secret.
Jess
Funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. I’ve had a bumper sticker for a while now that reads “Reality is when it happens to you,” but I never got around to sticking it on my car. I think now would be the perfect time to do so.
chopper
HAH!
it’s been pointed out before. it’s also been pointed out that peer-reviewed journals etc carry far more scientific weight than a politically-charged petition.
more importantly, it’s been pointed out that the people who run that site don’t actually check the credentials of those that sign the petition, and in fact fraud has occurred. jokers sign it claiming to be a phD in atmospheric science etc. so you can’t really trust the numbers overall at all. “hey, Dr. Oliver Clothesoff claims that GW is a sham! it must be true!”
of course, darrell knows all this, but he still keeps posting it as utter proof that there is no consensus at all. best just ignore it.
Darrell
Some prank names were added (by those trying to discredit the petition?). But we’ve already hashed this out before on these threads, as many of the atmospheric scientists who signed this petition were contacted and survedy, and MORE of them STILL stand by the petition than those who changed their mind and now disagree.
But chopper knows this and he has a narrative to push, so he trots out his dishonest attempt to discredit the ENTIRE petition of atmospheric scientists, just because there were a few who signed with a fake name (out of 17,000+), or without a thorough check of their credentials. Point still stands that there is no consensus in the scientific community that man made effluents like CO2 are a significant contributor to global warming.
Darrell
More evidence why liberals should NEVER be trusted with national security. Openly hostile nations with batshit crazy dictators like Iran and North Korea developing nukes represent only a “1%” chance that they could do us harm. Pure unvarnished idiocy.
Darrell
Senior Dem congressman John Dingell drives home the point
No different than saying “I don’t take sides for or against Al Queda”.. But after making that statement, leftists defended Dingell’s comments, dishonestly claiming he was taken out of context without a word of criticism against what he said.
Zifnab
Well, if we’re taking swipes at Congressmen,
Yes, because it was those damn Iraqis and their hamfisted mismanagement of disbanded Iraqi soldiers, Abu Garab, and handling secterian tensions that truly foiled this operation. America did nothing wrong. But, you know, even the most perfect invasion fails when those pesky civilians refused to be conquered.
Don’t worry Congressman Bonner, Iran and Syria are right next door. If Saddamville won’t take freedom at bunkerbuster-point, maybe someone else will.
Freedom is on the march!
Perry Como
Cite? Oh, right. Once again, you are full of shit.
Indeed.
Darrell
The US gave Iraqis an opportunity that they did not have when they were under the boot of Saddam and sons. Frankly, I’m taken aback at your extremism in denying this. Abu Ghraib was Disneyworld compared to Saddam’s rape rooms, childrens prisons and mass murder.
That there were problems and mistakes in no way changes the fact that the US toppled a murderous dictator and presented the Iraqis with a chance at freedom and democracy. Their future is squarely in their own hands. We can help, but the ball is in the Iraqis’ court.
No surprise libs want to blame America and Bush for everything “Oh, because of Abu Ghraib, it’s all America’s fault that Iraqis are killing each other”. Wonderful libs. You’ve really got a ‘reality based’ perspective there.
Darrell
Yes, on one hand we have a senior Dem congressman saying that he’s not either “for or against” a murderous terrorist organization, and on the other hand, we have a Repub congressman pointing out the obvious, that the success or failure of an Iraqi democracy ultimately rests with the Iraqi people themselves. How crazy of him to point out such a thing!
Perry Como
Nah. Americans, liberal or not, want to Bush to take responsibility for his actions. The civil war in Iraq is due to the failures of the Bush administration. They’ll never admit it, but that’s pretty much standard these days.
chopper
how many? do tell.
again, how many? how many of those who signed the petition are atmospheric scientists?
first off, yes, i’ll always call into question a politically-charged petition. especially in an argument over science, where a petition is pretty low on the totem pole vs peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals etc. what kind of idiot believes a petition over a large number of peer-reviewed papers?
come back when you have something that resembles actual scientific evidence which you can back up with more than a fucking petition for chrissakes.
shit, i’ll bet there were petitions running about during the schiavo deal telling us all that she was totally awake. signed by (some real) doctors! that totally trumps the actual evidence that the broad was way gone. totally.
chopper
yeah, cause god forbid we might not invade a country that obviously is not threat whatsoever to us.
Bill
Speaking of elections, today, you have a chance to make it possible for every citizen
to have their vote counted throughout the United States of America !
How can you do that? By supporting Clint Curtis in his bid for Congress against Tom Feeney.
How does that affect you?
Clint Curtis is a computer geek who knows how easy it is to manipulate your vote because he was asked by Congressman Tom Feeney to create such a prototype in October 2000. And the rest is history.
It is all about YOUR VOTE actually getting counted.
This is your chance to make a difference in America. Stand up with Clint for Democracy.
Stand up and be counted. Go to http://www.clintcurtis.com to be a part of this historic race.
Paul L.
Clinton – Kosovo.
demimondian
Take that up with the Western Europeans.
How’s the CSI on the Qana bodies going, Q[u]incy?
Paul L.
Nice deflection.
Of Course Clinton gets no blame for Kosovo.
I do not know anything new about Qana. Did they find the other 28 bodies or do they have to ship them in?
demimondian
Q[u]incy:
Fixed.