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Comment Re:Mann is a fruad (Score 5, Insightful) 786

and the religion of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change is alive and well... unfortunately

Ahh, the anti-science movement calling the pro-scientific movement a "religion".

This is one of the lies that the anti-science's PR movement pays people to tell. If you have a fault, it is a good idea to accuse the other side of that fault so that the perception develops that both sides are as bad as each other.

How's that working out for you with the audience of http://science.slashdot.org/ ?

That's because it doesn't work on people who are actually following what's going on.

Comment What exactly do you mean by "Fraud"? (Score 5, Insightful) 786

Only about 20% of scholarly papers that are cutting edge science are still corroborated 5 years later.

One example of research that has been particularly well corroborated by later papers is the temperature reconstructions by Mann, Bradley and Hughes.

There is no higher standard of affirmation than reproduction by independent lines of evidence.

How can this possibly be fraud?

Neither is he self-promoting. He is science promoting. That is to be admired. Even if you're a Bush or Murdoch, so that you've an interest in not promoting it.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Non-coders, why aren't you contributing to open source? 4

Jason Baker writes: Most everyone is using an open source tool somewhere in their workflow, but relatively few are contributing back their time to sustaining the projects they use. But these days, there are plenty of ways to contribute to an open source project without submitting code. Projects like OpenHatch will even help you match your skill set to a project in need. So what's holding you back? Time? Lack of interest? Difficulty getting started?

Submission + - South Korea Bans Selfie-stick Sales

Rambo Tribble writes: South Korea has instituted large fines for selling unregistered "selfie-sticks". The problem arises because many of the devices are using Bluetooth radio spectrum, and must be certified to do so legally. Expressing doubts that the regulations and stiff fines will influence sales, one official said of them, "It's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way, but it is nonetheless a telecommunication device subject to regulation, and that means we are obligated to crack down on uncertified ones,"

Submission + - Open source craft brewery shares more the recipes (opensource.com)

Jason Hibbets writes: An open source craft brewery in Saint Paul, Minnesota is taking open source beyond sharing recipes. The goal for Tin Whiskers Brewing Company is to "engage and give back to the community by sharing an inside look at opening and operating a craft brewery." In this interview with co-founder George Kellerman, we learn a little more about why the trio of hobbyists who started the brewing company took the path to becoming professional brewers and why they decided to be more open. "The brewery community was extremely helpful and open, so being open ourselves seemed like a great way to honor that," Kellerman said.

Comment Re:They WILL FIght Back (Score 1) 516

huge amounts of deforestation (nine thousand acres worth),

Really?

It looks from the aerial photography you link to that they just cut tracks to each turbine.

Wind power is a joke regardless of how you look at it.

I look at it from price per unit, insulation from oscillating fuel prices, greenhouse emissions, and production of harmful waste.

It's not as funny as you seem to think.

Comment Re:Not For Me (Score 1) 194

> Remember, Hydrogen is really just a battery when you think about it, the power still has to come from somewhere else like coal (though ideally wind or solar). In most cases hydrogen is generated from natural gas, generating, you guessed it, carbon dioxide in the process.

The great thing about the Hydrogen economy, is you can increase the amount of renewable on the grid, and convert excess to hydrogen, when you have an excess, like in the middle of the day and the middle of the night.

Comment Re:History is written in the geologic record. (Score 1) 495

You're reasoning in isolated abstractions: "biodiversity is good for humans"

That's pretty well accepted.

The argument you see in textbooks is that the interdepedence of ecological systems is such that at it is difficult to know what species are key to our own survival. so dropping biodiversity is like playing Russian Roulette. (Of course the rich will be able to supplement, but I mean key to our own cheap survival).

But more importantly to me is the intellectual resource. Each species comes with it's unique proteins and biological processes. Losing them without studying them is a permanent loss to our knowledge, and future study is more likely to have useful results than current study, as our understanding of the biochemistry allows fuller understanding and so utilization of the processes observed.

"tigers dying reduces biodiversity"

I linked to a paper with this (generalized) result: reduced genetic diversity withing species reduces biodiversity of other species in the ecosystem.

"ice sheets move slowly and allows migrations"

The species in current existence have survived the repeated glaciation cycle of the holocene. The current warming is more rapid, and in the wrong direction.

With that kind of superficial reasoning, you can "prove" anything in any complex problem by just picking out the right abstractions.

I think you're ignoring the proofs. If you think one of them is wrong, we can delve into it. But read the paper linking genetic diversity to biodiversity first.

Large predators are usually already evolutionary dead ends, candidates for natural extinction

That seems like an isolated abstraction. Do you have any science-based evidence of this claim?

Humans have killed off many apex predators in many environments over the past few millennia.

Can you give a few examples?

Generally, the main effect has been that human livestock and humans have become safer.

Do you have any science-based evidence of this claim? I think that it is wrong. When you remove an apex predator, biodiversity crashes.

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As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein

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