Can we get a Star Trek like movie but instead of meeting human looking weirdos in outer space, let's meet species that look really weird, yet make friends with us and we commnunicate.
I can imagine a world without war, a world without hate, a world where everyone lives together in peace. I can imagine us attacking that world.
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"everyone thinks this" is not always the best argument for something
It's a damn sight better than "all the experts think that, therefor I'm going to spin a wild conspiracy theory and believe the opposite!"
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The Slashdot population leans heavy on the tech and science geek side, people who are generally pretty good at finding reliable websites like the National Academy of Science, and secondary websites that reasonably reflect reliable mainstream science.
Usually.
Except when it comes to fucking climate change, when suddenly a substantial portion of our population buy into some wacky conspiracy theory that the entire mainstream science community is in on some conspiracy to publish lies, and they start actively rejecting the fucking United States National Academy of Science as presumptively unreliable, and instead start digging up random blatantly trash websites that gain "reliable" status when they see that the info supports the "right" side of the issue. And you start running into "climate" papers cited to support a point - papers filled with blatant errors - and when you google the author's name to try to figure out what sort of idiot wrote it, it turns out the author wasn't a climate scientists at all..... no... the author was a "combustion engineer".... and then you think "WTF is a combustion engineer" and you find the link to his professional page you see (drumroll please) he's a combustion engineer specializing in how to burn coal better. And you can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. Because the otherwise competent geek you were debating with fell into paranoid conspiracy nonsense throwing out everything he knows about reliable science, and rejecting sites like the National Academy of science as "unreliable".... and instead found himself a "reliable" junksite that said what he wanted to hear.
You can use reliable sites to figure out what to believe, or you can use what you believe to determine which websites are reliable. One of those two options doesn't work so well.
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I could point out that in 20 years of tracking the climate you'd EXPECT typically one result breaking the 95% confidence band on the high side and one result breaking the 95% confidence band on the low side.... and that I'm pretty sure we broke the 95% confidence band on the high side in 1998... but never mind that....
The whole warming thing is basic undeniable laws of physics. Sunlight shines down, hits the ground or ocean, and turns into heat. And basic laws of physics, CO2 blocks thermal infrared energy from leaving. Heat energy is trapped, Q.E.D. the basic principal and basic fact of global warming is an absolute undeniable result of basic laws of physics. The only complicated part is exactly what will happen with that trapped thermal energy. Where will it go and what will it do.
Surface temperatures have been rising slightly slower than predicted for the last few years, however the ocean temperatures have been rising faster than predicted for the last few years. That means the total warming balances out right just as expected. As I said, basic laws of physics, a pretty well predictable amount of heat energy was trapped, exactly as predicted.
The complicated part is how that heat energy will flow in the climate system and what abnormal effects it will produce in climate system. And just as we (in general) expected, it resulted in random anomalies in climate circulation - there was anomalously high rate of ocean mixing carrying more of the heat energy into the deep ocean.
The earth is warming exactly as expected, and weird random shit is starting to crop up in climate circulation patterns, just as anticipated. (I believe Donald Rumsfield would call these "Known Unknowns. We can predict that the climate is going to start doing weird shit we've never seen before, even if we can't predict exactly what that random shit is going to be. The overall heating of the Earth is a pretty well Known Known.)
Changes in ocean circulation is a core expected "unknown". The slight increase in vertical mixing we got is pretty insignificant, it gives a temporary slowing in the land-temperature rise. But another very possible change in ocean circulation patterns would be a shift or shutoff of one of the north-south circulation loops. If that happens.... well.... then they're going to start saying the "Alarmists" were overly optimistic. No one can even guess at the odds of that, so scientists focus on the known-knowns of the total amount of warming and sea level rise.
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Physics actually can answer it to some degree
The laws of physics aren't PROVEN! They're JUST THEORIES!
Checkmate, warmists.
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I suspect a lot of AGW denialists are also Evolution deniers
Indeed, there is a heavy overlap. Furthermore there's a well established correlation between conspiracy theories in general. Someone who believes in one conspiracy theory is more likely to believe in others. Anti-vaxxers and moon-landing deniers are more likely to be warming-deniers or creationists, creationists and warming-deniers are more likely to be anti-vaxxers or moon-landing deniers. Oh... and toss in 9/11 Truthers of course.
Once you start believing NASA/Doctors/Biologists/Climatologists/Geologists or whoever are in on some vast global conspiracy of deception, it's easy to expand and merge the conspiracies.
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I don't like societies transformed by government mandate
never been a society successfully "transformed by science"
Lead was eliminated from gasoline (and our air) by government mandate. The same goes for keeping mercury and other crap out of our water.
So either agree that it is reasonable and appropriate for the government to restrict/prohibit the usage of the atmosphere/waterways as an unlimited dumping ground for industrial waste, or go move to some communist country toxic hellhole city in China or Russia where society polluting HASN'T transformed by government mandate.
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Here, you use the old tired fallacy of Argumentum ad populum (appeal to widespread belief, bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) - where a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many people believe it to be so.
No, he wasn't using Argumentum ad populum.
An example of Argumentum ad populum fallacy would be "Most of the general public believe global warming is scientifically controversial, therefore global warming is scientifically controversial".
He was using Argument from Authority, and as he was citing expert climatologists on an issue of climatology, he was using it in a non-fallacious manner.
The "bandwagon" says eating lead paint chips causes brain damage in children. And if you think effectively unanimous agreement of experts in a field and decades of research and thousands of peer reviewed papers and an entire planet of scientific evidence "bandwagon" is a SANE justification to reject something, then clearly your parents actively avoided the lead-paint-chip-bandwagon when you were a child.
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Apparently you don't don a prosthetic or your words would be different.
>"Average American Cable Subscriber Gets 189 Channels and Views 17"
I must be above average then (or perhaps below average), since I get something like 300+ channels and watch maybe 8?
Ones I can get over the air (so I don't count those 6, of which I might even watch only 3)+
History
Science
NatGeo
SciFi
AMC
Epix
Encore
WGN
How's this for cherry picking: The Earth has been on a cooling trend every year since 1965.
Genuine global mean temperature data, continuous coverage from 1965 to 2013.5, no tricks or manipulation other than cherrypicking 5 dates to split it into 6 cooling trends. The graph was inspired by recent claims that warming has stopped, it's a perfect illustration of how utterly fictional that claim is.
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How the above post could possibly be modded up for any metric is beyond me.
>"Especially when those copies come with awful DRM. "
Um, and streaming doesn't? There is just as much DRM on Netflix/etc. Plus it has its own limitations:
* I can't use it on any of my many Linux machines.
* I can't use it without an Internet connection.
* I can't get QUALITY without a GOOD Internet connection.
* I can't use it at all if that Internet connection has blocking.
* They have the ability to FORCE the user to watch anything they want- commercials, previews, copyright notices, public service announcements, etc.
* The quality or playback is far more likely to change or be interrupted.
* Streaming is often very "clunky" when it comes to fast forwarding and rewinding.
It worked fine for me yesterday, that is all I know. Have not tried it again since then... yet
"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid." - Martin Mull
