I think it's a little too easy to say that the problem is "we're being too easy on children". And yes, I think that there's a sort of Mrs. Lovejoy "Won't someone think of THE CHILDREN" every-child-is-a-perfect-snowflake political correctness that is a problem. However, I also think it is important to be accommodating to the different needs of different children.

There's a larger problem, which is that we don't know what we're doing, and we don't even know what we're trying to do with education. Are we providing vocational training to get a job? Are we advocating a general liberal-arts-type education? Are liberal arts stupid and useless? I can't seem to find a consensus.

So instead, we speak broadly about accountability without specifying what people are accountable for producing. We make our kids take a crazy number of silly standardized tests, and put a lot of pressure on them (and on teachers) to perform well. It's not clear that the standardized tests are testing anything that we care about, especially since it's not clear what we care about. We're telling kids, though, that it's vital that they do extremely well on such tests, or else they're stupid useless people who are unfit to do anything but become a janitor, and "being a janitor" is described as a punishment.

It's not at all clear to me what we think we're doing, but what we're doing is awfully stupid.

I don't have any good solutions

How about not continuing with the dictatorial oligarchy in the US that right now passes for a democracy?

Sadly due to a very lousy school system in the US many Christians simply can not understand their own faith. They get suckered in by all kinds of nonsense sects that offer teachings about 100% opposite of what Christ asked of us.

So what if Christ had asked people to believe in creationism? Would that make it any more valid?

Anytime I have to build a presentation in PowerPoint, I generally have comprehensive notes (with additional case studies and metrics) in the notes section. I generally take a printed copy with the additional notes to the presentation so I have a reference copy and I use the slides as topic agendas, maybe a chart or two for reference.

While this mostly seems like incoherent ranting -- pardon me if I am mistaken -- I was making a very simple point:

Let's say you, Sam, own a large farm. And somewhere on that farm, coincidentally, is a large deposit of naturally-occurring "Roundup". As long as it stays where it is, everything is fine. But if it got into your fields, your crops would mostly die.

You have several neighbors, many of whom are basically friendly to you. You also have one neighbor who also has fields, who directly competes with you. His name is Russel.

You and Russel both know that using Roundup on each other could kill each other's crops. So you have a mutual agreement to never use Roundup... but just in case the other guy does, you build up a pretty big reserve to use in retaliation. Just in case.

That pretty much describes the "cold war". And it wasn't irrational. It was stressful but it did work.

Now along comes some insane manager of your farm, who decides Russel isn't so bad after all. You, the owner (The People) know better, but that's the line your "manager" (President) is selling you.

Question: even though you are not actively in conflict, do you sell shares in your Roundup mine to Russel? Especially when you know he will in turn sell it to other neighbors who are even less friendly?

It would be IRRATIONAL to do so. It would be BETRAYING your farm and your family.

But that's just exactly what the Clinton Foundation helped do.

It's not fucking rocket science. Nor is it paranoia.

You're right, it was 24 years ago. I guess my mistake reflects just how much trouble I go to, to pay attention to your lengthy rantings.

But they DIDN'T predict growing sea ice in a world that is NOT warming, did they? (I did read the paper, by the way.)

Since these conditions are not the conditions presumed in the model, in fact they have not predicted anything. You are just a master at inappropriately shifting contexts, as I have pointed out many time. You don't get to say that they predicted a result given THESE conditions, then say the same result under OTHER conditions constitutes a "prediction". Especially given the uncertainties involved. That's bullshit.

You aren't using "all the available data". Once again, you are using the data that is convenient to you. I will ask you again: would the slope be the same if you chose 2000 for a starting point, or 1850?

No, it would not. I made a simple comment based on a simple fact: 1981 was at or near a local maximum, and using it for a starting point of your "average" is questionable at best. That is an accurate statement. If you chose 1930 instead, as another local maximum you would again have to justify that as a starting point. You don't get to weasel out of that.

Yes, indeed. If you should ever start actually using "all the available data", and were honest with yourself, I think you might start softening your tone.

That doesn't explain record sea ice extents at a time when it is claimed that ocean, not particularly land, temperature is increasing.

I'm not trying to claim it's irrelevant. But it certainly does not seem sufficient.

Manabe was 14 years ago. Conditions have changed rather significantly in that time, as has our understanding of the geology.

It may be that Manabe is still correct. On the other hand, it may not.

You seem to feel that what "you told people" is necessarily truth. That's an interesting point of view.

You are implying that my statement that 1981 was near a temporal local maximum is incorrect?

You would rather use 1930 as your starting point? As opposed to, say, 2000 or 1850?

No, like so many others you mischaracterize what Libertarians are all about.

Regardless, the Tragedy of the Commons stemmed from a socialist "commons" policy... nothing even remotely Libertarian. In a Libertarian society such commons would scarcely if ever exist, and if any did, no party would be allowed to exploit them at the expense of others.

The first thing to note is that you are confirming my own comment, to a rather laughable degree.

The second thing is: you prove your ignorance by speaking of "conservative libertarians". There is no such animal. There are libertarian-leaning conservatives, but it does not work the other way around.

And maybe you should learn something about people you are speaking to before assuming they are just repeating media talking points. In fact I was speaking strictly from personal experience, much of it gleaned from right here on Slashdot. From comments like yours.

Yep. Because people are sick and tired of "Progressive" liberals and their provably failed policies. I mean not just failing now, but that have historically failed, for many decades.

But on the other hand, the largest single voting bloc (>40%) are people who identify themselves as "independent" or "libertarian". In other words, not members or followers of either of the "Big 2" parties.

How do you know? Again you confirm my original comment by conflating libertarians with conservatives (a false notion), and then go further to suggest that YOU HAVE EVER SEEN A LIBERTARIAN POLICY. That's a hoot.

Personally, I think the odds are getting higher every year. Approval rates for all aspects of the Federal government are at all-time lows. Something has to give.

Is there actually a way for US businesses to prevent themselves from hostile takeover? Like, can they be "private limited companies" and just refuse to merge? If so, I think these guys should tell EA to fuck off, on principle.

To me, the worst of the lot is the statistical "reasoning" which is all based on the presumption that these events are equally distributed. The thing is: we know that they are not uniformly distributed... and even worse, we don't know how they are distributed.

Sure, we do know of a few particular cycles of tendency, but those don't predict individual events.

So the very basis of TFA's statistical reasoning is nonsense. We don't have any way to actually calculate the probability of such an event. We don't have enough information.

Correction: arctic ice is below 1 standard deviation from 1981-2010 average, but within 2 std. deviations.

Still, remember that 1981 is a (dare I say deliberately chosen?) high point from which to start measurements, so going by the 1981-2010 average is probably a bit misleading.

And the total global ocean ice is still well above normal, because of the record high Antarctic ice right now.

Currently, global sea ice is well above normal. That is largely because antarctic sea ice is at or near a record high, while arctic sea ice is slightly lower than (but approximately within one standard deviation of) average.

Now, while I know that overall ocean temperature and surface ice may not be a direct correlation, it's a bit of a mystery to me how they can claim that ice is melting due to unusual ocean warming, when we know that ocean surface ice has been at record levels.