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Comment What causation? (Score 3, Insightful) 132

Who said the CO2 causes anything?

The article and summary use the words "contributed to", which we know will be true - as a greenhouse gas, any increased CO2 will amplify and contribute to further warming. Doubtless there are other causative factors involved (e.g. Milankovitch cycles), some of which may well have occurred before the CO2 release.

The interesting question is, what triggered the CO2 pulses?

Comment Re:Women prefer male bosses (Score 2) 399

Daily Mail articles highlighting a single example should be dismissed, SJW or no.

The Business Week article discusses a series of Gallup polls, which make a better case. But even there, 34% of people had "no preference" - not that different to the 39% that preferred a male boss. I also note these have been steadily converging for the last few decades.

In any case, it's not particularly relevant to a Mars mission - candidates would be selected on their ability to get along, not randomly from the population.

Comment Re:Nothing new here ... (Score 1) 292

I presume you're referring to the interglacial warm periods, as shown in this graph.

We have a very good idea of what causes those - they align nicely with orbital variations (Milankovitch cycles). And we're not due for another one - we just passed the peak of one a few thousand years back. The temperature had been dropping slowly since then (up until a century ago).

Comment Re:2013 Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high (Score 5, Informative) 292

Usual selective reporting from the Daily Mail - claiming a 29% rebound from an all-time record low is somehow "proof" that global warming is overblown. The link is a year old too - this year is actually the sixth lowest in the satellite record.

Worth looking at an actual trend, rather than Daily Mail headlines.

Comment Re:Nothing new here ... (Score 1, Insightful) 292

How does the cause of past events have any bearing on the cause of this event? Is it unthinkable for there to be more than one possible cause?

GP's linked studies make a good case about past events. They say nothing about this event, which may have entirely different causes. It's pure speculation to assume either way, at this stage, and accusations of confirmation bias and "bald faced lies" only reflect on the accuser.

Comment Re:Nothing new here ... (Score 4, Insightful) 292

So because it's happened for other reasons in the past, that conclusively rules out climate change as a cause in this case? Not seeing the logic there.

Let's not jump to any conclusions here, either pro or against climate change as a cause, until we get a peer-reviewed study concerning this event. TFA is insufficient evidence, as is your link.

Comment Re:Fox News? (Score 1) 460

And that's good for Commerce, how? And Penn State?

So if I understand your logic:

1. CRU emails cleared ->
2. Climate "hoax" strengthened ->
3. Governments everywhere introduce massive new taxes "just in case" ->
4. Chamber of Commerce gets huge new budget for some reason ->
5. CoC panel members all get their fat bonus payoffs, along with all the other panels that cleared CRU ->
6. Vast global conspiracy involving government departments in most developed countries AND all major universities and scientific institutions AND their member scientists, who have all risked destroying their careers to fake all their studies and somehow share in this tax bounty - and nobody talks, no actual evidence is produced, the poor fossil fuel industry is just an innocent victim, and taxpayers around the world get stuck with a world running on renewable fuels with minimal pollution a few decades early.

Yep, makes perfect sense, far more sense than it being the fossil fuel industry that is doing their very best to deny all the evidence and sabotage any possible price on carbon, because they don't have hundreds of billions in profits and trillions more in potential assets at risk. No incentive there!!!

Comment Re:Fox News? (Score 1) 460

Do you have a reference for that? The first link I looked at just said

...the committee found no evidence of anything beyond "a blunt refusal to share data," adding that the idea that Jones was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that weakened the case for global warming was clearly wrong.

So there could be various reasons for them to not want to share data (such as too much time & effort required) - but wanting to hide evidence against global warming, is not one of them. The GPs implied accusation that the science was fudged has been thoroughly and repeatedly disproved.

Comment Re:Fox News? (Score 1) 460

Frederick Seitz? The physicist who, in your own link, admits he took money from tobacco and oil companies? Any reason we should be listening to his opinions over the thousands of climatologists and other scientists?

That interview made very interesting reading, like where he dodges the questions of undue influence from vested interests, and instead tries to accuse the interviewer of being unduly influenced (by persons unknown), providing no evidence of his own but talking over the top of any mention of actual peer-reviewed studies. I see no reason to consider him a reputable source.

Comment Re:worse than crapware (Score 1) 427

If Google would simply allow this stuff to be easily removed from an Android system

Go into the Settings/Apps list, tap any app you don't want, Uninstall any updates, and Disable it. That frees up all the writable space taken by that app, stops it from consuming CPU cycles, and hides it from your app drawer. Takes seconds, can be easily done by the average consumer, and provides all the results they're looking for.

Not enough for a power user? You don't even want it taking up bytes on your read-only /system partition? Google allows you to do that too, by making it easy to unlock your phone, root it, edit the system partition, flash new ROMs etc, and by providing the source to the latest version of Android so that third parties like CM can give you fully customised software on your hardware - and you don't even have to give up access to Google's closed Android apps to do it, if you don't want to.

I really don't see how any of this is "being evil", especially when you compare it to the offerings of the other major mobile systems.

Comment Re:They pay lots of taxes already (Score 1) 120

What angers people is that multinational corporations like Apple (and Google and many others) collect a lot of revenue from many the countries they operate in - but somehow make such tiny profits in those countries that they pay tiny taxes.

Taxpayers in those countries pay for infrastructure and services that the multinationals' local offices depend on, consumers in those countries contribute greatly to their revenues, yet see very little return in corporate taxes thanks to the profits being funnelled away to tax havens via disproportionate expenses for intangibles like internal licencing fees (for example, there's a big Google R&D office in Australia, but the results of that work are given away to Ireland and licenced back, at a cost that eats up most of Google's local profits). It's a legal loophole that governments are increasingly unwilling to tolerate.

I know you'll go far to defend Apple from any perceived attack, but the "simp(sic) truth" is that these methods of minimising tax/revenue ratio to maximise their profits deprive their host countries of tax income that is badly needed to continue providing services that all depend on, including the multinational's offices and their own employees.

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