Non sequitur. Unless you were trying to give another example of that same flawed reasoning.

This is a tired argument. The path of an individual photon as it travels from Earth to space is chaotic and unpredictable; that it will be either absorbed as heat or ultimately re-emitted to space is a certainty. It's very easy to make statistical claims about how often this will happen and how long it will take, and this can generally be confirmed by satellite measurement.

And some models are two-dimensional and do not use cells at all. You are very obviously not qualified to evaluate the usefulness of any of them.

This is an important area of study but it is a non sequitur in discussions of composition changes in the upper atmosphere and the effects on radiative transfer. The oceans are a heat engine, but their effects are confined to this planet; the other end of the heat pipe is not in space.

False. You can easily make statistical claims about weather more than 30 days out; in most areas in the Northern Hemisphere you may confidently predict that July will be warmer than December, and further make accurate predictions about temperature ranges given a set of historical data. Weather predictions on a daily basis are also frequently given as statistical claims, especially the chance of precipitation.

A further note on models would be that even obviously wrong models can still give useful results. A one-dimensional model will tell you what the black body temperature of Earth is. From that you can calculate the "greenhouse effect" of Earth's atmosphere, which makes the difference between a permanently frozen world and abundant life. A simple two-dimensional model can tell you what percentage of this can be attributed to various gases, based on absorption spectra. From there you can start calculating heat transfer due to convection and other effects, working from known physical principles, and mathematically describing the world as we know it in as much detail as possible, and comparing it to observations.

Your rationalizations are ignorant and false. If you're going to drag in a bunch of obviously wrong talking points, you should try a Gish Gallop. If you want to construct a rational argument, you might try arranging your thoughts around a central premise ('climate is unpredictable', e.g.). The best way to argue against a scientific theory, however, is with another scientific theory, but that requires you to learn something more about the subject than just what factoids match your preconceptions. Personally, I'm not really interested in responding to a string of incoherent factoids, so if you are still convinced you have some sort of rational response to make, maybe you can find some other forum.

I believe your cost estimates are greatly overestimated, but I did not actually address that subject. I don't really care what gets done or how much it costs, honestly, just that something happens. It's probably too late for my home to ever look the same again, but maybe yours will not be too badly affected. For more information about possible mitigation strategies, I would consult the IPCC report. However, you should know that your theory of no-feedbacks was the prevailing theory about seventy years ago, and it's taken a long time for scientists to come around to the idea that people/CO2 can affect the climate in a noticeable way; this did not happen without evidence. Everyone is hoping that we can find some physical system that lets us ignore atmospheric CO2 levels. Also, an increase in the global average does not imply an equal distribution of heat; temperatures in the Arctic have already warmed by 2 degrees C. There are a lot of other very visible changes, but I don't feel like going into them at the moment.

Simple models show that the CO2-water vapor feedback loop can lead to almost arbitrary temperatures; obviously that is not observed. Scientific predictions have their limitations, but my powers are even more limited; I know I do not have the decades of experience necessary to evaluate either the observations or the climate models. I would strongly advise against the application of "common sense" to massive chaotic system, however: getting the number of butterfly wing-flaps wrong could produce very unexpected weather conditions. To give an example, take a piece of Arctic tundra. You heat up the Earth, making the underlying permafrost melt. This releases a lot of carbon from sudden decomposition. The land then subsides and creates a swamp. Swamps are good at trapping carbon, but you've also changed the albedo so that the land absorbs more sunlight. Does this result in an overall warming effect, or cooling effect, and in what kind of time frame? The only thing that you can know about these sorts of problems without tons of research is that any simple answer is probably wrong.

Personally, I think that an appropriate first step might be to stop subsidizing oil and gas companies to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year. Another important step would be to change building standards so that heating and cooling are more efficient -- the cost of heating in an Alaskan winter is mind-blowing, just because it's cheaper for the construction company. Similarly, many homes are designed so that air conditioning is a necessity, rather than using passive cooling techniques. Hopefully electric cars will be able to compete on their own merits, but it would be nice to not subsidize auto manufacturers (the numbers I saw worked out to about $30 billion for the industry) to keep making internal combustion engines. Introducing some sort of carbon tax for manufacturers may or may not be a good idea -- I'm not an economist either, but I'm given to understand that markets are bad about pricing externalities -- but it may not even be necessary. It may be that if we stop giving handouts to massively polluting industries, green technologies will prove to be more efficient and competitive. If not, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

You're pretty much the embodiment of this article. Because you don't like the solution, you are pretending like there isn't a problem. I can't tell you definitively if there will be a huge problem, but the best available science seems to point that way. However, you also seem to be listening to extremist rhetoric about possible solutions, and I am pretty sure that there are a lot of very reasonable things that would improve world regardless of whether there was a climate change issue, and might make a significant difference there as well.

Also, notably, book titles are not copyrightable even though they may arguably be the most important part of the work. Neither are slogans, recipes, telephone directories, or substantially non-creative works. There are good and bad APIs, and you can do a creative interpretation of an API (a poetic reading, perhaps) which may be copyrightable, but the API itself is not a sufficiently creative work.

There are useless predictions, damned lies, and statistics all around if you want to look. Clearly the scientific community has failed to predict all aspects of the future. This has nothing to do with the evidence for AGW and you're disingenuous for suggesting so.

There is a very simple set of measurable facts that are the foundational basis for the theory. Solar irradiance is constant to within .1% as far as we have been able to measure. Carbon Dioxide is known to absorb outgoing long-wave radiation. Human activity has increased the partial pressure of CO2 markedly, extending the CO2-rich region further out into space. There is only one way for the Earth to radiate heat to space. That is enough to determine that CO2 causes warming, and what the direct effects of a doubling of CO2 will be (roughly 3.7 W/m^2 of warming).

However, it is well known that Earth has large reservoirs of a much more potent greenhouse gas covering about 70% of its surface. Given that warmer air can hold exponentially more water vapor, it is unlikely that the CO2-water vapor feedbacks will be anything but strongly positive. By itself, a doubling of CO2 would only produce about 1 degree C difference to the global average temperature. With water vapor and other feedbacks, no one knows for sure, but you can read the IPCC report if you would like to know what the current estimates are.

You can argue as much as you like about the scientists' moral character, about their predictions, and whatever credibility you think they do or do not have. The science is inarguable, and you can even measure the warming effect of CO2 yourself with simple lab equipment. The deniers need to bring more facts to the table. Unless they can poke holes in the fundamental theories of radiative transfer, all the rhetoric on either side is worthless.

Definitely a lubber, I appreciate the info. There's never been any evidence to suggest that the radar was off, and at midnight in a totally unpopulated area prone to foul weather, it sounds extremely unlikely.

It seems the citizenry were sold a bit of a package with the double hull tankers, although perhaps it helps with low-energy collisions.

Where did you get the impression that I was unaware of those things? I did mention the concept, honestly. I am just saying, from long personal experience, that the weather in the specific area of the Valdez Narrows and Arm is extremely unconducive to seeing anything at all, but especially not the celestial sphere. As a method for navigating a supertanker through those same waters, it is entirely useless. Tits on a bull, seriously.

Joe Hazelwood may or may not have been drunk, but he was provably not on the bridge when the ship struck. Also, he could have been drunk as a lord, and if the ship had not been a glorified Capri Sun, it wouldn't have mattered what he hit. Overall, his role in the spill was pretty minor. Blame Exxon for hiring him, blame them for the tanker's condition, the spill response, and for the travesty of justice perpetrated afterwards: Hazelwood might have had the official responsibility, but singling him out as a scapegoat only ignores the real problems of the spill.

Honestly, I don't know what issue people still have about this. Yes, it was a disaster, but so was the spill response, and either way it's completely invisible today. The salmon fisheries are as healthy as they ever have been, and there are as many eagles, sea otters, and sea lions as you could possibly want and then some. If you want to point out real, permanent damage, you might note how far the Columbia and other nearby glaciers have receded in that same period. That is the real damage that oil companies have wrought in Alaska.

Well, the thing about the Exxon Valdez spill, is that it happened at night, shortly after leaving Port Valdez. Taking elevations at noon only tells you your latitude, unless you have a very accurate clock, and the sun can only be used in that manner at noon (AFAIK). You could try using another celestial object, but the visibility in the Valdez Narrows tends to be bad even for the region, although the seas are generally less than in Prince William Sound or the rest of the Gulf of Alaska. I presume you're referring to allegations that Exxon Valdez's radar navigation was turned off, but there has never been any evidence to that effect. Personally, I don't know Greg Palast, but I did grow up in Valdez, and I was there for the spill, and while I have no definitive evidence, I am pretty sure he is not only full of shit, but paid to be so. Even if the radar was off, you detect reefs with sonar, and that was working perfectly.

The biggest factor in the Exxon spill was the lack of a double-hull construction. It should not have been a disaster. Even if everything else that went wrong had still happened, it would have been mitigated to a great degree with better construction. It wasn't a problem of double-checking procedures or equipment, it was a fundamental design flaw.

No, actually, possession and manufacture (growing) of marijuana has been legal in Alaska since 1975. I've grown myself, and even had the attention of the authorities called to the matter, which worked out favorably. I've also had friends have growing equipment confiscated by the police, and subsequently returned with an apology. Nota bene: the legal protections applied (almost) exclusively in one's house or primary residence.

There are some cultural differences at work here; Alaskan marijuana was (semi-)legalized under a privacy clause, which mostly stems (ironically) from a far-right desire to be left the hell alone by everyone but especially the Government. Except in the form of pork barrel projects, which everyone knows are necessary in order to compensate for the state's underdeveloped "frontier" status.

Generally speaking, while it was legalized in the sense that cops were not going to bother one for private use, public consumption was strongly discouraged. This was not the first time full legalization has been on the ballot in Alaska, there were similar ballot measures in 2000 and 2004. It's a complicated situation; Alaska is almost ludicrously conservative compared to the other states which have legalized.

One must give credit where credit is due, I think it's significant that after years of effort and a long history of consumption in Alaska, this measure did not succeed until after Colorado and Washington. However, ultimately, I think that the most influential state in marijuana politics would be California: their medical marijuana dispensary system has paved the way for the de-demonization of cannabis. Now, the onus is on all of us to reverse the damage that the War on Drugs has caused, particularly in America's having pushed its drug laws on the entire rest of the world through the UN.

A side note on that: I suspect that this last part will involve the US pushing its drug laws on the rest of the world once more, but it would be nice if there were some process by which the international community could come to sane decisions about these drugs.

Well, that's true to some degree, but it's still possible to do a "clean room" implementation. These sort of things have been done before, perhaps most notably by ReactOS. It's a hell of a lot better than starting with nothing in any case. I suppose it's less common to have a device for which Linux drivers exist but not equivalent Windows drivers, but it's still a little odd for reverse engineering to be normal in Linux-land and completely unheard-of (by myself, at any rate) on the other side of the fence.

Next thing you'll tell me is that I can't run Linux on my clockwork zombie badger. That, sir, is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put!

TBH getting Linux to run on a Chromebook is a bit of a process, too, and some of the drivers just made it to the kernel in 3.17. While we're on the topic of irony, it's strange to think that it's normal for closed-source drivers to be reverse-engineered for Linux, but no one is likely to use the open-source Linux drivers to produce Windows drivers for the Chromebooks.

It's ironic that it doesn't run Linux well, given that [a] Linux can be installed on everything from mechanical watches to dead badgers, and [b] Google insists on the non-release of Windows drivers for their Chromebooks.

Notably including Alan Turing, who was chemically castrated with synthetic estrogen, and eventually committed suicide. I am glad to read that he was formally (royally) pardoned at the end of last year. I cannot imagine who thought castration was an appropriate response, especially given the long traditions of "rum, sodomy, and the lash" in the British Navy, but I suppose one must make allowances for the past, even if it is within living memory.

No, I mean what I said. Whether or not doorknobs should be painted purple is also not a scientific issue, and I take no position on it. I have an opinion about the rhetoric being used in this debate, or should I say the style of demagoguery.

On the one hand, I have no problems describing Monsanto as an evil, duplicitous corporation. If you read the link I provided, their only issue with PCB toxicity was getting all the money they could out of it before the public caught on. On the other hand, there has been and continues to be considerable scientific scrutiny of the dangers of GMO products, which was not the case with PCBs for at least several decades.

With regards to labeling, if it's not an immediate health hazard, I don't really care: it's not going to affect my purchasing habits whether or not it's there. I would support the idea of data being made available to the public on the Internet, and wouldn't you know, there are already several sites where said information can be obtained. Similarly, no one has been able to demonstrate any harm (to humans) from rBST milk; it's not something I am going to loose sleep over. It's not a health issue, it's not a scientific issue, it's just a marketing ploy. I'm not very amenable to marketing, still less so to frenzied, largely factless ranting about hypothetical dangers.

If you want to make this a personal crusade, then I am happy for you. I have enough real problems in my life that I don't have to go looking for more. If you have room in your life to be worried about the genetics of the food on your plate, that puts you ahead of about 90% of humanity. Some day I will have to return to the first world so that I can have those kind of problems too.

As an aside, I don't think "exerts" was the word you were looking for. You maybe meant to use "exhibits"? I could perhaps "push" or "peddle" an opinion, "exhibits" is a little passive.

Yeah, I used the term because you did, it seemed apt. I will more politely request that next time you might lead with data and not diatribe.

Labeling is not an issue I take a position on, actually, except to say that the subject is not itself scientific. We're not talking about data being made available to researchers. Whether the public has a right to know is an important issue, but more of a marketing and commercial interest than a scientific one.

If those studies are all we have to worry about, I will not worry too much. Thank you for providing the links. One question though: on the off chance that GMOs are the significant danger that Taleb thinks is possible, what will labeling help?