It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

I've been shouting this from the mountaintops on /. for years. Few people understand the concept and benefit of limited government. If government didn't have the power to regulate this or that, corporations wouldn't be buying it off. People seem to assume that political motivations are somehow natively nobler than that of business, but fail to realize they are often one and the same. Sadly I fear, even this clear example would not cure liberals of their stubbornness.

I agree there is not enough competition. What causes conservative-thinking people like myself to tear our hair out is when we read "The government should step in". What you seem to fail to realize is things are the way they are because government HAS stepped in. How else do you think these unimaginably large banking organizations got so big in the first place? How do you think they squash their competition? There is absolutely nothing wrong with capitalism at all... what we have here is something called crony-capitalism. Asking government to do something about it only invites more of it! We need less government involvement - not more (not none either). Don't mean to turn the thread into a political battle... as it's off-topic. Sometimes I just can't let these "the government should do something" comments stand.

Sigh... Sometimes I don't know why I bother posting on /. anymore. I always end up having to deal with brat kids like you that think you're smart and go spouting off when you have no idea what you are talking about. It's as if you have some genetic need to be in an argument with somebody. No... Pay attention, I'm educating you. ALL irrational numbers are necessarily infinite in concept - by definition. That's why they're called 'irrational'. Have you EVER actually calculated the circumference of a circle? (C = 2Pi*r) What value did you substitute for Pi in your calculator? 3.14? That's close but not Pi. How about 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399? No, that's closer but not Pi either. You can get a 'close enough' value for normal everyday purposes easily enough - but you will never be able to exactly calculate any formula that contains Pi because it's an infinitely repeating decimal. Still don't believe that irrational numbers are infinite? Grab a pen and paper. Convert the fraction 1/3 into a decimal number and write it down. Post the complete result here in this thread... I'll be here waiting so you can prove me wrong.

INDEED! I was thinking the same thing... Believing infinity can't be 'real' or doesn't exist (because we can't model it) is very similar to saying a circle can't be real or doesn't exist... Because a 'perfect' circle can't be described mathematically... without using something which represents an infinite value! (Pi) Yet I would hope no rational thinking human would make such a claim as circles do not exist.... They certainly do! It's just not something you can model perfectly. And just because we can't create a perfect model - or completely understand a thing or concept doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

This whole 401k thing is out-of-hand... Generally, an employer who offers a 401k or other like option to its employees doesn't sit around and decide which specific companies to invest in... First... it's usually the EMPLOYEE which decides. And that employee generally chooses from a limited list of mutual funds - provided by whatever brokerage the employer has contracted with... Those mutual funds may invest in hundreds or thousands of companies around the country or world. To make some sort of moral equivalence between these two situations is intellectually disingenuous... I suppose, arising out of some general ignorance of how retirement plans, such as a 401k work. Heck, I don't even know much about them - but know enough to realize what these hysterical people would expect out of Hobby Lobby to absolve themselves from this perceived hypocrisy would be highly impractical or impossible... short of eliminating their 401k program entirely.

I fully understand the argument of the article to which you linked... and i'll let it stand on its own merits. I'll only address your assertion that my own commentary contained contradictions: Bull-crap. It would appear so if you are conflating the 2 different data sets as representing the same thing... (short-term vs. long-term)... they don't. The short-term data indeed shows zero warming trend for the past 15-17ish years. FACT. Not arguable. The long-term data does... even though the recent observed data points don't match up with what the trend says they should be... there is still an upward trend. The point is... We've got quite a few more years of actual data from when the IPCC first published its report (and model predictions)... The data shows their models weren't just wrong... they were HORRIBLY wrong - way, way overestimated. That doesn't mean there won't be any more warming in the future... it just means that the long-term trend plot (at present) is nowhere near where they said it would be at this point in time. In other words - the models considered where we are right now to be way outside of the realm of possibility... therefore one should carefully consider how much faith one invests in these models' ability to predict the future.

Dude. Chill. Sounds like you've done considerable research on the subject and I salute you for that. I wouldn't consider myself a 'climate scientist'... or even a statistician, but we have a saying where I'm from: "Figures don't lie but liars will figure." Yes, indeed, no doubt, I do not argue against that there has been a warming trend. But I've seen these long-term plots now in quite a few places here or there...from different sources... they all seem to be in basic agreement. One doesn't have to be a genius or perform all kinds of complicated mathematical analysis plotting trends to see that YES, the global temperature rise has indeed leveled off for the past 15-17ish years. This should not even be arguable... but it means just that and only that. Anybody with any kind of sense knows that we're only talking about 15ish years out of a much longer time scale. You can plot long-term trends all you want and you'd be correct, mathematically! It still doesn't negate the FACT that there hasn't been any observed warming recently. The only thing that continues to show a warming trend at this point is your imaginary plot... which doesn't match up with reality. This 'statistical noise', if it continues, will be knocking on the door of 'trend' in the not too distant future... so I guess we'll see.

Hey... Citation was requested... I provided. No idea to whom the website belongs. It very well may be a 'denialist' site... but the author of the article seems to clearly and honestly outline the important details and scope of the data presented. Indeed, one of the longer time-scale graphs shows a warming trend... The author doesn't appear to DENY this. He simply exhibits the data from this particular source and indeed the data shows no warming trend for the last ~17 years. He also observes that the longer-scale actual OBSERVED warming trend is significantly less than the IPCC 1990 PREDICTED trend... even significantly less than the low-end of their predictions. Right this moment - the global warming appears to have leveled-off. These are simply facts... no parlor tricks here. In fact the author states that the warming could crank right back up next year.

And, clearly, an 'Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change' could never publish anything that is false... I mean... They're intergovernmental and everything!

After a grueling 5 seconds of googling... http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

Really? Seriously? Do you ACTUALLY believe that people having a sense of patriotism is how we got to where the U.S. is now? (Meaning it's not so much a government for the people, by the people, but more-so a ruling class lording their power over us.) How shallow. No, my dear fellow... We USED to have something to be relatively proud of... and still do to some extent, but it's almost gone. Freedom has been under assault for almost a century in our country... by men who believe they can make better decisions than I could and should make for myself. They go by many names... Progressives, Liberals, Democrats, Socialists... even some call themselves Republicans. All of them thirst for power and consider the 'masses' to be dumb hicks who couldn't feed themselves if the 'elite' weren't in charge. You are like one of these. Do you think a people smart enough to govern themselves are so dumb that they would just 'believe the hype'? Not at all. The sense of patriotism is toward the ideal this nation represents... not toward the government. Indeed, part of that ideal is quite suspicious and wary of people in government gathering too much power unto themselves.

The idea that the oceans may rise any civilization-threatening amount in the next century is laughable. If they had said 10,000 years... I might have been interested enough to look into it. Consider the surface temperature in Antarctica year-round and compare that to the melting point of H2O... The temps are going to have to raise a HECKOFALOT to get anywhere close to -32 F.

Not in the slightest. I didn't say there wouldn't have been ice (or won't be in the future) at the south pole... I said there wouldn't have been (and won't be at some point in the future) on the continent of Antarctica... as plate tectonics shoved the plate toward... and eventually will shove it away from the south pole. The water evaporating from the oceans over the eons... and precipitating it on land above sea-level at the pole -as ice- slowly drew the ocean levels down by some amount. This process will inexorably reverse. Any ice that may have existed at the south pole before Antarctica drifted there would have no effect on ocean levels... much like the north sea presently.

I've read about some scientific theories that postulate a trigger for planetary ice-ages is, in fact, a continent drifting across one of the poles... creating a run-away effect of increasing the albedo of the planet. One possible consequence of these theories is that we are currently smack in the middle of one of these ice-age phases - and that the "normal" state of the globe is, in fact, very little or NO ice... anywhere on the entire planet... with possibly a few seasonal exceptions in extreme locations.

The point is, the Earth will do what the Earth will do - and there is nothing we can do to stop it or change it. As any kind of Earth-science should teach us - change is the only constant in this world... Look at the fossil record! How many thousands of species lived and passed away? I live a thousand miles from the nearest ocean - yet there are fossils of sea-creatures here! Things change. And the factors that govern our climate are HUGELY more complex than than our politicians and their useful idiots are prepared to accept. Yes, we humans could wipe ourselves out someday - but its not going to happen by using the natural resources given unto us by mother nature herself to survive.

Your argument is amusing considering it is generally (historically) GOVERNMENTS that 'disrupt our lives' much more so in the manner you describe.