How does it feel to have an imbecile demonstrate you to be wrong on both of the points you tried to make?

If you would like to get a real "education" about what Fourier said on the matter, you can find it here.

I've written multiple detailed comments to other people about specific claims about the science. If you wish to interpret them as saying "the greenhouse effect does not exist" that is your business, but it is not quite what I said and not what I was thinking.

You didn't "educate me" about anything. Fourier's own writings make it clear that he initially believed De Saussure's apparatus warmed via trapping of radiation, which we know today to be false. It worked by preventing convective cooling... just like a real greenhouse does. No "trapping of radiation" was involved... which we KNOW from hundreds of years now of observation of real greenhouses. Yes, I'm saying Fourier (at the time he wrote those notes) was wrong.

He later postulated that gas in the sky could work via a similar mechanism, holding energy by trapping radiation. However, he correctly noted that the effect in the atmosphere would not be the same, because it includes convection. The problem with this idea is that the first effect -- the radiation trapping -- did not occur at all (we know this from real greenhouses).

The point of the particular comment which you linked to above was not that the greenhouse effect does not exist (that's a different discussion). The point was that the "physics" it was based on was an incorrect conjecture by Fourier about De Saussure's apparatus. The effect did not exist in De Saussure's apparatus. All of the temperature is accounted for by absorption by the blackened cork, and lack of convective cooling.

You then go on to state that if there were no radiation trapping, all the radiation would go straight off to space and the earth would be very cold. But if you really believe that to be true, I suggest you look up how long it takes lunar regolith (in no atmosphere) to cool entirely by radiation once it rotates out of sunlight. You're in for a very big surprise.

This is completely irrelevant to my point, which was not about the total energy budget.

THE PURPOSE of models is to do forecasting. So far, no models can accurately project the behavior of ENSO. Now we have a proposed cycle that supposedly drives or at least overwhelms ENSO, but is equally unpredictable. At least so far.

If the model can't forecast not just ENSO, but a larger cycle that supposedly drives or overwhelms ENSO, then the models are that much LESS useful for forecasting.

Get it? I made no comment about energy either staying or leaving. Conservation of energy is not relevant to this point.

Um... have you bothered to look at the raw temperature records?

s/marker/market of course.

What kind of fantasy world do you and GP live in?

In order for the free market to take care of it, there has to be a free marker. There isn't. It's effectively a monopoly.

And that's why OP is also just so much garbage. This isn't anything "new" here. It's the same old shit monopolies have always done, once they realized they were monopolies.

I'd think your, and GP's, comments would be funny if they weren't so dangerously wrong-headed. Blaming monopolistic behavior on free markets is like blaming ISIS on democracy.

I'm not disputing what the "real crime" is here, but here is the source of the injustice:

According to many studies over 15+ years, the vast majority of downloads are people who never would have paid to go see the movie in the first place.

Accounting for this, then: if 700,000 downloaded the movie, that probably means (very roughly) 700 lost ticket sales. If a ticket sale is £5 (five pounds if Slashdot doesn't reproduce that character correctly) then after all was said and done, the movie studios might have actually lost about £700 total.

They can't try to claim they lost the whole office box price for every download. That's so overblown as to be nothing more than a bald-faced lie.

When your head has been blown apart by multiple 9mm hits or you're rendered brain-dead by a thorough beating, you won't hear any "wooosh" anymore.

Everyone dies, Anon.

Try your armchair revolution tactics before a phalanx of well-armed cops, see what happens.

What happens is that the cops must choose between doing nothing or attacking unarmed people. Former means their weapons do them no good, the latter means they expose their evil for all to see, thus deligitimizing their authority. It's an extremely efficient tactic that turns the very armed might of your opponents against themselves, but of course it requires you to be ready to die - or spend the rest of your life in jail - for your cause.

You do realize that this has been demonstrated multiple times in the past century alone?

But I strongly doubt you would dare.

Nobody knows until the moment of truth comes. But I think it's more likely you're afraid they just might dare, thus exposing your worldview as a delusion held due to fear.

Might makes right: if someone with more power than you says you can't do something, then you cannot do it. There are no noble and high principles that can stand up to reality. It sucks, but that's the way it is. Get over it.

Which is why Pirate Bay has been shut down, just like Ghandhi's resistance was quickly and efficiently suppressed by the British Empire. Not to mention the hard-line communists who stopped the dissolution of Soviet Union through military power, and the US stamping out drug use through its War on Drugs.

Perhaps you should take a look at reality, and consider how well your own principles stand up to it? Then again, posting as AC strongly implies you already know you're spouting bullshit.

The problem with 'Big Data' is everyone is trying to use it as a substitute for actual hypothesizing and experimentation.

I am not suggesting it isn't useful, it is, and it can be a huge help in identifying non-intuitive relationships that may exist. Its not being marketed that way though! Everyone is trying to sell it as the solution to all their unresolved problems and knowledge gaps.

At the end of the day all it can ever show is correlation, never causation. All the fancy AIs we add on top are really just correlation engines as well. One day real-soon-now WATSON or something like it will diagnose your cancer. It won't 'discover' the cure though, it will just apply the 'KNOWN' treatment that statistically correlates with the best outcome, hopefully excluding some which correlate with especially un pleasant side effects.

Same is true with the financial markets. Big Data alone will never discover a unified theory that explains market behavior. It will probably make a handful of people stupid amounts of money based again or event correlation and speed. As long as those are the drivers though we will remain forever at risk of sudden meltdowns.

Really? You're citing Top Gear as a source of factual information? What's next, are you going to teach me about the occupancy of pineapples at the bottom of the sea because of something you saw on Spongebob?

I have worked with lots really sharp guys from India, mind you they have been here in the US. Which implies selection bias, they were ones who had the interest, ability, and resources to get here. I have worked with lots of guys and from all over Europe an South America as too. Some great some not so great.

I don't think 'where' has much to do with it, talent is talent and it cares not about the label applied to map marking ones place of birth.

That said I don't think much of these programs. I expect 'my government' to look out for the 'general welfare' of 'my fellow countrymen'. I think the long term economic wisdom of importing all these workers from elsewhere is highly questionable. Based on intuition, labor statistics, and anecdotes, I fail to to reach the conclusion that the vast vast majority of tech jobs could not be filled by current citizens. Its not even clear it would alter the long term cost structure of these companies much; even if it did hurt the next few quarters.

So I suggest we dispense with all of the crap, the unsubstantiated economic voodoo, the nationalism, and the Xenophobia. Lets stop incentivising off-shoring and importing of workers. Lets not disincentivise it either. Get rid of the tax loop holes; dump payroll taxes entirely. Just allocate what is required for entitlements like SS and Medicare from the general fund. Get rid of the tax exemption on benefits make them taxable as regular income. Provide that no employer may require an employee to participate in their benefits program. That will make the heal-care market place more open and take that dimension mostly out of labor competitiveness.

Then adopt a permissive immigration policy, no quotas no incentives. Let as many people come as want to but require they prove at least one of the following:

1) An offer of gainful employment
2) Existing financial resources on which they can live for at least two years.

No, they want the science to be settled more-thoroughly before we re-model our entire society in response to it.

No, they want to avoid any change since that risks the status quo that works just fine for them and their buddies. Demanding more evidence is simply a delay tactic at this point.

But the bottom line is: people aren't as stupid as you'd like to think they are, and they don't need the science community usurping the decision-making power by internalizing the debate and lying to everyone.

And they're never more ingenious than when they're coming up with excuses for why they don't need to change. Which is their problem when it's their own body or personal life they're ruining, but becomes my problem when it's the entire world that's at stake.