100% irrelevant to the topic I was discussing, which was ownership of U.S. uranium interests by Russia. Not only is Australia a completely different continent, its politics are also completely different. Similar in some ways, but definitely not the same.

Again, completely irrelevant to the topic under discussion. If I lived in Australia, I'd object to sales to China OR the U.S.... but especially China.

How do you claim absence of side effects?

Solar farms are already observed to fry birds and blind pilots. Not to mention the huge amount of landscape they consume. And in high latitudes, not only to they take up even more (and more ecologically sensitive) area, they aren't even usable a good part of the year. In my area, they don't even come close to competing with other sources for cost.

This causes me to think you haven't understood what the Butterfly Effect actually is. It says that slight differences in the initial conditions of some nonlinear systems can have a profound effect on later outcome. It doesn't apply to all chaotic systems by any means, nor does it necessarily mean a persistent change... just a big one. Nor, just off-hand, would it seem to apply to your windmill example at all.

You might be interested to know that the Butterfly Effect has made a profound contribution to weather and climate modeling. Without it, we would not know even the relatively small amount that we do know.

The name "Butterfly Effect" was intended as an analogy to how it works... it isn't to be taken literally. But it does work, and is observed in the real world. If you doubt that, I strongly suggest you avoid flying in a modern jet.

I disagree with others here. If they say they don't know if their organization has the talent to succeed, then indeed they don't know what they're doing.

Especially those who think their IT dept. is incompetent. What that means is (A) they are wrong, or (B) they are right... which in turn says they made bad hiring decisions and should clean house.

Labour might consider it now. With the probably long-term loss of Scotland, FPTP doesn't really give them much benefit over proportional representation, but it benefits the Tories a lot.

Cameron has a plan to get us out of Europe? Seemed like he wanted to keep us in to me.

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.