Oh dear.

If you think we are beyond famines, you will be having a very difficult awakening quite soon, I think. Our industrial revolution thus far has been a blip.

In any case, I wasn't being quite so literal, and I think you knew that. There is an economic crash still in progress, wars, homelessness and a general chaos wherein many millions of people are being squeezed ever more tightly. THAT is the end result of our activities in the industrialized West. It should have been a panacea, but instead people are losing their homes and going hungry.

Facts on the ground, right? THAT is how things are currently 'working' out, and this is all a direct result of our business practices wherein we treat people as though they are commodities.

-FL

If you want to get hung up on definitions, then you will make no progress. I'm talking about something larger which does in fact make sense. Try to step outside the equation you have been taught, because that equation has resulted in the economic mess we are all living in at the moment. Clearly it doesn't work very well.

Sorry. I have no interest in diving into a nonsense semantic argument filled with revolving definitions. If you cannot understand the intent behind my words it is because you are being evasive. What good is that? It's the same as covering your eyes and singing loudly rather than learning. The old patterns have failed us. Why cling to them?

Yes, and the work of parenting still needs to be done on top of the regular jobs mothers and fathers have to hold. The difference is that today there is less time and energy available for this exactly because both parents need to be working in order to earn a living income. This leads to exhaustion and a weakened family structure. I'm not sure what your point is.

Can you see how this plays into the economic structure? If people are having to work harder for the same end results, then the numerical price tag on a car is not a true reflection of its real cost.

Automation should result in a freeing up of time, but our time is tighter than ever. Clearly, the system is leaking wealth, and the point of that leak is the banking system with its usery/interest scam and the oligarchy which is milking the populace dry.

Sending jobs away without replacing them is just a symptom of a psychopathic system where people ignore the needs of the others in their community. That's a small piece of the puzzle, but it is very telling.

Try to grasp what I am saying here rather than seize on those definitions which do not happen to match your own. One can always find discrepancies among words.

-FL

That is useful data, but it doesn't really address the point of my post.

I suggest going back to read what I wrote, unless you were deliberately ignoring it and were simply offering these calculations for the sake of interest.

-FL

Of course they do. What does any of that have to do with automation? Since you didn't supply a point with your questions, I'll do it for you:

Automation should make it easier to feed everybody. Except that's not how it worked out, is it? That means there's a leak in the system. That leak is two-fold; banks charging interest on money which cannot be paid back because not enough exists to pay it back, and oligarchical greed.

That's not a fair comparison. Industrialization isn't the problem. The problem is that it was perverted and corrupted so that the populace barely sees a fraction of the wealth which has been created. And that little fraction of a bone the psychopathic bosses toss us isn't even enough to prevent the coming food riots.

That's because psychopaths are not capable of forward thinking beyond their immediate desires.

Shipping jobs overseas without first ensuring alternative systems are in place to feed and employ the newly unemployed is an apt example of that kind of psychopathic greed.

"The Free Market" is just a lofty-sounding excuse for "Unfettered Fuck You Jack Greed".

Many people will object to that on grounds that it makes them sound as bad as they actually are. And that's the point. They are.

-FL

"Um" yourself. You're just plain wrong.

1989 average car price was around $15,000

1999 average was around $21,000

2009 average is closer to $27,000

Adjusting for inflation doesn't cover that by a long shot. Why? Because the number of hours the average family needs to work has nearly doubled since the 80's.

In the 80's, it was quite possible for a middle class family to have a stay at home parent and still maintain a comfortable lifestyle. Today, that's a fantasy. And even with that, people *still* don't have enough left over income. That's the result of industry feeding on people, not the other way around.

Don't put words into my mouth, please. I'm not talking about makework jobs. I'm talking about banks fucking off and stopping the practice of usery which is destroying us all. I'm talking about preventing the psychopathic executives, the top 5% of the population taking home 75% of the national income.

And also. . , there is nothing wrong with tribalism. Why? Because it's just another word for "Neighborliness". Taking care of the people in your immediate community is the *point* of this wonderful industry; to allow people more time and free energy to explore and grow in spirit.

If people far away need better lives, then what we need to do is leave them alone rather than poison them and corrupt their systems for our benefit.

-FL

The flaw in your argument is that people still have to pay their mortgage and buy food, etc. The labor, at the moment, is free now to starve, because the banks have enslaved everybody and the jobs are not within walking or driving distance. Is the labor supposed to move overseas?

If the automation process allowed people to work less, then you'd have a point, but they still need to put in as many hours to get paid in order to survive.

Put another way. . .

Are cars getting cheaper because labor costs have dropped? No, they aren't. Cars are getting more expensive. -In a balanced system, the cars would need to get cheaper in order to compensate for the fact that people are getting paid less.

The thing people are forgetting is that industry was invented to serve the population, not the other way around.

-FL

I like that site and I appreciate the link you've provided; Robert Way covers the arguments for and against in depth with lots of references and current dialogue.

The interesting thing, though, is that the state of current knowledge, especially regarding Antarctica and continental ice-sheet measurement is anything but straight-forward and anything but settled. The means for measuring yearly ice-melt versus ice-gain on the South pole is really rather sketchy and open to biased interpretation.

I was also fascinated to learn that in his rebut of the "It's the Sun" argument, it is noted that the Sun is indeed doing some strange things. This is consistent with the idea that the solar system itself is undergoing a change due to outside forces and that the Earth and other planets are similarly affected. The theory being that the dark star, or so-called, "Nemesis" is grounding the whole system, pulling energy out and resulting in numerous effects system-wide.

I think you're partly correct. I think my assumptions about NASA's databases are entirely reasonable given what we know about computer systems and the kinds of systems reported to be in use there, etc. But I must admit, I didn't realize that Antarctica was completely ice-covered with no edges of the actual land itself showing from beneath the ice sheets. I can understand why photographs of top-views wouldn't be terribly useful since there is nothing to measure in terms of retreat/expansion.

It's a shame that the other means of measurement and the results are so weak. It would be interesting to know what is actually happening. Reading some of the essays and discussions indicates a varying lack of objectivity and a fairly wide expanse of uncertainty (in spite of what Mister Way claims).

I agree. The revolutionary new theory isn't 100% there, but rather is a collection of ideas which make me scratch my head. James McCanney, (interviewed in the two links in my original post) offers some of those ideas. Though, he's also a bit of a crazy-man suggesting some other things which I find hard to swallow, but then many of history's most famous and productive scientists have shown similar qualities.

Other aspects are hard-to-ignore points of interest which suggest larger forces at work than simple climate change models. One of those points of interest I noted earlier is the story about Greenland seeing first Sunrise two days too early. The accepted theory being that the horizon line melted due to global warming, but this is patently ridiculous for several reasons, not the least of which being that sunrise isn't measured over ice sheet and which leaves us with the question of, "What the heck is going on?"

In any case, I think it might be prudent to wrap this up here.(?) If you agree, then I want to thank you for being intelligent and for offering a good resistance to my thinking, proving once again that Slashdot can be a fine knowledge crucible. I don't have all the answers, but I feel more informed and stronger in mind today than before we started to dialogue.

Cheers!

-FL

My intent was to direct you to the search function itself, not those particular results. That's why I suggested you plug in your own parameters. You just got my last search results before I cut & pasted the address.

So anyway, yes, ice certainly freezes in the winter time. I didn't check September, just January and June, hot and cold six months apart, right? That gives a pretty good spread. And yes, 2007 was a hot year up North! In fact, it is the year most quoted on the web in comparative models, and I can see why that is if somebody is trying to make a strong point. The problem is that this is quite typical of the AGW hysteria. We don't get honest representations. Showing only 2007 provides a misleading representation, and that kind of reporting is half the problem.

It also makes me wonder if 1979 was an atypically cold year and what 1978 was like..?

But in spite of all that, there's no doubt in my mind; according to this particular data set, the Northern Ice caps are certainly showing a strong retreating trend to the tune of a couple million square kilometers over the last thirty years.

Noted.

Really? I'm having a difficult time verifying that one way or the other.

That's a lovely rationalization, but it doesn't answer my original question; Why only in Antarctica? Do fluid and saline dynamics only work south of the equator?

Then be sure. Weak assumptions of that sort are worse than useless. A flimsy excuse to stop asking important questions is in fact dangerous.

In any case, specifying, "Sea Ice Scientists" rather than, "Climate Change Scientists" is a little evasive. Please remember that the media tells us that thousands of scientists have come forward to assure us that Global Warming is a crisis issue requiring immediate government intervention. For changes of that magnitude, I do in fact think that we deserve all the evidence we can get, and that satellite photo-evidence would go a long way to supporting the claim. While you appear to be satisfied in coming up with weak, (and frankly, ignorant) assumptions for why obvious blank spots are not being addressed, I am not.

That's a huge evasion built on more totally unfounded assumptions, but that seems to be the chosen mode of thinking among people who refuse to question the official narrative.

What I'm hearing from you is, "Stop asking questions. Just accept the 'truth' being handed down."

Look. We have the satellites. They take thousands of pictures. Those pictures are in databanks. We know this. We've seen them. We just haven't seen enough of them on a large enough cross section of time to be able to form a useful picture. There is no good excuse for this, and by "good", I don't mean, "Because scientists don't have the need or time or budget," as you suggest.

If I can update the php function in a wordpress blog in ten minutes, then a NASA engineer can make their data bases provide the images necessary. It's easy, as in "before I finish my cup of coffee" easy. That you suggest it being some kind of budget-breaking impossibility goes against everything we know about computer and image processing technology. NASA is, believe it or not, plugged into the modern computer age.

Moreover, the images I want are highly useful to anybody exploring climate change. You presented yourself pictures of a withdrawing glacier as evidence of global warming, but at the same time tell me that bird's eye view photographic data of where that same ice begins and ends along an entire geographic area is worthless?

What that tells me about the way you think does not encourage trust.

-FL

Jeezus. A little benefit of the doubt before hitting "Sumbit" would be nice. Rash assumptions make you look rather sanctimonious.

I don't own a car or a cell phone.

I was speaking to broad cultural trends in the West, where, if you'll notice, this story was produced by and for. It's about eBooks, for goodness sake. I think those consumers are going to be car and phone people, don't you?

-FL

Is this real?

A manipulation from Amazon would be nothing new, and this one costs them nothing and has the potential to create a profitable trend. Those Jonses and their Kindles.

But whatever. Let's take it at face value. . .

All those people who got an iPad thingy for Christmas are eager to try it out and never ever get bored with their cool new Buzz Lightyear.

So yeah, they're going to buy media, because that's the whole premise of the device. You don't get a Buzz Lightyear and *not* click his wings open a bunch of times.

And the same way everybody had to replace their album collections with CDs, there is a market spike as new media is adopted.

The question is. . . Will it stick, or is this just another digital watch?

Well, let's consider. . , all those iPads were bought at around the same time. But their batteries will wear out according to usage, and when your digital book stops holding a charge for long enough. . , do you replace it? Was the experience good enough for you? Can you port all your purchased 'books' over to a new reader easily? Do you have to stay brand-loyal just to read your stuff? Will there be law-suits forcing personal library porting because Apple is the new anti-competitive demon? Will people even care? (Do you still have all the same crap you downloaded from Napster or have you moved on, secure in the knowledge that all that old music is basically free any time you want it? Or are you willing to pay a buck to play it on your iPod?)

Will owning an eReader of some sort be like owning a car? Or a phone? Considered a basic necessity just so you can access your stuff?

Maybe.

I think eReaders are probably here to stay, and they will probably be a viable income source for publishers, but I wouldn't let all that limelight blind you. Paper ain't going away. It's just going to have to share.

Remember: Theater never died. There's a half dozen full stages within a ten minute walk from my place, and they're all booked regularly.

-FL

Ah! Now that site is more what I'm talking about.

And, I note, a comparison of the images doesn't exactly hold up to the AGW claims, do they?

Plug in data from the North and South poles for both the Summer and Winter across the full time spectrum from 1979 to 2010.

The ice seems to morph and breathe. I note that in the Summer in the North, there appears to be a greater degree of melt than in 1979, but that in the Winter today, the ice sheets are actually more extensive in some areas than they were back then. Overall, however, ice sheet in square kilometers is certainly less extensive today.

But on the South pole, and here's where it gets interesting, nothing much seems to have changed.

So, is there climate change? Obviously. That's not in question, but those changes behave oddly. Why would green house gasses only affect the North pole?

Now, there are other theories which fit the observations, are less sound-bite simplistic, which are not politically motivated, which are far more compelling to people who know how to read and think objectively, -and which don't have anything to do with pollution.

And anyway, I still wanted to see some photographs! Graphics are okay, but they're still just graphics.

These satellites are flying on public funds, and Yes, of course those photos exist. That's what those satellites DO. They were put in orbit for the express purpose of taking pictures. You make it sound as though organizing those pictures is somehow considered by scientists to be too much trouble. That's silly.

And there are some spectacular images available!

I'd just like to see them organized by date so that I can look at them. That's all. It's not like these satellites don't fly over the same land masses every day as a basic function of their existence.

To be fair, there are some efforts to provide this information, though it is still frustrating to go through, (and that particular collection only documents one year).

-FL

That's a nice assumption. But before I'm willing to accept it, I'd like to see the photographs myself. That's all.

Their absence is very much in keeping with other aspects of AGW which make it questionable.

-FL

Most of these acts of terror are manipulated from the ground up by various secret services precisely so the ignorant masses will have the very reactions you are experiencing.

When are people going to figure this stuff out and stop being so easily fooled?

Do some reading by ex-secret agents to see just to what crazy lengths agencies will go to in order to manipulate the world. There is NOTHING they won't stoop to. No act is too ridiculous. If it is possible to do, (and it usually is with their virtually bottomless budgets), and if it can advantage them in the field of population control and manipulation, then they absolutely WILL do it.

https://wikispooks.com/w/images/9/99/The_Secret_Team.pdf

-FL

Don't make that common and gross error whereby one assumes the scientific community has all the power. Don't discount your own senses and your own powers of reason. And don't forget that scientists are people too; many of them are no more wise, brave or insightful than the average university graduate. I know a lot of very well-educated people who, in spite of having absorbed a great deal of data, remain hopelessly naive and soft-minded in many respects. True insight comes from being able to connect patterns within data and to then map those observations onto the world beyond the safe borders of official culture. Wisdom is a very different animal than that of raw fact recall.

Science starts with our senses, and our eyes are extremely useful measurement tools. I use mine all the time to work out how my world works, and they do a great job.

Deeper analysis might involve using a ruler and overlays of photographs coupled with observations in different spectrum bandwidths and different angles of view. I'd love to have that information, but I don't. And that's my point.

We don't even have the starting materials to work from. We don't even have two photographs to compare.

-FL

If you can post false assumptions, then you also have access to the internet.

Look before you leap.

Seriously. Look up "Leap Second". The Earth's rotation is in fact variable and right now it happens to be slowing.

No. You're supposed to believe in AGW, and you are proceeding accordingly. That's how propaganda and mind-programming works.

I'm just pointing out the truth. Whether you choose to explore that truth and determine how it fits with your existence is entirely up to you. It's not my problem.

The point of the matter is that the evidence for global warming, if you actually explore it, tells a far more complicated story than the one which has been bought and paid for by people who don't actually have your best interests at heart. (Actually, I doubt they even have hearts at all, but that's another issue.)

The facts don't line up, there is real hysteria and momentum preventing clear thought, and there are many scientists who disagree with AGW for exactly those reasons, so there really isn't any global consensus despite what AGW people claim. And there are other facts which are being totally ignored. I have provided a lot of threads and ideas which you can independently verify, and which lead to actual knowledge rather than the kinds of false assumptions you have been conditioned to make.

Thinking independently IS hard, I know. But it's the only way out, because you are NEVER going to be told the truth by big media, nor will you find it on either side of any large populist debate. The truth is the quiet thing off to one side.

Are you a cow or a human?

Most people are cows and they prove it every single day through their preference to being herded over the rigors of independent exploration.

-FL