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Comment Re:erroneous conclusions (Score 2) 458

by cosmicaug (#37573682) Attached to: Canadian Ice Shelves Halve In Six Years

"These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural."

Really? Because climate has never, ever, not even once, shifted quickly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

Note the huge uptick in average temperature starting roughly 11.5k years BP. I'm pretty sure the foot-powered cars the Flintstones drove didn't warm the earth, so this must've been a natural event. Saying that it's impossible for current temperature trends to be unnatural flies in the face of something that has already happened once, almost within recorded history; not to mention all the times when it happened outside of recorded history.

This is why some people, like myself, do not take climate alarmists seriously. They make these grandiose pronouncements that have little, if anything, to do with the facts.

That's not a very reassuring comparison if you want to calm down the alarmists. You know what else happened at a time when, despite what you are suggesting, temperature change was slower than what we seem to be getting now, at ~11.5k years BP? Yup, that's right, a mass extinction.

Comment Re:Amazing (Score 1) 458

by cosmicaug (#37573598) Attached to: Canadian Ice Shelves Halve In Six Years

Scientists have been fairly unanimous in predicting warming since the mid 1970's, and so far they've been right.

No, sorry, I remember the 70's and global cooling was all the rage then. Search 'global cooling 1970s'. Global Warming has been since the 90's.

Science popularizer, Isaac Asimov, never got the memo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6tSYRY90PA

Comment Re:Bad phrasing (Score 3, Insightful) 458

by cosmicaug (#37571588) Attached to: Canadian Ice Shelves Halve In Six Years

'The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.'"

How's that saying go, past performance is no guarantee of future results. The Andes used to be under water for thousands of years; the continents used to all be one big land mass. If we lived back then I'm sure we'd be hearing about Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift.

Assuming this is not some pathetic attempt at humor which I am pathetically entirely missing, do you even have any idea of the timescales involved here or are you one of those 'the earth is 10000 years old' folk?

Comment Re:Why would that dispel anything? (Score 3, Informative) 458

by cosmicaug (#37571436) Attached to: Canadian Ice Shelves Halve In Six Years

Since you have no record of how fast ice shelves may have vanished in the past due to natural warming, it seems suspect to claim that this certainly proves the current rate of dissipation is due to unnatural warming...

Says who? At the very least, someone seems to have the idea that these particular ice masses have been around for thousands of years.

Yes there is warming, but it appears our activities are unrelated.

But then what would he know? He's only the chair of a climatology department...

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/murray_salby_and_conservation.php
DRM

Submission + - Spotify to bait and switch? (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review, of all places, is running a story suggesting that Spotify may have to rely on a bait & switch strategy — or might have one forced upon it by the record labels. From the article: "Spotify gets all its content from the same place everyone else does –" the same industry that has forced price increases on other online services once they have become successful. That appears to be at least partly what happened with Netflix last week. At least in the case of the existing a la carte music services, if you don't like the new price, you don't have to buy the new track. In Spotify's world, if you don't like the new price, there goes your music library. Or, if Spotify tries to stand up for its users, the labels can just pull the songs and those songs simply disappear.""
Music

Submission + - RIAA/MPAA: the greatest threat to tech innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by TAGmclaren
TAGmclaren writes: The Harvard Business Review is running an article stating that it's not India or China that are the greatest threat to technological innovation happening in America. Rather, it's the "big content" players, particularly the movie and music industry. From the article: "the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. Example after example abounds of this attitude; whether it was the VCR which was "to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" as famed movie industry lobbyist Jack Valenti put it at a congressional hearing, or MP3 technology, which they tried to sue out of existence."
Movies

Submission + - Big content killing innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by TAGmclaren
TAGmclaren writes: America is at risk of losing its place as the leading place to innovate — not because of China or India, but rather because of the big content industries like the music and movie industry. So says the Harvard Business Review. It's interesting to see a big business publication come down on the technology side. From the article: "despite making their living relying on it, the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. "
Businesses

Submission + - Big Content is strangling American innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "Harvard Business Review is running an article close to many slashdotter's hearts: the problems with "Big Content". They make the argument that all the measures that the movie and music industry are putting in place to protect their business models actually threatens to undermine the innovation engine that the US has built up in the tech space. Very interesting reading."

Submission + - The fall of Wintel and the rise of Armdroid

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review are running a very interesting article on how this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance. Their argument is that tablets are going to disrupt the PC, and these tablets are predominantly going to be running on Google's Android powered by ARM processors — "Armdroid"."
Google

Submission + - The future of Android and Google (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "Given the recent publicity about Android and Google, the Harvard Business Review are offering another interesting perspective. They argue that Google runs a serious risk of losing control of Android, as competitors such as Bing and Baidu move in. It certainly presents an interesting possibility — that Android could win but Google wouldn't see any benefit out of it."
Google

Submission + - Google losing control of Android (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review are running an interesting article, questioning whether Android will end up making Google any money in the long run — with the likes of Microsoft and Baidu fighting to take the place of Google's services on Android handsets. It certainly does beg the question — what would the future of Android look like if Google no longer supported it, or if they closed the source off?"

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