Kerry: the electorate’s too stupid and uninformed to understand…
…and appreciate how wonderful the Democrats are.
And we were, fortunately, just too stupid and uninformed to understand your overwhelming superiority back in 2004.
I like the first comment to the article, which goes like this:
Not all of us are bright enough to be C students at Yale, John. Nor are we smart enough to marry a deceased colleague’s billionaire widow. Please excuse us for being so dumb.
…or smart enough to choose such a classy V.P. running mate.
If only the people would listen to Barney (Frank) explain it all then they’d get it — gooder and harder than they got it the last time. Sorry about the grammar, or is it syntax? — I’m a mouth breather.
Ah, yes. We, the unwashed masses are just too freakin’ stupid to “get it”.
No…we “get it” all too well. We will hammer the Left in November and continue to hammer any politician that doesn’t meet standards. WE SAID NO!
“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,”
Like HOPE and CHANGE, John?
John Kerry’s starting to get it? But the clue bat hit him on the wrong side of the head.
Or like “It’s Bush’s fault”.
America dodged a bullet when the French guy was defeated.
I can’t wait to read Taranto on this.
Bless John’s heart. We dummies just can’t grasp poverty and corruption as a good thing.
The Dems don’t seem to understand that their efforts to sell us their brand of pet food have failed because we don’t like the taste of the dog food.
Halp us Jon Carry-
We R stuk hear n teh Tee Pardie!!
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/soldiers-answer-kerry-comment.shtml
I always think of him as “Stenator Kerry,” due to that stupid stentorian voice he affects.
Lurch strikes again!
Given my perception that the average Democratic Party Congressman read only a page or two of the two thousand page Health Care Reform bill- you heard a lot more in the news about those who had read nothing than those who had read a lot- “UNINFORMED” is rather comical coming from Senator Kerry.
BTW, Senator Kerry: how many pages of the HCR bill did YOU read?
In honor of Honorary Irishman John Kerry, here are some Kerryman jokes.
What Mr. Frank said.
http://www.fionasplace.net/irishjokes/Kerrymanjokes.html
Nor are we smart enough to marry a deceased colleague’s billionaire widow.
Ah yes, John Kerry, reporting for booty. . . the happy couple is known, of course, as Cash ‘n Kerry.
Hey Kerry, explain the yacht thing, lmoa, then explain the ketchup thing….
Either we win, or it’s get out the muskets.
Always the astute politician, Senator Kerry has always payed meticulous attention to the ebb and flow of the public opinion. As a young graduate Kerry followed JFK’s example into combat and became a gunboat skipper and decorated veteran. When honorable service lost its vogue he threw away his medals. When the fashion returned he miraculously retrieved them. OM 2001, Kerry loudly proclaimed that there were WMD in Iraq in Feb 2001 when support for the war was 70%. In the 2004 election (when approval for the Iraq confliect was about 50%) Kerry claimed that he only gave the President the authority to go to war. He didn’t think that he would actually do it. In 2006, with the war deeply unpopular Kerry’s tune changed again and insisted that Bush had misled him into supporting the war.
Kerry’s support for the war may have waffled, but he has always hated the American soldier.
Kerry in 1972, “I am convinced a volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown. We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the perpetuation of war crimes as simply ‘doing its job.”
This was repeated with his Columbia University warning, “Education, you know, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
With his latest condescending, down-the-nose comment it is obvious that the American soldier isn’t all that he dispises.
He should enter stage for speech and begin with, “..You rang…”
“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,”
This from a member of a body that enacts legislation it hasn’t read.
I’m with Gringo, 100%.
Americans should really throw these bums out with vigor. But once again, this is a case of the media not being at all what it is taken to be.
What it is taken to be is a fair reporting and questioning group for everyone.
What it actually is, is the propaganda wing of liberalism/progressivism/communism/ demparty (same things).
The sooner we accept that fact, the more easily we will be able to correct the innumerable, but predictable problems this presents, among them: 1) That the other side has a powerful and expansive media/entertainment wing that is against us; 2) That the good side does not have any equivalent counter to it and that we think we are fighting a less powerful group (politicians alone) than we are (an entire media-political-academic-entertainment-economical complex that is something like a hydra.
If there were a real media like we think there is, all they would have to do is ask people like Kerry some basic first-things-first questions, like:
What is it exactly that we don’t get? Show it to us. Explain it to us.
Since this would show who is truly stupid (Kerry) the media will never ask.
They could have asked Obama a simple set of questions and if they had, he never would have been elected:
Mr. Obama, when you say you want to fundamentally transform America, what is it exactly that you want to transform? What is wrong with it that you think it needs transforming? What are you going to transform it into?
Basic logic.
That we NEVER get it tells you all you need to know about light and darkness and who is on which side in that age old struggle.
If you limit your focus to the State of Massachusettes, there has got to be some truth to what Kerry is saying. After all, what other state’s voters (illinois excepted) would elect and reelect him and Ted? Regrettably, he speaks from experience.
Right, Steve G.
Down here in the swamp, I tell people, ” You can call me all sorts of vile names. You can call me an SOB, you can call me a MF, but you damn well better not call me a Democrat.”
I just read the article you linked to and I cannot find where Kerry says the electorate is too stupid and uninformed? Are you referring to this:
“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.”
This sounds about right to me and is true of supporters of both parties. Unless he said people were stupid somewhere else and I have missed it, your headline is not very accurate.
Simon: do you think someone has to use the word “stupid” to accuse people of being stupid?
Let me spell it out for you. Here’s one of the Kerry quotes:
An electorate that doesn’t pay attention is an electorate that is uninformed.
People who are influenced by a simple slogan rather than facts or truth are stupid. And simple. As in “simpletons.”
I hope that’s clear enough.
Then Kerry says that if people could actually hear the facts and see what Democrats such as Barney Frank are doing, Frank’s actions would make sense to them, and their anger would no longer be directed at the “wrong people” but at the right people, such as obstructionist Republicans.
Christ, now we’re importing nitwits from the UK. Are there not enough homegrown ones?
Try this one:
The British don’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so they are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.
Does that help?
If you replace “The British” with “The World,” then I accept your analogy Occam. I do not see any mention of Republicans in the Kerry quote.
At the same time I accept your analogy at face value. Brits are just as dumb as the Americans. Often dumber.
I do not accept, however, that people who are influenced by a simple slogan, rather than facts or truth, are necessarily stupid. Many, on both sides of the political isle, use their brains elsewhere.
You guys are always very intelligent and diligent with facts, but the one place I have seen you getting lazy, is with man-made global warming. In this area you seem happy to ignore the massive scientific consensus and go with the 1 or 2 cranks. I don’t think this makes you stupid, just unbelievably, frustratingly, ideologically blinded to reality.
Same goes with religion. I am with Christopher Hitchens, Ayn Rand and the like on that, but know for a fact there are priests, vicars, imams and rabbis whose intellects dwarf my own. I would never call these people “stupid,” but I do believe they are blind to reality.
It is quite conceivable that Kerry believes the electorate to be stupid, but from his quote, I don’t think you are justified in making that leap.
Son, an infrared spectrometer run in single beam mode reveals a honking great broad peak at ca. 3000 cm-1 (O-H stretch, broadened by hydrogen bonding), and a smaller one around 1600 cm-1 (H-O-H bend). If the spectrometer detector’s gain is set to keep the O-H stretch on scale, the fundamental mode of the O=C=O stretch is a mere blip at 2346 cm-1, a slight hiccup that neophytes (a status to which you can only aspire) often don’t even notice, thinking it’s a pen glitch. The oscillator strength of the O=C=O stretch in air is trivial compared to the corresponding one of water.
Further, the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is ca. 500 ppm. (That’s 0.05%, for the innumerate.) Likening the atmosphere to the population of the U.S. (300 million, plus you, unfortunately), that means that CO2 would correspond to … 150,000 people. But that’s from all sources. Anthropogenic CO2 is 3% of the total, corresponding to … 4500 people. So the position of the Church of
Global WarmingClimate Change is that the addition of 4500 people to the population of the U.S. — 4500 people who are identical in absolutely every respect whatever to 155,000 already here — has a catastrophic effect.I know you don’t know or give a rat’s ass about the U.S., so I’ll put it in terms to which you can relate. Would adding 900 Muslims (not 900 imams, or 900 terrorists, but 900 garden variety Muslims, which we will agree to suppose is different) to the population of the U.K. suddenly change the situation in Old Blighty? Does that strike you as plausible?
Of course not. The burden of proof is on those who maintain otherwise, a burden they have failed to carry. Science is not done by consensus; one man with dispositive data trumps 100,000 a-holes with opinions. (Your countryman, William Thomson, the greatest physicist of his day, regarded X-rays as a hoax, believed heavier than air flight was impossible, and grossly underestimated the age of the earth from cooling data, not knowing about radioactive heating. The point: most people are wrong 99% of the time. “Experts” — of which, in some related contexts, I am one, as you’ve probably divined — are wrong 98% of the time. I include myself in that estimation.) Such dispositive data are not to hand, and thus the acolytes of the Church have failed to meet their burden. The issue is open.
Bottom line: “global warming” is bullshit until proven otherwise.
Simon: If you don’t see any mention of Republicans from Kerry then there is something wrong with your reading comprehension. It is in the fourth from final paragraph in the linked article.
Kerry pulled “C’s” in the Ivy League.
The requirement for a “C” in the Ivy League is an opposable thumb.
I speak from experience.
You really are preposterous Mr. Occam. Isn’t this kind of pomposity what republicans despise in liberals? I have read similarly abstruse paragraphs from 9/11 truthers, and find them equally unimpressive.
If you are talking scientific fact, why not word it in a way I can understand? Scientific truth is more often than not elegant and comprehensible to all. Are you incapable of articulating it properly, or you just can’t be bothered?
To the general point of your response:
“Global warming” is bullshit until proven otherwise.
Could I amend this slightly:
Global Warming is unproven until proven otherwise, but as a theory it is looking pretty damned airtight.
To do nothing until we have definitive proof is beyond idiotic. Especially given the potential price.
Have a (patient) chimp explain it to you.
Science my chimp-brain can understand:
“Manmade CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 gigatonnes. The ocean releases about 332 gigatonnes. In contrast, when you combine the effect of fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, human CO2 emissions are only around 29 gigatonnes per year. However, natural CO2 emissions (from the ocean and vegetation) are balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Land plants absorb about 450 gigatonnes of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs about 338 gigatonnes. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance. Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance.
About 40% of human CO2 emissions are being absorbed, mostly by vegetation and the oceans. The rest remains in the atmosphere. As a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009). A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20.000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years.
Additional confirmation that rising CO2 levels are due to human activity comes from examining the ratio of carbon isotopes (eg ? carbon atoms with differing numbers of neutrons) found in the atmosphere. Carbon 12 has 6 neutrons, carbon 13 has 7 neutrons. Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2 comes from fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occurring (Ghosh 2003). The C13/C12 ratio correlates with the trend in global emissions.
Annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement manufacture in GtC yr?1 (black), annual averages of the 13C/12C ratio measured in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa from 1981 to 2002 (red). ). The isotope data are expressed as ?13C(CO2) ‰ (per mil) deviation from a calibration standard. Note that this scale is inverted to improve clarity. (IPCC AR4)”
“Global Warming is unproven until proven otherwise, but as a theory it is looking pretty damned airtight.
To do nothing until we have definitive proof is beyond idiotic. Especially given the potential price.”
Simon, I’m not a scientist, but it seems to me there’s enough indication that the theory looks ‘airtight’ only if you restrict yourself to the believers. I’ve read, with an open mind, their arguments and they’ll a tad bit incestuous in that they sure don’t accept outsiders skepticism. And skepticism is easy to come by using a little every day common sense.
I think there’s good reason to doubt the data itself. A lot seems to be from corrupted sources or got corrupted by the true believers themselves in their zeal to save us all from ourselves.
The models are suspect. These scientists who use the doubtful data in obviously imperfect and primitive models, conclude there’s a terrible disaster in the making – well my first reaction remains – you’ve got to be kidding.
This planet has been moving in and out of long periods of extreme cold and occasional warmth for several tens of millions of years – while humans were insignificant in numbers and technology.
A more likely primary cause is the sun’s own oscillations in brightness.
The causal link between CO2 and near term increases in temperature is also doubtful.
Even it we grant there is some harmful warming up over the next 100 years tho, it doesn’t follow that we should go with the proposals on the table for higher taxes on carbon and a major increase in government intervention in all aspects or our lives.
Finally, your argument that waiting for definitive proof is idiotic given the potential price is seriously lacking in logic. How do you leave your house in the morning given the many ways you could be killed going to and from work or simply being anywhere?
I’m only thankful that people susceptible to your reasoning aren’t in control of the nuclear weapons both here and in Russia. Some misunderstood wisp of ‘proof’ would have long ago been taken as justification to launch first, because waiting for definite proof of the other side’s intentions would have been idiotic given the potential price of being wrong.
In any case, I believe we have to use a little common sense and judge the sources of these proposals. There are too many scientists with a financial interest (e.g. government research grants) in keeping the holy momentum going strong. So in my judgement their science is suspect and waiting until better evidence, theories, and arguments are put forward is the best and least risky choice.
While I’m not a scientist, I do have a high degree of confidence that the proposals to restructure our industrial base along the lines Gore (for example) is talking about would definitely plunge global civilization back into some seriously lethal dark age.
Any politician (take John Kerry) is suspect up front, but when they go along with such nonsense they’re either irredeemably corrupt or mentally deficient.
Your chimp brain takes these estimates, these monstrously big-numbered assertions, as fact. You do not in fact comprehend enough to question the veracity of these “gigatonnes” that you have spouted, indeed vomited, upon us. You have willingly ignored the gross manipulation of semi-spurious data by your East Anglians.
You’d best sit at Occam’s feet a while. ‘Twill do you good, but only if you heed.
To do nothing until we have definitive proof is beyond idiotic. Especially given the potential price
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! It’s that wager, the “if God exists and I do nothing, all is lost” one!
Except… this new form ignores the cost of doing something.
Huh, can’t even make proper use of data….
Occam certainly seems exceptional and I don’t doubt I could learn a thing or two from him, but his argument, however obscurely worded, is a common charge made by AGW skeptics and it is one that is easily countered:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
I was arguing with my mum and dad not so long ago on this very topic. They both live in England and are both conservatives and AGW skeptics. I asked my dad if he thought that if we burned every last plant on the planet, I mean everything, would this have a detrimental effect on the global climate? He quickly replied that of course it would. So I had to wonder, if this was so obvious, how can people think that what we have done thus far has had a negligible effect and that we need absolute proof before we take any preventative action.
I am not suggesting totalitarianism, just better economic incentives for clean energy innovation and a modest carbon tax. Other taxes could be lessened to offset the carbon tax, thus no net increase in government control would be necessary. How is this unreasonable?
Maybe 99% of the world’s scientists are wrong, I know consensus is no guarantee, but if I were considering crossing a rickety old bridge in a heavy truck and 99% of the bridge engineers in the world told me the bridge was too dangerous, and 1% said, ah, don’t listen to those commies, it’s fine! I would spend the extra time/resources necessary and find another way across the river.
“Except… this new form ignores the cost of doing something.”
I know there is a cost of doing something, I have understood this very simple concept for many years. It is after all a very simple concept. Even a chimp like me gets it. In fact I remember being very impressed with Martin Durkin’s excellent “Against Nature” documentary some 13 years ago, which made this point very well. We should be cautious about where we allocate our resources, no doubt.
But I believe the cost of doing something, in this case, is relatively small compared to the potential for disaster. And I also know that past efforts of this nature have resulted in very positive advances in all kinds of unexpected areas. There is no way of saying for sure that money diverted to slowing/stopping global warming will, in the long run, retard growth in other areas. These things are not zero sum games.
Simon, I’ve seen those types of numbers and arguments before (at your link) – I may have even read that particular one back in 2004. The problems are two: The data – tree rings and temperature readings – is no where near as clean as the authors and their minions would have you believe. That suspicion was confirmed with the thoughtful and well timed release of those emails of communication among the GW conspirators.
Another is that the link between carbon release into the atmosphere and a rise in temperatures is weak in two respects – that it actually causes increases in temperature, and in time – it appears that increases occur so long after the carbon increases (like possibly 700+ years) that the carbon increases are more likely effects not causes of the temperature increases.
I know the left/liberal wing of the human race seems to as one regard carbon as the bete noir of our age, but given how economical carbon sources of energy are compared to any other source, any attempt to cause their cost to rise (to hurry along development of alternative sources of energy) will have a direct and immediate impact on economic activity, which is another way of saying our standard of living will drop like a rock. Carbon is at the center of our civilization.
The idea that there are ‘clean’ and cheap sources of alternative energy is a fantasy pushed by the left in our schools and in the media. It infects a lot of people. We need a good vaccine for it. It’s a disease killing a lot of people.
Since carbon is doing little to no harm and much good why would the saner among us allow the misguided to take actions directly impacting our well being?
1. If you didn’t understand my previous comment, you are in pretty much the same position to comment as my golden retriever. That’s not to say you (or anyone else) should take my views as Holy Writ, but rather that I want to see those views substantively rebutted before I’ll even consider changing them. Al Gore quotes don’t count.
2. “Global warming” is not a theory, nor even a hypothesis. It’s a conjecture, which is a fancy way of saying a suggestion, or hunch, a notion to be tested.
First, it is not possible to prove a theory or hypothesis; it is only possible to disprove one. Data can at most be consistent with a theory or hypothesis; it is never possible to exclude the possibility that a divergence between the conceptual model and reality will be discovered later, or that another hypothesis will explain the data better.
I guess we scientists wasted many years as undergrads, grad students, postdocs, and professors learning what was commonplace and straightforward to you and other PBS viewers.
“Global warming” is DOA. It was strictly and solely a vehicle for socialist agitation from the get-go. “We have to have the government control the economy — to save the planet!” Convenient, yes?
I disagree. The economic (and political) price for believing in this risible notion is huge. Suppose we trash our economy and then find out that someone neglected to include a term in his model. Oops.
Does this strike you as a valid argument? Seriously? Here’s a test of your intellectual mettle: what would be corresponding reductio ad absurdem on the other side?
Simon, there’s a fine adult inside you trying to get out, once you emerge from the larval stage. “Global warming” is not about the environment. It’s about control. Proof? Which “global warming” activists are exercised about CO2 emissions from China and India? Answer: none. Yet their CO2 is every bit as bad as ours; CO2 is CO2, right? Why aren’t “global warming” activists up in arms about China and India? Answer: because curtailing their CO2 emissions wouldn’t advance government control of the economy in the U.S. and Europe, so there’s no point. Why are feminist groups not concerned about Iranian women being stoned to death for being raped, or African women suffering broken bottle clitorectomies? Why are environmentalists not concerned about the Aral Sea? Answer: because agitating on these issues does not advance socialism in Western countries.
First, you have no idea what proportion of the world’s scientists actually think about anything.
Second, their opinions are irrelevant. Scientific issues are not decided by a show of hands.
Third, and this will be hard for you as a layman to accept, but science is a business, a profession, like any other. It is exquisitely sensitive to fads and fashions; getting grants is a scientist’s lifeblood. Get them, and his career continues. Fail to get them, at any juncture (called “falling off the wagon” in the trade), and he’s done. Finished. Finito. Kaput. Why? Because without grant money, he can’t hire grad students and postdocs. Without grad students and postdocs, he can’t publish. And without publications, he can’t get new grants. (In each proposal he has to detail his publication record for the previous 3-5 years. If that’s sparse, it’s “adios, amigo.”)
So who decides whether he gets a grant or not? His peers, who review his proposal(s). If they’re scoring big grant bucks for saving humanity, and he says that humanity doesn’t need saving (and thus that his reviewers are conning the funding agencies), what do you suppose happens when they review his proposal(s)?
For these reasons, if I were still active in research, I’d be submitting grant proposals on ways to combat “global warming,” even though I have little doubt that it is crap. If grant administrators at NSF, NIH, ONR, or ARO want proposals on combat “global warming,” then by God I’d dress up whatever I actually wanted to work on as a panacea for “global warming.” I certainly wouldn’t submit one seeking funding to debunk “global warming.” That would be professional suicide.
If you doubt this, Google “Peter Duisberg.” He’s a member of the National Academy (analogous to the Royal Society in the UK) who has questioned whether HIV causes AIDS. I happen not to subscribe to his position, but consider his pariah status. There’s a small chance he’s right, but he’s stuffed. He’ll never get funded to redeem himself. Then consider the story of Barry Marshall & Co., who were derided by 99% of the scientific community for suggesting the peptic ulcers resulted from H. pylorii infections. Turns out, Barry was right. His detractors — legions of them – were wrong.
Bottom line: scientific issues are not resolved by a show of hands, but by dispositive data.
Here’s a question to ponder. Climatology involves modeling an incredibly complicated system of coupled differential equations. What other sphere of endeavor generates such problems? How about economics? If you could reliably model such a system, wouldn’t you focus on economics, where there’s so much money to be made? Long Term Capital Management was founded to do just that, and included several Nobel Laureates in economics. How’d they do?
Oh.
QED.
I wouldn’t give a bucket of warm spit for a computer model. Of anything. I have personally synthesized compounds that computer modeling suggested couldn’t be made. Bear in mind that Jurassic Park was the result of computer modeling. The point: the output of a model depends critically on the input, and on the algorithms within the model. In this context, the refusal of “global warming” proponents to disclose their (unmassaged) data and algorithms demands skepticism regarding their conclusions.
> I do not accept, however, that people who are influenced by a simple slogan, rather than facts or truth, are necessarily stupid. Many, on both sides of the political isle, use their brains elsewhere.
Well, Simon, then YOU are stupid.
The entire POINT of Democracy is that the people SHOULD use their brains when electing their representatives. Anyone who chooses not to take the time needed to properly exercise their franchise intelligently should — if not stupid — refrain from voting.
A good slogan should, and can, call attention to a candidate’s positions, ideals, and goals. It does not — can not — say how that candidate plans to accomplish those things. And hence whether or not the candidate has any idea at all how to accomplish them, or whether the candidate’s efforts will do more harm than good.
“Lower population!” might be a good goal, and a great slogan…
“Widespread random release of Sarin Gas” would NOT be an acceptable means, though, would it? So anyone who elected the candidate based solely on their slogan would necessarily be pretty much a major grade idiot.
“Hope and Change” was not an awful slogan by any means.
“Turn the USA into a Euro-Style Pseudo-Democracy” is not a good mechanism for promoting “hope” OR “change”. And anyone who was paying attention — that is, not just listening to the mainstream media — knew that was his goal, as well as that of the Democrats.
In short, anyone who voted for The Big 0 was being remarkably STUPID.
The amazing part is that it was an even stupider vote than one for Kerry would have been.
> I would never call these people “stupid,” but I do believe they are blind to reality.
“Blind to reality” is by definition, STUPID. In any society but our own, which has far too much protection from the results of stupidity, can such survive at all.
Reality just IS.
Being ignorant of it — blind to it as you so politely attempt to put it — is a capital offense against the universe.
The sentence is usually death.
There is no court of appeals.
On a more simple level that you might be able to grasp:
=======================
Too much tiger food.
Not enough tigers.
=======================
> there is something wrong with your reading comprehension. It is in the fourth from final paragraph in the linked article.
Dangit, neo, you expect him to COUNT **and** READ??
NOW who’s being stupid?
* In this area you seem happy to ignore the massive scientific consensus and go with the 1 or 2 cranks.
Oh, GEEZ. SO friggin’ tired of this CRAP argument advanced by utter morons.
Forget it Simon, there’s no question, now —
you >>>ARE
No “ifs”, no “ands”, no “buts” — STUPID
But lets’ deal with your stupidity rather than just point it out, lest we be accused of ad hominem argumentation — all of this has been dealt with before AD NAUSEUM in this and many other forums.
Part of what makes you SO asininely, blatantly STUPID derives from the fact that, despite ALL THE EFFORTS of people to the contrary to call ALL of this to your attention, you STILL manage to be BLITHELY IGNORANT OF IT.
You pretty much HAVE to be functionally brain dead in order to NOT be — at the least — seriously questioning AGW at this point.
1) The “consensus” is OFTEN wrong. Look up two things: “Phlogiston Chemistry” and “Ether Physics” to find two scientific ideas that were about as close to 100% consensus at one point, but which are now acked as utterly wrong. The latter, ether physics, was debunked by the results of a single experiment. A true scientist does not argue EVER based on “consensus”.
Sidebar: See Bertrand Russell, esp. #5
2) IF consensus is so important, then why is it that petitions doubting AGW signed by TENS OF THOUSANDS of people in various related sciences are ignored by you and your ilk and repeatedly reduced to just “1 or 2 cranks”…? Either you know about this, which makes you a lying POS, or you don’t know about this, which makes you out to be a total idiot.
So which are you, Simon, a lying POS or a total idiot?
> Global Warming is unproven until proven otherwise, but as a theory it is looking pretty damned airtight.
What’s looking pretty airtight is your skull. You’re clearly not allowing anything resembling a fact between your ears to contaminate that vacuum tube.
> However, natural CO2 emissions (from the ocean and vegetation) are balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Land plants absorb about 450 gigatonnes of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs about 338 gigatonnes. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance. Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance.
Demonstrating the first level of ignorance.
From the above statement, you clearly assume that the natural absorptive capacity of the planet is already at maximum, a fact not only not in evidence, but almost certainly categorically wrong just on first review…
Clearly there have been times of much higher carbon levels, yet somehow, the planet absorbed ALL that in order to reduce them to current levels. So the planet’s absorptive capacity MUST be much higher than it is NOW to produce the current state — DUH and QED.
> Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! It’s that wager, the “if God exists and I do nothing, all is lost” one! Except… this new form ignores the cost of doing something.
Indeed, you note the FALLACY inherent in Pascal’s Wager:
If God exists, then to be wrong is bad. BUT — if Set, Baal, Krishna or whatever-God-you-want is correct, what then, Mr. Pascal? What then of your worship of God?
“Opportunity costs” apply to other religious philosophies, too.
More to follow, I suspect….
Simon @ 12:10am —
I call Strawman!
He cites:
> How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?
WHO CARES
That’s the WRONG QUESTION, and either you’re aware of it (i.e., a lying PoS) or too stupid to know better.
No one CARES if there is an increase in CO2 or not.
What we care about is: Does it have a substantial and significant long-term effect on that thing we call “climate”???
At this point, there is a huge MASS of evidence to question that assertion (notably cooling trends this decade, “heat waves” on other planets, etc.)
> So I had to wonder, if this was so obvious, how can people think that what we have done thus far has had a negligible effect and that we need absolute proof before we take any preventative action.
You have to wonder this because you’re a clueless imbecile and have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.
1) I can shoot you through the head with a .50 caliber bullet, leading to near-certain death.
Does this mean that ANY bullet that approaches your body will lead to near-certain death? Or could a bullet that came near to you but didn’t actually strike you not cause any harm at all? YES.
Could not a bullet which struck you “just so” actually cause very little harm? YES
Could a bullet strike you, and even pass fully through your body, yet cause limited harm? YES.
Could a bullet strike you yet NOT kill you? YES.
You choose an extreme example and extend from that that the results of ALL examples in evidence are exactly the same.
But wait, there’s more…
You assume that all around you are arguing against ANY action in the face of a lack of evidence.
WRONG. The chief question isn’t even that, but that, given the doubts:
a) Is not far more study called for, and should we not make a greater effort to double-blind both the data collection and data analysis pools so that there is less chance of bias in the results?
b) IF we assume that AGW DOES have a basis in reality, is it cheaper to actually REVERSE COURSE or would it not be FAR cheaper to take palliative measures, instead?
No, says Simon:
“There’s an infection under your toenail!! Screw the lesser treatments!! No Time!! Chop the whole leg off!!! Quick! Quick!! Before it can kill him!! Cut it off!! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!”
> I am not suggesting totalitarianism, just better economic incentives for clean energy innovation and a modest carbon tax. Other taxes could be lessened to offset the carbon tax, thus no net increase in government control would be necessary. How is this unreasonable?
BWAAAAAhahahhahahhahahhahhahhaaaaaaa!!!!
LOON!
You’re a total LOON!!!
a) When the F*** has ANY government actually, voluntarily REDUCED its intake levels?
b) When the F*** has ANY government actually, voluntarily REDUCED its power over the people?
That’s not just about the USA or UK, Simon — that’s pretty much the natural order of governmental power and money consolidation in ALL HUMAN HISTORY.
“How is this ‘unreasonable’?” you ask?
Simon asks, “All I want is for water to flow uphill for a while… How is that unreasonable?”
That you need to ask this question is what marks you as
S T U P I D
Simon.
> what was commonplace and straightforward to you and other PBS viewers.
He’s a brit, Occam — that would be “BBC viewers”.
See? See? How can he trust your view of AGW if you can’t even get that part right????
:^D
> It was strictly and solely a vehicle for socialist agitation from the get-go. “We have to have the government control the economy — to save the planet!” Convenient, yes?
Indeed. And it’s been FAR, FAR more effective in that vein than its predecessor memes, “Overpopulation” and “Global Cooling” (yes, “cooling”).
> by God I’d dress up whatever I actually wanted to work on as a panacea for “global warming.”
Occam, we should start a proposal showing that farting Howler monkeys are at the source of the problem, and that, if we just eradicated Howler monkeys, the problem would be fully solved for the next several centuries.
This way we could get PETA involved on the sensible side, for once, even if for the wrong reasons.
8^D
Pompous ass. That is exactly what this man is.
When you seek to deceive the only person you deceive is yourself.
The curious question about global warming isn’t about why conservatives and freedom lovers have so many doubts about it. It’s why progressives, communist and statist appear to have none.
SteveH,
The curious question about global warming isn’t about why conservatives and freedom lovers have so many doubts about it. It’s why progressives, communist and statist appear to have none.
Conservatives question it because it should be questioned. It doesn’t pass any of the smell tests at all.
Progressives don’t question it because it has nothing to do with whether the earth is warming and everything to do with totalitarian control.
EVERYTHING the left/progs/Dems do should be read through that lens. If it leads to less freedom and more totalitarian control, they are for it, and vice versa.
There are no exceptions.
Hacks like Kerry, Obama, Gore, Dean, Pelosi will almost inexplicably rise on the Left as long as Conservatives spiral further and further into their anti-intellectual crusade. There are smart Conservatives out there. Conservatism is a good philosophy, but there is an ethical shift in Conservatism; Individualism has become Prescribed-Individualism (no to gay,lesbian, transgender rights …. your business is our business), Classical American values fall to White-Identity Christian values (Hindu prayer for children in public schools anyone?), two is enough for now. Liberals are guilty of the same sort of shifting — away from core Liberal principles. It was astonishing to see that Conservatives championed the idea of National Liberation for the Iraqi people — thank you!! But domestically the only thing one side or the other wants is to jab the other side, little else matters.
After these cannonades, Simon’s decks have been swept bare, and his ship is slipping beneath the waves. Vaya con Dios, Simon.
“I wouldn’t give a bucket of warm spit for a computer model.”
Yes indeed! Remember all those computer models back in the 70’s that “proved” we were all going to freeze to death? Starve to death? Run out of mineral resources? Didn’t happen.
But the scientists who produced all that garbage didn’t suffer any setbacks to their careers–because there is no penalty in the academy for producing politically correct bullshit.
Hey Occam, Care to help out a fellow American autodidact? 🙂
Today is a frustrating day, i can show you emails from 2007, where i wanted to get my ‘partner/friend’ to use a Transcription enzyme to meter the flow of DNA through nanopores. they just announced it.
so far i have lost a high speed search circuit (it can go through data that would take a desktop a thousand years to go through).
a new calibrator, a new detector for DNA short sequences, cogeneration, moving digital evolution to a morphological multicellular paradigm (with implementation). new type of nano valve, a new form of chemical sensor that monitors surface tension as a chemistry variable, razor blades made from non ferrous materias (continous process), new yacto/nano/micron trays in glass with active surfaces for analysis… and many more…
I detail them, tell you where you can buy the parts, and EVERYthing is known quantities and measures. ie, you just have to work the problem, not come up with some new tech that solves it. MANY times i work on the crux of the proof…
this year alone i lost the patent for using superhydrophobic materials to shape a drop which then makes the drop into a lens, and then makes analysis cheap. (the doc didnt think that was worth anything). which means we are going to lose the valve. we just lost today the use of a transcription enzyme… i have a faster way, but he thinks it wont work (until it does, then he is amazed and marvels at it, and says things like “wow, you must have some really great first order principals)..
i have ZERO resources but my mind…
this is SO frustrating…
any ideas?
there are no more Hoyles to ramanujans i guess.
after 30 years of this, and losing one thing that i worked on for 20 years. Mathematical… the doc didnt get it, the review board didnt get it. they hired my competition to give a review, he said no. then took it to china to his r&d center.
now i am afraid to put the digital evolution stuff down, that took 30 years to get to an understanding.
the other stuff, which includes a better model for multicellular organization… which smoothly integrates new, has modularity, granularity, explains methelations mathematically, and even shows how the model works.
but i cant get anywhere with it because i am outside and so adademic bigotry means i dont count.
my ‘pal’ doesnt get he has been erasing my work and life…
any suggestions sir?
your connected… if its hopeless, then that is help, as i am old now, and lost out living my life to learn all this!!!!!!!!!!
yes, i worked so hard to earn the privilege of being kicked around… for nothing.
Shorter Simon: I can’t understand all those big words and hard concepts Occam wrote about; therefore he is wrong and stupid and knows nothing about science and I am, as always, right about everything.
I always wonder why people WANT so much to believe in global warming. Logically, wouldn’t they be happy to learn that they aren’t going to fry in the coming heat wave? S
Maybe global-warming believers are masochists who want to be punished for some reason or another.
Promethea- Jimmy Akin has a recent post that points to why folks wish it. :^)
Occam:
Thanks for giving me some stuff to think about and study. Specifically the withholding of input variables for climate modeling. I’ll look into this. We actually have an ocean physicist in the family and I’d interested to hear what he makes of that claim.
I am a little skeptical about the equivalency you postulate between global climate models and economic models. I trust economic models as much as you do I am sure. I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan a couple of years ago and found his arguments very convincing in this regard.
On the other had whilst I understand we cannot account for all variables when modeling the climate, at least we are dealing with physical laws, not pure theory as with the economy. Surely we can expect more accuracy this being the case.
Unfortunately I am at work, so cannot dig into this any further right now. Your job sounds very interesting and makes me quite envious. I very much regret that I didn’t go into science when I was younger, I find it fascinating.
I just finished Leonard Susskind’s Black Hole Wars, and whilst I do not claim to understand the book, he is at least able to get across a flavor of the ideas. Which is why I said what I said earlier about scientific ideas being elegant and communicable at least at some level.
“”Maybe global-warming believers are masochists who want to be punished for some reason or another.””
Promethea
I think they look at humans as a destructive freak of nature. Heck i’d probably think that too if i lived a life ingrained with deceit and lies that were so pervasive in my personality that i felt hopeless that love and goodness even existed in humans, much less could solve the issues causing my own despair.
Hey Occam, Care to help out a fellow American autodidact?
Happy to, Artfldgr.
I’d suggest filing provisional patent applications in the US Patent Office. It’s cheap (ca. $100), can be done on your own, and doesn’t even require claims (i.e., the tricky part of a patent application).
All you need is a cover sheet indicating that the filing is a provisional patent application, and a description of the invention. Here’s the link to the page with instructions re the cover sheet (see SB16) and to the provisional cover sheet itself.
The description needn’t be long, nor formal; think of it as a glorified invention disclosure. A few pages can suffice, as long as you indicate
1. the problem to be solved;
2. how you solve it; and
3. how to practice your solution, so that someone of ordinary skill in the field could follow your description of how to practice your solution.
Examples are a good idea. They needn’t be real; they can be “prophetic,” i.e., a description of exactly how and what you would do to provide the example so that someone of relevant skill could follow your description and make it work without “undue experimentation.”
If you have someone help you to construct a real example, make sure you specify — in writing — what they’re to do (to show that they were working under direction, not inventing), and make them agree to assign to you rights to any inventions they make in the course of working on your project. This is all utterly standard.
The overall goal is to show that as of the filing date you were in possession of the invention, i.e., that you’d figured out how to solve the problem and weren’t missing any critical bits.
Once you file, you have a year — to the day — in which to file a regular (formal) patent application. For this I strongly recommend a patent attorney, because claims drafting in particular is no job for amateurs (although patent examiners make allowances for amateurs, and will even sometimes help). This part is expensive, so spend the intervening year trying to find a licensee who will pick up the tab. You’l have to kiss a lot of frogs, and give up a lot of your baby, to get one, but it’s worth it. A fraction of something is better than 100% of nothing, and your licensee is taking a big risk too and deserves reward.
Good luck! I’ll be happy to help you in any way I can.
OK, Simon:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
(and more specifically:)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/
(more specifically:)
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/category/uncategorized/global-warming
Go learn.
Come back when you have.
(The gist is: tree rings don’t necessarily follow temperature, and tree ring data that didn’t show “warming” was tossed. Weather-station data not showing warming has been tossed &/or fudged. The program that created the alarming “hockey stick” graph creates a “hockey stick” for any random bunch of numbers. Weather stations that used to be out in the boonies are now in Urban Heat Island areas. The other planets ALSO show signs of warming: since our CO2 doesn’t reach that far, “something else” –like the sun– is definitely driving THAT increase. We’ve had “little ice ages” and we’ve had “warming periods” as well — long before humankind was emitting CO2 to any extent. … and so forth.)
You’d think, wouldn’t you? The governing laws themselves aren’t so much the problem; the relative magnitude of effects is. It’s a classic problem throughout physical science; phenomena depend on the relatively small difference between large terms, so small percentage differences in the large terms can wildly affect the difference between them. What terms can be neglected safely? In chemistry it’s commonplace to see calculations of molecular properties reach different conclusions based upon the level of approximation used (and, where relevant, the basis set of orbitals) used, and whether solvation was or was not taken in account. (You may have seen an earlier thread where Good Ole Charlie and I discussed non-classical carbonium ions, a heated controversy at one time for just this reason. The controversy swirled particularly around norbornyl systems, which have…just seven carbon atoms. Pretty simple, yes?)
Moreover, what are the magnitudes of cross terms? Greater solar output can generate more cloud cover, which reflects sunlight back into space, mitigating the expected increase in insolation. But by how much? Increasing CO2 partial pressure should accelerate algal growth — but, again, by how much? If increasing CO2 partial pressure traps more heat, it may lead to more cloud cover, decreasing sunlight for photosynthesis and tending to slow algal growth. Yet again, by how much? I’m talking through my hat here, but you see the problem.
We’re talking about a complex series of coupled differential equations interrelating phenomena from such fields as astronomy, geology, atmospheric physics, oceanography, and even botany. And some people claim to understand this to the extent of making predictions to within a few degrees 100 years out, based in part on 80 or so cherry-picked tree rings?
Please. Skepticism is definitely in order.
Once you file, you have a year — to the day — in which to file a regular (formal) patent application. For this I strongly recommend a patent attorney, because claims drafting in particular is no job for amateurs (although patent examiners make allowances for amateurs, and will even sometimes help).
thanks for the answer occam. but i think you dont get the problem. i am a poor white guy who never had capital to pool… so i cant file for patent after a year so i dont file for pending..
in this case, what happens is i team up with others. i work for a research hospital,but now due to bigotry and elitism, i get humored and nothing changes course.
so, it matters not to patent..
what matters is i publish…
so when the geneticvist asked me how i would solve the problem of DNA going too fast through a nano pore, i spent a few weeks, and said to leverage transcription enzyme…
he then does his elitist thing, get sengineering or help from me. i think if i save him 5 hours i get 1 hour and he is happy with 4 extra hours.
nope, he says if he gets 5 hours extra he uses them all on his projects.
meanwhile, the CEO of IT, now knows a list of things that we have lost (since we wont fight to get them back).
i developed a system to do searches of unordered string data… he took over, and basically went wishy washy. the research hospital hired my potential competitor. he then took the thing to china. china now bought 128 illumina sequencers, but did NOT buy computers to scan the data… the competetor, closed his bsiness after that, and is in te same area of china where the stuff is.
all because i couldnt get them to help with an EE… i would have taken my life savings and paid for it.
so we lost a search circuit that if 1024 bytes wide, and has 1000 circuits, can do 1,024,000 compares per clock tick
the competitor, was celebrated for getting a FPGA (xilinx) to do ONE compare per clock tick!!!!!!!!!!!!
a basic simple machine was orders of magnitude faster.
not only that, but the FPGAs cant do ghz…
desktops are at 5 plus ghz
and mine leveraged cisco router chips, at 50 gighz.
that means my device for under 1000 dollars cost (i bought the parts already)…
can do 51,200,000,000,000,000 compares a second.
the machine is scalable…
i bought the parts, i did circuits on electronics workbench, did chip fab estimates of cost. did different costsings depending on chips, unmounted chips and fabs. did comparitive studies to all other commerical products and patents.
and NOTHING i sad was good enough for the researcher to act as if it was something worth anything.
the circuits were to be trade secrets, and the whole thing was to be a service, like beijing is now going to run.
over this time, i have wroked out how life organizes multicellular structures from DNA. i worked out the math.. i worked out how life incorporates new, discorporates…
while the search circuit took me 20 years of work to get the best answer that coudnt be beat, AND write papers showing WHY the others failed, and what tehy were missing.
this movement of digital evolution to a morpholotical being in siliaca is a biggie… it tooke me 30 years of work
so right now, this person costed me half my lifes work and effort. as if someone threw away einsteins work because he was a patent clerk.
at this point i am despondant…
every so often some thing i wrote and such gets wroked on by someone else. and the people i trusted turn out to be Salieri’s not Hoyles.
hoyle discovered ramanujan, and introduced him. this did not diminish hoyle, quite the contrary, and it gave us ramanujan
i get salieris, who pretend to help, but then waste years of my life
over 4 years thsi time. and now my dad is dying and we dont have the money to help. so this is not some nice thing they do, as they delude themselves, this is nasty betrayal with a smiling face and passive aggressive screwing.
it takes you a long time to figure out that they are lizars smiles. mostly because the others have deluded themselves. and so to themselves they are not lying, but you get it after a while as no relationshiop is that long and that unproductive to only one of the pair.
so now, all i really ahve left is my opus magnus. if that goes, i might as well never been born, and my life has been completely wasted. with not much left to live and no money to do it.
every reason i had for working so hard is gone now.
there is only one thing worse than being a has been.
thats being a never been…
and i am not even that now… they have reduced me to a nothing, and by putting me off and not even writing a paper musing about whats possible, i now sound like a crank when i say i had that three years ago.
but i do have the correspondence, the skethes, the notes… the professor saying its good, and that it sound exciting… which fires me up and then lets me down like going on a date to be wiht the girl of your dreams only to find out that she is a no show cause she is across the street with her friends watching you and laughing at your pain.
not even the common decency to be honest enough so that my life isnt thrown away.
I should point out that if i can show the circuit works, or show the simiulation works even a bit, they will back me.
the researcher didnt want to try to get grants which are available. he also is in a bit of trouble but doesnt know it.
i work with ceos, and corporate people. they want to have IP, and they dont lie that they can look over my work and they are upset at the researchers like this since we make our money doing research and not seeing a 10 million grant so tht you can persue a 50k one, is not making them happy.
after about 2 years of twiddle, i maneuvered and got the CEO to join our team. now my guy, is over him, his guy, and his guys guy.
that is, i will soon maneuber to hav his boses force him to give up his work for mine.
if i can prototype it, and do that, they will do the rest as to licensing, patent and all that.
my department gets 1./3, the research hospital gets 1/3 and I get 1/3
i get the same plus as any researcher and this time.
so i DO have a great point here, but he screwed me by wasting my first load. and since i cant prototype it to the level that a biologist wants… and that allowed an EE to steal it, since it was a biologist and an administrator who voted me down when the EE who is a competitor said, it wouldnt work, then would not explain WHY.
i will say this.
in an odd way, each time these people do things like this, it lights more of a fire besides destroying me.
if i do succeed, they get their returns in the history being known… and that i am hoping is a reason when all oher reasons are gone. time will tell though
“”On the other had whilst I understand we cannot account for all variables when modeling the climate, at least we are dealing with physical laws””
I believe it was the late Michael Crichton who said something like… “It’s like pretending what will happen when asking a teenager to take out the trash is actually predictable”.
nyomythus, it seems that social conservatism (which you call “Prescribed-Individualism and White Christian Identity”) is your own Grand Unification Theory. For you, it explains everything, including Left-wing hacks and propaganda.
It’s not a compelling theory (if all too pervasive in some quarters), and you probably notice you are mainly talking to yourself on this site. This is not a good thing. I recommend letting your hobby horse rest awhile.
I’ll never, Never, NEVERRRR ‘Get’ why the Mass. voters keep re-electing this useless, clueless, elitist, snotty, loathsome hack to the Senate. But–Full Disclosure–I’m a refugee from California where the voters–until this November, PLEASE GOD–have kept ‘Mam’ Boxer in that same House of Lords for 18-F***ing Years!
Ohhh, and Fuller Disclosure, I live in the hideous Alan Grayson’s District 8, here in Central Florida!!
…Come to think about it…Mr.John-I Served In Vietnam for 3 months 41 years ago-Kerry already answered my query. He KNOWS that the dumbshiit voters of his state have returned him to the Senate for close to 30-years…ONLY possible answer is that they’re dumber than a sack full’ of rocks. Baa-Daa-Bing.