Joe Wordsworth
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Al Gore just changed a hugely significant chunk of my worldview and political interest agenda.
Honestly, be impressed--that's not easy.
Honestly, be impressed--that's not easy.
An Inconvenient Truth
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Joe Wordsworth
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He discussed global warming. I intensely recommend everyone see it.TheEarl said:
shereads
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TheEarl said:
He put together a film about global warming that has even skeptics taking it seriously.
http://an-inconvenient-truth.com
Joe Wordsworth
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See it. It's entirely worth the price of admission. You leave there feeling possibility crouch around you.shereads said:
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He's a much better professor/lecturer than presidential canidate. Funny, friendly, honest, dedicated, genuine and warm. The film is about a lecture he gives on Global Warming, but it also goes into his personal history.Sunnygrl said:
Much as I wish he'd won the election because I'm appalled at what Bush has done to this country--I still have to say that perhaps Gore is getting more done this way than he would have as president. He doesn't have to play the game, he can finally be himself. And who he really is (at least so far as this movie shows) is a man you want to know, someone who really can help to change the world.
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A Positive Film
It isn't even, as he explains it, that hard a thing to do. And he points out that there are many countries already working on the problem. It's a surprisingly hopeful film and Gore has great faith in humanity.
Go see it. He doesn't scream "apocalypse," doesn't chide humanity or wail about the end of days. He explains the situation, offers clear evidence of why we should be concerned...and then assures viewers that there are ways to fix the problem. It CAN be changed, and the power to make that change is in our hands.shereads said:
It isn't even, as he explains it, that hard a thing to do. And he points out that there are many countries already working on the problem. It's a surprisingly hopeful film and Gore has great faith in humanity.
mack_the_knife
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Look not to the Cineplex 8 for your enlightenment. Pirates of the Carribean would have been a better use for your $20.
Roxanne Appleby
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This film may owe more to groupthink than solid science. Here is one item that makes me think so:
Hockey Stick Hokum
July 14, 2006
It is routine these days to read in newspapers or hear -- almost anywhere the subject of climate change comes up -- that the 1990s were the "warmest decade in a millennium" and that 1998 was the warmest year in the last 1,000.
This assertion has become so accepted that it is often recited without qualification, and even without giving a source for the "fact." But a report soon to be released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee by three independent statisticians underlines yet again just how shaky this "consensus" view is, and how recent its vintage.
The claim originates from a 1999 paper by paleoclimatologist Michael Mann. Prior to Mr. Mann's work, the accepted view, as embodied in the U.N.'s 1990 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was that the world had undergone a warming period in the Middle Ages, followed by a mid-millennium cold spell and a subsequent warming period -- the current one. That consensus, as shown in the first of the two IPCC-provided graphs nearby, held that the Medieval warm period was considerably warmer than the present day.
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f224/spitfiregriffin/ED-AE505_1hocke_20060713182815.gif
Mr. Mann's 1999 paper eliminated the Medieval warm period from the history books, with the result being the bottom graph you see here. It's a man-made global-warming evangelist's dream, with a nice, steady temperature oscillation that persists for centuries followed by a dramatic climb over the past century. In 2001, the IPCC replaced the first graph with the second in its third report on climate change, and since then it has cropped up all over the place. Al Gore uses it in his movie.
The trouble is that there's no reason to believe that Mr. Mann, or his "hockey stick" graph of global temperature changes, is right. Questions were raised about Mr. Mann's paper almost as soon as it was published. In 2003, two Canadians, Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, published an article in a peer-reviewed journal showing that Mr. Mann's methodology could produce hockey sticks from even random, trendless data.
The report commissioned by the House Energy Committee, due to be released today, backs up and reinforces that conclusion. The three researchers -- Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, David W. Scott of Rice University and Yasmin H. Said of Johns Hopkins University -- are not climatologists; they're statisticians. Their task was to look at Mr. Mann's methods from a statistical perspective and assess their validity. Their conclusion is that Mr. Mann's papers are plagued by basic statistical errors that call his conclusions into doubt. Further, Professor Wegman's report upholds the finding of Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick that Mr. Mann's methodology is biased toward producing "hockey stick" shaped graphs.
Mr. Wegman and his co-authors are careful to point out that doubts about temperatures in the early part of the millennium do not call into question more-recent temperature increases. But as you can see looking at these two charts, it's all about context. In the first, the present falls easily within a range of natural historical variation. The bottom chart looks alarming and discontinuous with the past, which is why global-warming alarmists have adopted it so eagerly.
In addition to debunking the hockey stick, Mr. Wegman goes a step further in his report, attempting to answer why Mr. Mann's mistakes were not exposed by his fellow climatologists. Instead, it fell to two outsiders, Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick, to uncover the errors.
Mr. Wegman brings to bear a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely. "As analyzed in our social network," Mr. Wegman writes, "there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis." He continues: "However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility."
In other words, climate research often more closely resembles a mutual-admiration society than a competitive and open-minded search for scientific knowledge. And Mr. Wegman's social-network graphs suggest that Mr. Mann himself -- and his hockey stick -- is at the center of that network.
Mr. Wegman's report was initially requested by the House Energy Committee because some lawmakers were concerned that major decisions about our economy could be made on the basis of the dubious research embodied in the hockey stick. Some of the more partisan scientists and journalists howled that this was an attempt at intimidation. But as Mr. Wegman's paper shows, Congress was right to worry; his conclusions make "consensus" look more like group-think. And the dismissive reaction of the climate-research establishment to the McIntyre-McKitrick critique of the hockey stick confirms that impression.
Hockey Stick Hokum
July 14, 2006
It is routine these days to read in newspapers or hear -- almost anywhere the subject of climate change comes up -- that the 1990s were the "warmest decade in a millennium" and that 1998 was the warmest year in the last 1,000.
This assertion has become so accepted that it is often recited without qualification, and even without giving a source for the "fact." But a report soon to be released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee by three independent statisticians underlines yet again just how shaky this "consensus" view is, and how recent its vintage.
The claim originates from a 1999 paper by paleoclimatologist Michael Mann. Prior to Mr. Mann's work, the accepted view, as embodied in the U.N.'s 1990 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was that the world had undergone a warming period in the Middle Ages, followed by a mid-millennium cold spell and a subsequent warming period -- the current one. That consensus, as shown in the first of the two IPCC-provided graphs nearby, held that the Medieval warm period was considerably warmer than the present day.
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f224/spitfiregriffin/ED-AE505_1hocke_20060713182815.gif
Mr. Mann's 1999 paper eliminated the Medieval warm period from the history books, with the result being the bottom graph you see here. It's a man-made global-warming evangelist's dream, with a nice, steady temperature oscillation that persists for centuries followed by a dramatic climb over the past century. In 2001, the IPCC replaced the first graph with the second in its third report on climate change, and since then it has cropped up all over the place. Al Gore uses it in his movie.
The trouble is that there's no reason to believe that Mr. Mann, or his "hockey stick" graph of global temperature changes, is right. Questions were raised about Mr. Mann's paper almost as soon as it was published. In 2003, two Canadians, Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, published an article in a peer-reviewed journal showing that Mr. Mann's methodology could produce hockey sticks from even random, trendless data.
The report commissioned by the House Energy Committee, due to be released today, backs up and reinforces that conclusion. The three researchers -- Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, David W. Scott of Rice University and Yasmin H. Said of Johns Hopkins University -- are not climatologists; they're statisticians. Their task was to look at Mr. Mann's methods from a statistical perspective and assess their validity. Their conclusion is that Mr. Mann's papers are plagued by basic statistical errors that call his conclusions into doubt. Further, Professor Wegman's report upholds the finding of Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick that Mr. Mann's methodology is biased toward producing "hockey stick" shaped graphs.
Mr. Wegman and his co-authors are careful to point out that doubts about temperatures in the early part of the millennium do not call into question more-recent temperature increases. But as you can see looking at these two charts, it's all about context. In the first, the present falls easily within a range of natural historical variation. The bottom chart looks alarming and discontinuous with the past, which is why global-warming alarmists have adopted it so eagerly.
In addition to debunking the hockey stick, Mr. Wegman goes a step further in his report, attempting to answer why Mr. Mann's mistakes were not exposed by his fellow climatologists. Instead, it fell to two outsiders, Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick, to uncover the errors.
Mr. Wegman brings to bear a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely. "As analyzed in our social network," Mr. Wegman writes, "there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis." He continues: "However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility."
In other words, climate research often more closely resembles a mutual-admiration society than a competitive and open-minded search for scientific knowledge. And Mr. Wegman's social-network graphs suggest that Mr. Mann himself -- and his hockey stick -- is at the center of that network.
Mr. Wegman's report was initially requested by the House Energy Committee because some lawmakers were concerned that major decisions about our economy could be made on the basis of the dubious research embodied in the hockey stick. Some of the more partisan scientists and journalists howled that this was an attempt at intimidation. But as Mr. Wegman's paper shows, Congress was right to worry; his conclusions make "consensus" look more like group-think. And the dismissive reaction of the climate-research establishment to the McIntyre-McKitrick critique of the hockey stick confirms that impression.
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Roxanne Appleby
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But that does not mean that it is worth the effort: https://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=18161227&postcount=13113 said:
Roxanne Appleby
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With respect, not this one. See my other posts here.shereads said:
mack_the_knife
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Your facts have no place in the global warming argument. It's about feeling that we must be doing something wrong, else we should be living in shit mudhuts and eating refried pimintos from mason jars over dung fires. Our very affluence proves we're destroying the world, and oppressing the little people (whoever they are) for our personal gain.Roxanne Appleby said:
</sarcasm off>
Joe Wordsworth
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I for one (1) fundamentally disagree that there is a rational coherance between the ideas of affluence and "destroying the world" and (2) wonder if Pascal's wager has merit on the idea of environmental changes to the tune of Gore's documentary.mack_the_knife said:
Roxanne Appleby
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Pascal's wager is problematic for a number of reasons, but within it's own logic is the presumption that there is essentially no cost to the bet. That is not the case in this instance. See https://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=18161227&postcount=1.Joe Wordsworth said:
Joe Wordsworth
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Pascal's wager does not, within its own logic or any stretch of it, work on the presumption that there is no cost to the bet. Please, go back and re-read Pascal.Roxanne Appleby said:
Roxanne Appleby
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Joe Wordsworth said:
I meant the cost of your stake, how much you have to put down to 'play,' is essetially zero. You are correct that according to Pascal if you lose the cost is "eternal happiness."
"God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up...Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is."
Blaise Pascal, The Pensées
Roxanne Appleby
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See the article posted in my first post on this thread. Please respond to the challenges it poses to your second statement. If you are not willing to do so then there is no point in responding to this post, since that is my response. Of course you are always free to put me on ignore. But if you choose to engage with me then fairness and reason require that you to engage my arguments. That said, I will remove the Michael Moore slur.wazhazhe said:
Joe Wordsworth
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Pascal ventured that one actually has a cost to the bet to "play" as it were, there is the spending of freedoms and pleasures and even comforts and conveniences that come into play for the "safe bet" to pay off. You are simply wrong on this. Please re-read Pascal, or at least don't presume things simply wrong about The Wager.Roxanne Appleby said:
And I didn't say anything about the "cost is eternal happiness" or anything remotely related to that.
It is obvious your grasp of this basic philosophy is either flawed or it is the case you have never actually read it. Pascal's stance in the whole of his analogy was that to abide a metaphysic with the existence of God as a cornerstone was the abiding and sacrificing of certain tenant to the whim and wills of purpose with regard to a centralized divine conceptualization. This sacrifice had at the least analytic components (reason and will) and had, entirely possibly, more material and actualized components (denial, deprivation of some parts of existence either internal or external). As such, the minor inconvenience of the sacrifice for the etneral goods of rational and metaphysical /accuracy/ as well as divine reward far outweighed the negative given in the case of denying the truth while engaging in (again) at the least the analytic freedoms and (at worst, which he saw as not too important) the more actualized ones.
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shereads
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mack_the_knife said:
I take it you've seen the film, and are offering an informed critique. That's something we can all respect, even if we differ in how we interpret the presentation. Of course, if you haven't seen it, you wouldn't be here to announce that it's all bunk. That would be stupid.
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