hitops

That's because the KKK are directly affronting and contradicting their scripture (NT bible), whereas ISIS is more or less completely consistent with theirs (Koran, hadiths). I cannot think of a group more in sync with the teachings and actions of the prophet Mohammed than ISIS. Fortunately more western Muslims do not follow his example today. True for Muslims. How is this true for Christians? Maybe I don't know what you mean by 'moderately' religious vis a vis Christians. How is it easy to use the NT bible to endorse things like what ISIS does? I have read all those books and I cannot think of a way the NT (Christian part of the bible) could be used as such. There is a difference between people justifying violence or persecution on the basis of their religion, vs having an actual basis in their scriptures for those actions.

Which is what banning pipeline will do, since rail is much more prone to spills than pipe. It is not about real, calculated, objective concern for the environment. If it was, pipelines are the obvious better choice. It is about the symbolic value of the 'pipeline' as a the great emblem of evil.

Trudeau Sr had principles, much as I would not agree with many of them. Trudeau Jr. does not, he believes whatever is popular sentiment in the moment. He stands for nothing. That is not necessarily always bad, for example in this case he might actually make the right move and re-commit to Syria or even reduce/stop the refugee influx. Will have to see.

The irony is that every communist society viciously suppressed that right. Communism doesn't need a theory to prove it wrong (although any thoughtful consideration of it makes it obvious it would fail), we simply need to look at every example of it in history, to observe that it is worse than almost every other alternative.

ISIS says they did it, nobody else is saying they did it, and western governments believe they did it. I'm not sure what else you would want.

I'm sure that's true, but it is not a reason to therefore accept refugees.

The above was tongue in cheek. That is meant for the locals who always like to say that 'all religions do it'. No, they really don't. One religion has a near monopoly. Here's a fun game. The top conflicts in the world by death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts Game is called: Count how many do not involve Muslims.

Oh for sure, when the west meddles with their military it never works out. I mean just think about those hellholes Germany, Italy and Japan! Just awful. The long term destruction of a people.....when will we learn? When, I ask you? The west should leave everyone alone. It's obvious. We have virtually no involvement in Somalia, and that place is doing great. To fully prove the point, look no further than the nation the US has involved itself with more than any other on earth. The unliveable wasteland known as Canada. If only they would leave us alone!

Boy I cannot wait for those 25000 Syrian immigrants. Muslim immigration is just working out so well for those enlightened European democracies! Just like it was predicted - you just help them out, removed them from the bad situation, and like magic, they change. Amazing hey? Working great. Well I guess I have to admit we should think of them just like we think of the boat people - cause you know all those killings the boat people are known for......oh wait, they aren't? Oh wait, I know, I know! It is because they are coming from such violent circumstances. Ya that's it. You can't assume they will cause problems......it is due to the bad psychology of coming from a violent place. Ah yes! That explains why the vietnamese played nice...because they came from such a place of sunshine and rainb....errr.....eh....ok I'll get back to you on that..... Ok finally got it. It's religion! Region is the problem. I mean just the other day I was thinking of the time that Buddhist Monks, Rastafarians, Shinto devotees, Christians and Jews formed terror groups and performed bombings in the name of their faith in major western cities......ehhh.....ok....no really....ummmm ok never mind.

Doing nothing also qualifies as a decision. There is no reason to assume doing something is always better than doing nothing. It is perfectly rational to not act when uncertainties are large. That's what I meant. When confidence intervals are so large they cover all plausible values, they do indeed describe the situation, just not in any useful way. It would be analogous to you needing a ride, and asking me what I can offer you. I then describe what I have for you as metallic, larger than 1 cubic centimetre, and including the colour black. And then you having to make a decision on whether that would be adequate to your transportation needs.

I agree, but this is just technical splitting of hairs. The point which I'm sure is not lost on you, is that the assumptions are minimally violated in densely sampled areas and in oceans (due to homogeneity), and greatly violated in the poles and to a lesser degree in Africa. Kriging is only proposed as a solution to those latter areas, not as a necessary interpolation to readings worldwide. Again splitting hairs, the point is that there are not enough such that more complex statistical calculations are required to try to deal with it, introducing uncertainty. I contend that the methods are inadequate to deal with those uncertainties, including Kriging and BEST. Especially since re-interpretation of the artic temperatures is in fact the entire basis for the proposition that there has been no pause. This is the same view as shared by Curry, as previously linked. A decision can be made with no certainty at all. But not a good one. All estimates will necessarily have huge biases on this topic, due to lack of data points to put into the estimate. The fact that we can construct a probability distribution does not automatically mean that such a distribution would be helpful. The fact that we can do math to describe a situation or risk assessment, does not automatically mean that said math better informs us to any meaningful extent.

Could not have said it better.

Right so the paper states that kriging works if the underlying assumption "the true field contains normally distributed random variations about a common mean" is true. I think we agree that this assumption is not satisfied in the arctic, as there are no land readings from which to establish a mean in the a region. I do not actually see anything in the paper addressing the arctic. They only talk about the antartic (and other sparsely monitored areas), where the methods may apply because there are in fact some reading stations there. Incidentally I was surprised to learn that some stations show large variations which they presume to be errors (pg 3 second paragraph). So I do not think this paper deals with the arctic issue. Actually it does not mention it. Incidentally Judith Curry is one of the authors. She explains her objection to the Cowton and Way approach here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/13/uncertainty-in-sst-measurements-and-data-sets/ Her conclusion is the same as the position I hold "The bottom line remains Ed Hawkins’ figure that compares climate model simulations for regions where the surface observations exist. This is the appropriate way to compare climate models to surface observations, and the outstanding issue is that the climate models and observations disagree." The main point that I cannot get beyond, is really this, that the models fail to predict observations. I'm aware there are models, but those models will only work if we have high confidence in the damage functions or relationships that they describe. We do not. If we knew for example how much flooding or drought or species loss or increase yields etc might happen with a few degrees increase, we could plug those into the model. But we really just don't, and we have previous little to go on to try to estimate them. Previous predictions about increases in adverse weather or human costs have been proven wrong (the human situation has actually dramatically improved since the first report). I cannot think of a good reason they would start becoming accurate now, using the same tools.

It was started by Germany, encouraged by Chamberlain (trying to be peaceful), and defeated by a the largest military campaign in our history. You seem to of the mind that if only everyone was peaceful, we would have peace. Quite true. But that's not the world we live in, if we are peaceful that does nothing to stop those that are not. However armed opposition to the forces of oppression and tyranny does produce a much better, more peaceful world. We are much better off because of warfare against Germany, and proxy warfare + military buildup against the Soviet Union. True, but that way was not paved by holding hands. That's why other societies need to be hawkish to prevent it. South Korean is free for only one reason - armed opposition to the North. If the South was peaceful back then, it would be ruled by Kim Jong Un today. It does not matter that evil dictators 'should' be peaceful. They are not. Given that reality, being peaceful ourselves does not bring more peace, it just encourages more aggression.

You even do it in conversations that do not involve you......that's like meta level....

If it is improving then perhaps it is possible that just getting older could yield further improvement. Any good sources? The paper itself doesn't seem to justify it. I furthermore do not know why using an alternate source of temps would be considered a legitimate way to interpolate for missing data, especially when the entire basis for omitting the 'pause' is entirely based on that data from the missing areas. Would you agree that there is no convincing data that the costs of not mitigating could possibly be even a fraction of that? And that in fact there may be a net benefit?

This. The only thing that protecting a noncompetitive industry accomplishes is guarantee that it becomes further noncompetitive and dies off, taking all the jobs with it. Far better to allow the human capital to be re-directed into more competitive, wealth-generating activity. There is no definition of fair trade though. How can I tell if something is 'fair'? That is a moral judgment with no way to know when it is achieved.

You previously mentioned BEST being a good way to deal with the problem of Kriging not being able to make reliable estimates for areas very dissimilar to areas with known measurements. Can you explain a bit why? Also just curious, do you agree that the costs of intentionally reducing CO2 are in the trillions?

If you are blaming me for getting it closed, that makes no sense. My last post was #319, and it closed at #384. I did not start up anything, the new thread was started by somebody else. No the attack is just your style. You do it in nearly every post, against any poster, on any topic. Why? Another example: When you could communicate the exact same thing by saying: "Hansen does not advocate nuclear in its current form given concerns over safety." "would you have the community of nations do... nothing? Nothing to attempt to reduce accelerating GHG emissions... nothing to attempt to shift reliance away from fossil-fuels?" Just try it out, is all I'm saying. Way easier to read, the exact same amount of information is delivered, you will be better received, and we don't have to cringe. Win win. Yet again: Is how you talk to people in real life?

The nazi example is not about what Germany did, it is about what everyone else had to do to deal with Germany and what would have happened if they did nothing. Every additional year of 'peace' was millions more to the slaughter. That is an argument for a strong military, not again one. In this case acknowledging that we do not face threats because of the US. Plenty of African countries had armed uprisings. But the greater point is that the imperial countries faced plenty of violent rebellion all over the place....making it less necessary for rebellion to happen by violence subsequently. That is still an example of force for the sake of freedom, ultimately making freedom easier for others. We gained freedom from the British because the British empire was declining and could not hold on anyway. But they didn't get that way by the magic of a circle of peace pipes. They were beaten back, starting with the Americans. The most obvious example of force vs not would be Korea. South Korea is a great place to live, and that was fought for. North Korea is probably the worst place on earth. If the military was not in Korea, the whole place would be like the North. Germany would killed far more people, and taken the UK if not for force from the allies. Communism would have put even more people into misery and poverty than it did, if not for a strong super-power opposition and proxy wars. The world is a better place for those interventions.

This is a smart plan, because it means we don't have to do anything until then, and at that point it will be clear that it doesn't matter anyway, and we can forget about it.

Waldo. Sit back and just think for a second. You are attacking a person in the very first sentence of the thread. Do you understand the problem? You need to learn to communicate in a civil way. Your posts are just full of demeaning, ad hominem monologues, with little substance. I'll give you an example of how disagreeing like an adult works. The above quoted is how you responded. The way a polite respectful person would respond, would be something like this: "Let's not also derail this thread" See how easy that is? Here's another example: And the respectful version: "We should focus on the Paris COP 21 meeting." So much simpler, and the same point is made. It just takes a little self control. The exact same thing was said, except simpler, shorter, and without the surrounding hyper charged emotionalism. Try it out, please. If your goal is to convey information, you will be more effective.

Proven false so many times, not the least of which is Nazi Germany. There are no countries on earth that can exist like that. You either defend yourself, or contribute to an alliance. Otherwise you just go away or are destroyed. That is the lesson of history. The only nation that actively does what you are suggesting in foreign policy is Tibet, and they do not have sovereignty over their own borders as a result. There are tons of historical examples of people gaining freedom through force, and virtually none through being passive. The only exception I can think of is India, and there was tons of internal violence even there.

Let's accept that. It doesn't make them go away. But it is not about ISIS. Threats will exist, and just saying we hope everyone loves each other will not stop them. So it's a strength of Canada that we spend so little? But you said we spend so much. Which is it?

That's probably about what will happen. Fortunately it will not matter. Temp will increase slightly, with no really serious consequences. We were told by the UN in 2005 that we would have tens of millions of climate refugees. There were none. But we did get tens of millions more people out of poverty since then. The previous post got closed, I'm not sure how much responding to that one will be accepted.