-1=e^ipi

Fine, I'll bother responding to your original post and point out all its holes. This 'possibly 16 million years' as far as I am concerned is nonsense and doesn't agree with the geological record unless you go to the very low end of estimates during the neogene. But only looking at the evidence that agrees most with alarmist claims is expected because alarmists reject the scientific method and approach things dogmatically to satisfy their confirmation bias. Why is this necessarily alarming? Please prove that increasing CO2 emissions is necessarily bad. The claim that high concentrations of atmospheric CO2 have previously only occurred during periods of excessive volcanic activity is false. High levels of CO2 have been the norm for most of the past 590 million years since the start of the Cambrian explosion. The historic norm is 1000-2000 ppm of CO2 and that's one of the reasons why photosynthesis of plants is best at these CO2 levels (and why people with greenhouses increase the CO2 levels to promote plant growth). We are in a geological time period of ridiculously low temperatures and CO2 levels (quaternary period) and this is despite the fact that solar irradiance has been generally increasing over the past 590 million years as the Sun goes through its life cycle. The only other geological time period with similar conditions is about 300 million years ago during the Permian. Furthermore, the claim that 'high CO2 levels' are bad for life on Earth (and by high I assume you mean somewhere in the range of 400 - 1200 ppm) is unjustified and as far as I am concerned is false. If you look at the geologic record, life has flourished on Earth generally during higher levels of temperature and CO2. It wasn't until the Earth had the conditions of the early Cambrian that multicellular life took off, not during the cold conditions of the Cryogenian. The amount of bio mass on Earth has generally been higher during warm eras with high CO2 concentrations such as the Carboniferous and the Cretaceous (which is why fossil fuels generally originate from these time periods). Heck, there were a lot more ape species during the early Cenozonic than there are now, because the Earth was a lot warmer and the climate was more suitable to support large biodiversity. Furthermore, it wasn't until the end of the last ice age did agriculture become viable and human civilization take off, not before. The implied claim that extinctions are necessarily bad is unjustified and if you think this is the case, I request that you prove it. As far as I am concerned, I would be very happy if mosquitos, ticks or great white sharks went extinct. Finally, I call BS on your implied claim that lower CO2 levels (I'm assuming you mean ~270 ppm) are ideal for the majority of life on Earth. As I mentioned earlier, biodiversity and biomass have generally been higher during the past 590 million years when the climate was warmer and CO2 levels were higher. Biodiversity and biomass are generally much higher in places closer to the equator (say the Amazon rainforest) than closer to the poles (say all of Antarctica). Increasing CO2 levels will cause a CO2 fertilization effect on all plant life and which should allow the Earth to support more life. Why do you think that the C4 cycle has only evolved recently and C4 plants have started to flourish recently (on an evolutionary time scale)? Because CO2 levels have been ridiculously low and plant life on earth is basically starving for CO2. Why do you think that we live in an age where mammals are dominant across most of the planet? Because the climate is relatively cold which gives mammals advantages relative to other forms of animal life. I call BS on this claim. No, but humans have been indoors where CO2 levels have been much higher. Furthermore, humans are a TROPICAL SPECIES. We evolved primarily in equatorial Eastern Africa. Why do you think we are relatively hairless and are covered from head to toe in sweat glands? Why do you think comfortable room temperature for humans is 22-25 Celsius, where as the average global temperature is 15 Celsius? Why do you think lots of people live in equatorial places such as Indonesia, Peru and Nigeria, but Antarctica is uninhabited, and polar countries such as Canada and Russia are relatively empty? Increasing atmospheric CO2 by a few hundred ppm will make the climate of the planet MORE SUITABLE for human life, not less. Please prove that an 'unprecedented' rate of change is necessarily bad. You may have noticed, but there are these things called 'seasons' that occur annually where the rate of change of climate is much higher and species across the planet seem to do fine. Wait, first you are going on about how the fast rate of change is super bad. And now you are going on about how since it takes a time scale of centuries or even millennia (due to certain feedback mechanisms such as glaciers) for the majority of the change due to increasing CO2 to occur. So which is it? Is the change more terrible because it is too fast, or is it terrible because it is slow and takes centuries. It looks to me like you are trying to have your cake and eat it too! You mean the alarmist that refuses to accept that humans breathe out CO2 and that CO2 is identical regardless of if it comes from an animal or from fossil fuel burning? I would hope you differ. I think you need to prove that something is a problem before going on about what the correct 'solution' to this 'problem' is. I would like to see your proof (both empirical evidence plus a reasonable mathematical economic model) that justifies this claim that the current capitalist system necessarily rewards 'short term thinking' and delivers most of the benefits to a 'small and powerful' elite that are necessarily 'greedy'. I see lots of claims and little justification for these claims. TV age? What? TV is in decline. I haven't watched TV in years. Haven't you heard of netflix or youtube? Maybe, maybe not. A number of these types of social science studies have immense confirmation bias and lack proper methodology. Yeah! How dare people be skeptical, question things and ask for evidence! They should just blindly believe whatever the 'progressives' want them to believe! Why should the people making all these sky-is-falling claims actually have to prove anything or justify their claims with evidence?! *sarcasm* 1. You are setting up the typical false dichotomy between global warming denialism and global warming alarmism. Though I understand that setting up this false dichotomy is necessary for the preservation of your ridiculously belief system because it allows you to avoid actually having to justify or prove anything because you can just point to a belief system that is more ridiculous and pretend that that somehow exempts you from having to justify or prove anything. 2. You have the unjustified claim that Planet Earth is broken. Please justify it.

No, the rate of increase has increased by about 2.6 times since 1959. More than doubled, not almost doubled. If fossil fuels get more expensive that generally reduces consumption of fossil fuels and as a result reduces CO2 emissions. The primary reason CO2 emissions are increasing is because of economic growth and a growing global population. Positive feedback effects do not cause 'ever increasing rates of CO2 increase'. But I don't expect alarmists to understand the concept of a convergent sequence. In their minds, existence of positive feedbacks somehow implies divergence in temperature and CO2 levels cause they don't understand math.

Actually I did catch it. But I'm so used to alarmists making up stuff that there isn't really much point trying to point it out. From my perspective it appears that the alarmist mindset is: All those that don't agree 100% with the alarmist mind set must be evil, facts and evidence be damned. Anyway, it is a well-known fact that CO2 levels have been low for the entire pleistocene. Though I call BS on your 'haven't reached 400 ppm in the past 16 million years' claim. 3.8 million years is reasonable. The future of life on Earth is not going to disappear nor are we at risk of extinction. This is alarmism not based on the scientific evidence. Many people come to believe many nonsense things. I know, right! If only we were all like North Korea and in poverty. Then CO2 levels would be far lower. I absolutely agree! You only perceive that we are 'in the crapper' because you are deluded. If you think that increasing CO2 emissions by burning fossil fuels will result in 'nothing left on this planet' then your understanding of climate science is orders of magnitude wrong, much like Obama.

CBC refuses to publish the cartoons, but Radio Canada is completely fine doing it. The decision was made by David Studer who appears to be some Canadian version of Michael Moore. You can watch the interview if you want. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/charlie-hebdo-attacks-why-hasn-t-cbc-shown-prophet-muhammad-caricatures-1.2894322 It's pretty clear that David Studer and others making these 'decisions' want to ensure that they filter the 'correct' information to Canadians to ensure that they don't form 'incorrect' opinions. In my opinion, they want to use their positions to impose their 'progressive' ideology on everyone else rather than try to inform the public as much as possible. This is the result of the infiltration of 'Social Justice Warriors' in all our media and was very much what #gamergate was about (despite the lying media insisting that it was just misogynists 'attacking' women). It doesn't surprise me that the anti-islamist protests in Dresden call the media the 'lying media' because that is what they are.

Okay, sorry I must have misinterpreted you.

@ poochy, 400 ppm was passed last year. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-400-ppm-global-17485 Though the global annual average hasn't exceeded 400 ppm yet. I'm not sure why you are trying to argue against this; there are so many other holes in the original post that you could go after.

If a muslim tries to make a 'new Quran' they will most likely be killed for apostasy. The Quran is supposed to contain the last and final teachings from Allah.

Oh the horror of making the planet more suitable for life! Edit: this is sarcasm. Edit 2: But seriously, nice alarmist post. Contains unjustified claims, appeals to emotion and the typical anti-capitalist conclusion. Totally Scientific! Edit 3: that was sarcasm again.

As one of these basement dwelling millenials, I think there are too many generalizations in this thread.

Are you starting to see the light Big Guy? Well it's good that you are finally asking the correct questions and want to look at the evidence. Did the recent attacks in Paris and elsewhere incentivize you to start asking questions that may challenge your beliefs? The Wikipedia article is very good, but I'll give you a brief explanation. Sharia law (or more accurately just sharia, the word law after sharia is a bit redundant since sharia contains the word law in arabic), is according to many muslims 'God's law'. And to many muslims, God's law are the laws that humans should live by. These laws were revealed to the prophet Mohammed by the angel Gabriel and contain the direct commands from Allah/God. The majority of conservative muslims have the view that everyone should live under Sharia, not just muslims. In their view, "Why should we follow fallable laws made by humans when we can follow infallable laws made by God?". To better understand the relevance of sharia, you need to understand the historical context of islam. Unlike the origins of other religions, Mohammed took power over all of Arabia and started a war with the Byzantine Empire & invaded Syria towards the end of his life. For the begginning of Islam (atleast from 632 to 750, after 750 it started to split apart), Islam was a single united state, the Caliphate. Because of this, Islam was essentially a state with it's own laws that both muslims and non-muslims had to follow. Furthermore, according to Islam, Islam is destined to take over the word and unite the world under a single government that follows sharia. Because fo Islam's historical context of needing to govern a state, it is far more of a 'complete' religion than christianity, judaism, sikhism, etc. Because sharia arguably tells people exactly how society should be structured: how divorse should be done, how much tax people should pay (both muslim and non-muslim), what to do during war time, how to treat non-muslims, what to do with gay people, the correct punishment for theft, etc. Furthermore, Islam contains a system of abrogation that determines exactly what should be done if one finds seemingly contradictory verses in the Quran or Hadith, so Islam does not contain the same level of flexibility of interpretation as other religions. So it is very wrong to treat islam as just another religion, because it is a very unique religion. There are no verses such as "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." in the Quran. Islam is supposed to give the complete picture of how people need to live their lives

I am not disagreeing with this definition.

A strawman is when you misrepresent a position as something else and argue against the misrepresentation of that position. I was not making a strawman argument. If you want to call it rhetoric, fine, but it isn't a strawman argument. Someone receiving a negative tweet does not imply that the tweet is misogynist. How hard is that to understand? If someone criticizes the arguments of the 'damsals in distress' in question then that counts as negative. Yet according to many people, merely challenging the arguments of these individuals makes one an evil misogynist that needs to be silenced. You know, the catholic church did this for a long time and they called it heresay. I'm not criticizing the media for reporting facts. I'm criticizing them from omitting facts, giving a completely biased perspective and selectional reporting in order to agree with their confirmation bias. I did. You asked me to earlier, remember? Try scrolling up and please try not to forget facts in order to agree with your confirmation bias. With flawless logic like this, how could I disagree? And I'm sure that there are no "real" gay people outside of what the devil tries to make people do. *sarcasm* Unless the people involved in said scandals are progressive feminists that will label all dissenting opinion as misogynistic in order to silence dissent. So the moment you try to criticize these individuals you are automatically associated with being misogynistic. Oh really? Then what about what I wrote earlier?: "With respect to the threats of violence, I condemn them." In that case, it shouldn't be too hard for you to find actual violence committed by gamergate and not threats of violence. Right? No you really don't. You only know what the mainstream media has told you. The Zoe Quinn arc is only 1 part of it. Edit: Going back to the article you like so much, Zoe Quinn has received far less tweets than Brianna Wu or Anita Sarkeesian. The picture of the article is of Sarkeesian not Quinn. Does that not even put a shred of doubt in your mind that maybe there is more to this than the actions of Zoe Quinn? I already said I would explain things in another thread. I've been meaning to create a thread about this for a while now. I am making no claim to know all the thoughts of journalists. Please do not strawman my positions. With respect to the MSM, this follows a larger tread where the quality of the MSM has been deteriorating due to the digital age. Too often, opinion articles are a substitute for fact and articles are written by people that do not understand the topic. Or people just strawman me a lot. Especially people that suffer from large amounts of cognitive dissonance (you, Michael, waldo, etc.). Yes. Is that difficult to understand? In that case can I say "'Islam is the religion of peace' is certainly the claim of many muslims, but it really hasn't been demonstrated by their terrorist activity. Therefore, all muslims are terrorists."? No? Then in that case why is your above argument so 'compelling' to you in demonstrating that gamergaters are misogynists? What? I'm a misogynist now? What is interesting is how little information you guys have on this subject yet you and other posters insist that the MSM narrative is correct and that no further evidence is needed. Even more interesting is that even after I make strong claims about MSM bias, none of you have even bothered to try to get the other 'side of the story' to get a more balanced perspective. Oh no! Are you trying to label me as an evil misogynist for disagreeing with you? It's not like the anti-gamergate group hasn't tried to label all dissenting opinion as misogynist or anything...

Indeed it wasn't. Now was it the majority people that associate themselves with gamergate (let alone all) that did this? No. But whatever helps to paint the dissenting viewpoint as misogynistic bigots I guess... Yeah... It's not like knowing any other facts is important or anything... *sarcasm* Your argument would be like saying 'A muslim killed a solider on parliament hill this week. How that soldier was treated is all you need to know. Therefore, all muslims are terrorists'. The only difference is that you are using gamergates rather than muslims.

No, rather it is a lack of thinking. The vast majority of journalists just blindly follow the narrative and don't question it or do investigative journalism. Once the narrative has been established all these media sources just regurgitate the same story like lemmings following each other off a cliff or an electron avalanche in a transistor. It also helps if the narrative confirms their pre-existing dogma and bias. Then they are more likely to go along with it and less likely to bother with facts. The SJW infiltration of various media sources also helps. Strawman argument.

I will in a different thread (where I present the full story not this false narrative regurgitated by the mainstream media), but I'm trying to get you to think for yourself and question the narrative. Though with your level of cognitive dissonance based on our interactions in the past I doubt it will prove effective. Come on, can you not think of even 1 single important thing that is being omitted here as to why the article is biased? Try using your critical thinking skills. And clearly war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. Why question the narrative? It is 'clearly' correct so does not require further evidence. Because receiving someone tweets proves that the entire #gamergate is about misogynistic bigots and there are no underlying issues or reasons why the individuals listed in the article would receive tweets. Some tweets being misogynistic implies all tweets are misogynistic. With flawless logic like that, how can I not accept the mainstream media narrative? *sarcasm* You don't get it, do you? They are all biased. BBC, new york times, CBC, MSNBC, etc. They simply regurgitate the same story from other media outlets and uncritically go with the 'damsals in distress from evil misogynistic gamers' narrative. It's such a good vs evil narrative, why would they challenge it? Why would anyone risk their career and be labelled a misogynist by not going along with the narrative? It's even better than the Assad bad, Rebels good narrative the MSM tried to sell us before ISIS took power. Investigative journalism is a thing of the past. Even news media that are usually critical of the MSM like The Young Turks or Sun News uncritically go along with this narrative because it appeals to their political agendas. There has been no violence in the name of GamerGate. There have been threats of violence. With respect to the threats of violence, I condemn them. Lol, 'something'. Can you please tell me what this 'something' is? I mean it isn't even that hard. Try using google. Cause it's not like gamergate has anything to do with ethical journalism or misleading media or anything...

Oh no, another biased misleading media article about gamergate! Clearly that refutes everything I wrote. *sarcasm*

Because the majority of facebook users are misled by the mainstream media and cannot think critically. So they are focusing on the distraction from the real issues.

Wow you guys are so uninformed on this topic, it isn't funny. Well I don't blame you. The mainstream media has blindly followed the narrative of the anti-gamergate side and uncritically regurgitates the same false information. It's not like bbc or the new your times wouldn't fact check anything, right??? Yes, it's all about poor damsels in distress being attacked by evil misogynistic basement dwellers. It's not like there would be any real underlying issues and that certain groups are trying to misrepresent their opposition or anything. Right? And I thought that the misinformation on the Syrian war and Idle no More was bad. But this is on another level completely. George Orwell was right: "(S)he who controls the past controls the future. And (s)he who controls the past controls the present." Maybe do your own research and don't blindly believe that the mainstream media tells you? #gamergate ^ I don't use twitter but it is appropriate.

Proof?

Can't say such an attack is unexpected. If anything, it is surprising it didn't happen earlier. There are many ISIS sympathizers in Canada who perceive the government to be the enemy, so I doubt this will be the last attack. Though it was a bit inconvenient for me that the University of Ottawa was shut down. I'm not sure if it is justified. While university mass shootings in Western Countries do occur, it is usually the result of a psychologically unstable lone wolf and not due to Islamist terrorists. Islamist terrorists prefer to attack symbols of the government / authority / power such as members of the military, embassies, important buildings like the world trade centre. The University of Ottawa on the other hand has been somewhat sympathetic to Islamists and to pro-Hamas groups, and has been known to have a culture of silencing those who may be critical of Islam or progressive views such as Ann Coulter. So it shouldn't be a target. Then can I be the second? Islamic supremacism is a global threat and groups like ISIS want to take over the world. The actions of these individuals are very much motivated by religion and cultural relativism & religious apologism do not help. A cultural of cultural relativism, religious apologism & progressivism in Canada combined with a lax immigration policy have produced a Canada that is fertile ground for domestic islamist terror attacks to occur. True, the Philippines is a good source of immigrants and the country may be an important ally decades in the future when the power of the West and most of our allies such as Japan and South Korea have significantly waned. This isn't completely related, but I thought I would mention that this municipal election, a Candidate for the Ottawa City Council wants to implement Sharia Law.

I don't disagree with only making reasonable accommodations, but I don't understand how you can define wearing a colander 'unreasonable' but wearing a turban 'reasonable'. They are both worn on the head, the obstruct the same amount of face, etc. I suspect that the reason for this disagreement is that you think that pastafarianism is an 'unreasonable' religion to have were as sikhism is a 'reasonable' religion to have. Please correct me if I'm wrong. So basically you are not objecting to the action as 'unreasonable' but rather the belief system used to justify that action. See here is the difference between how you might determine what is 'reasonable' and how I might determine what is 'reasonable'. For me the law should apply equally to everyone and not make special exceptions based on what the state arbitrarily thinks are someone's religious beliefs. The law can be made with people's religious beliefs in mind, but the law itself should be completely secular and not depend on what someone's religion is (only exception would be people hiring imams, priests or other people where religious belief is a sensible job requirement). The state should not try to define what is or what isn't a religion because doing this is impossible, has very inconsistent results (such as scientology being a religion in the USA but not Germany, Indonesia not recognizing Sikhism) and violates the concept of freedom of religion because it will inevitably lead to new or small religions having less rights than old established religions. Furthermore, the state should not try to read someone's mind to determine a person's level of 'devotion' (such as this pastafarian who claims to be a devoted follower of the flying spaghetti monster), because doing so would violate freedom of thought, which is far more fundamental than freedom to believe in any religion, as law enforcement will be able to arbitrarily give different rights based on what the law enforcement officer thinks another individual thinks at any given time. But in your cause, you want the state to define what is and isn't a religion, and for the state to determine the 'devoutness' of a pastafarian in order to determine if they can or cannot wear a colander, even though you would not hold a Sikh to the same standard. That is violation of freedom of religion, violation of freedom of thought and just plain discrimination.

You guys are all approaching this wrong! Perhaps the best solution is not to make one gender pay more than the other, but to address the gender life expectancy gap. And if there is one thing that progressivism has taught me, it is that if there is a difference in average outcome between two genders (or two races) then 100% of that difference must be due to discrimination. It is like with the gender wage gap. 100% of the wage gap (where Justin Trudeau claims that women earn 70% the wage of men for similar work) is due to discrimination. Factors like education level, experience, area of specialization, type of occupation, lifestyle choices, effect of pregnancy, biological differences, etc. cannot explain any of the average wage gap; 100% is due to discrimination! And, as progressivism has taught me over basically my entire life, the best solution to these outcome gaps is to implement government policies that favour the 'disadvantaged groups' over the 'advantaged groups' until outcome equity is forcibly reached. Sort of like how in Canada, we have employment equity policies which favour everyone over the evil white males (progressivism has taught me that white males are evil and cause most of the world's problems) to counter their white male privilege. Now I have never observed this 'white male privilege' and may have observed things that may appear to conflict with this white male privilege (over representation of females in universities, higher female life expectancy, large number of university scholarships reserved for females or non-white individuals, nearly every single job saying they will consider the race and gender of an applicant and give preference to groups that aren't white male, expectations by various family members and other individuals in society that males have certain responsibilities that females would otherwise culturally be exempt from, etc.), but progressivism has taught me that 'white male privilege' totally exists in today's society and that anything I observe to the contrary is either due to the evil patriarchy (which also totally exists and doesn't need proof according to progressivism), is implemented to counter the white male privilege or that the white males deserve the discrimination due to their white male privilege. Yes, according the progressivism it makes complete sense to punish a white male in his 20s trying to start his career through various forms of discrimination in university or job applications because an older white male in his 50s or 60s might have benefited from white privilege in the 70s before the younger white male was even born. We should punish young people today for things that happened to other people before they were born. Makes perfect sense! Much better than simply hiring the most qualified person regardless of race or gender! Furthermore, because slavery happened over 150 years ago in the southern united states, somehow a Black Canadian today who is unrelated to American slavery should be advantaged by the state over a White Canadian today who is also completely unrelated to some events that happened thousands of kilometers away in a time long ago. It is also well known according to progressivist theory that this white male privilege will always exist and regardless of cultural changes or state actions this will not change even over the course of decades. Because if white male privilege no longer existed then all those social justice warriors that making a living over issues such as feminism, racism, first-nations issues, etc. might have to change their careers. And that would be terrible! Furthermore, if anyone disagrees with progressivism then they are against 'progress' and are therefore evil. Most likely they are bigoted, racist, sexist and xenophobic. The opinions, arguments or evidence provided by an individual with these labels must be ignored and critical reasoning must be suspended. So in conclusion, according to progressivism, the best way to fight sexism, racism or other forms of discrimination is to implement state or non-state institutionalized sexism, racism or other forms of discrimination to counter it. Now some might argue that this appears inconsistent, but it is not. It's not cognitive dissonance, it is progressivism! So applying this to the gender life expectancy gap, the government should institute an age quota to restrict the ages of the advantaged gender over the disadvantaged gender and/or apply preferences to the disadvantaged gender in health services until life expectancy parity is reached.

Wilber, how are you defining what is and what isn't the 'ecosystem' because it seems somewhat arbitrary? Geological processes can release carbon from fossil fuels back into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the distinction between what is and what isn't a fossil fuel is not always clear. Would you define peat as a fossil fuel for example? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat

No, I never stated the intent is to ridicule. Religions may deserve ridicule, but that doesn't mean the intent of wearing a colander is to ridicule other religions. It is discrimination for religious people to have more rights than nonreligious people, or for the government to arbitrarily decide what is and what isn't a religion and discriminate against less popular religions. The Indonesian government doesn't recognize Judaism or Sikhism. The German government doesn't recognize Scientology. Many western countries still do not fully recognize pagan religions. The only 'guideline' that seems to be used is if a religion is popular enough or not. The government shouldn't define what is and what isn't a religion, because doing so usually leads to discrimination.

Thank you. You also provide very good insight and discussion. Though recently, I've become a bit more short-tempered in some of my responses. I've may have started to gain a bit of dyslexia the past month, which may have led me to misread people a few times.