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Incoherent Waldo-speak ramblings.

So you think that all the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider are nonsense because they take place in non-real world artifical confines? So when presented with non 'enclosed study' data that supports the existence of the CO2 fertilization effect such as tree ring data or fossilized pollen data, you call that a deflection? How warped is your mind?

Claiming that experimental evidence is useless because it takes place in an enclosed environment is absurd. I've already responded to this in earlier posts. Try responding to what I wrote earlier rather than ignore it. Again another attempt at strawmaning what I said. How difficult is it for you to understand the difference between the CO2 fertilization effect on crop yields, and the overall effect of changing CO2 levels on crop yields? Oh look, another out of context graph or statement from a study/scientific paper that doesn't indicate the methodology used, theoretical model used, methodology, etc. But as expected, you aren't interested in science, only support for your dogma. The text at the bottom sort of implies that they didn't even consider adaptation to get these results. And these results have 0 well within any reasonable confidence interval, meaning the data isn't conclusive enough to claim crop yields will decline.

Santa Claus?

I have no moral objection to Canada having nuclear weapons, but what is the point? It would just be a waste of money. Is there any expectation that there will be a major world-wide conflict that would justify the use of nuclear weapons? No. Then why obtain them? Also, obtaining nuclear weapons has huge ramifications on how other nations view us and reduces our 'moral authority' to take future military actions. Since we were the second nation to obtain nuclear power, but do not actually have any, it gives us a sort of 'moral high ground' over other nations. Too many people overlook the importance of moral authority, but in a world where most nations are democracies (and the nations that are not democracies still have to worry about having public support to prevent riots) being able to morally justify your nation's military actions to people in other nations improves the ability of Canada to use it's military capabilities and implement it's political will since people in other countries will take a more favorable view of us. Unfortunately, many western nations like USA, Britain, France and Canada (under Harper) are ignoring this and are supporting very morally dubious actions (supporting terrorists in Syria, supporting protesters in Western Ukraine but not protesters in Eastern Ukraine, etc.) and have a very hypocritical foreign policy (ex. Kosovo is allowed to separate from Serbia, but Crimea isn't allowed to separate from Ukraine). No, no we do not. Canada is one of the few nations that doesn't need a military. No one is going to invade us. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have a military. But Canada's military role should not be 'self defence' or 'peace-keeping'. Instead, the role should be considered 'charity' to our allies and to other nations. Our primarily goals right now should be being able to help South Korea, Japan or Taiwan in the unlikely chance that there is an East Asian conflict, and trying to prevent the spread of islamism throughout the world. Yes, thanks Harper! Funding terrorists in Syria, supporting the democratic overthrow of the government in Kiev, and denying the right of the Crimeans to self-determination has turned out so well! China has zero claim to anywhere remotely close to our north. Sort of has to do with geography. As for Russia, if you look at the geography of the arctic ocean, there isn't really that much overlap between the possible claims of Russia and the possible claims of Canada, especially since both countries are reasonable countries that have agreed to solve this dispute via the UNCLOS. Most of Russia's territorial dispute will come with Denmark most likely, especially if Russia tries to claim the north pole for political reasons (which is Danish territory). Since Canada and Greenland share the same continental shelf, we have a strong incentive to work together vs any Russian territorial claims. And since Denmark is part of the EU, we should have the EU on our side.

Maybe my wording was unclear so I'll restate things: please justify your claim 'extremists should not have any representation because the majority of the electorate will disagree with them'. Your claims of 'extremists having the balance of power' are nonsense even in your 'examples' because the extremist parties like the Tea Party are not the only party that can negotiate with the conservatives to get sufficient support to pass legislation. The conservatives can also negotiate with the NDP, the greens, the liberals, etc. And if the Tea Party is as extreme as you claim, then maybe the conservatives will prefer to negotiate with a less extreme party like the liberals. You fail to define what you mean by 'balance of power' and the only thing I can gather is that 'balance of power' means 'possibility to form coalitions to create laws'. Well in that case every single party in the legislature, assuming no party has over 50% representation, holds the 'balance of power'. It's not magic. It is what is logically expected when you change the incentives of voters due to electoral reform. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Evaluating_voting_systems_using_criteria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromega_rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law Now your claim has morphed to include 'for your views'. Well different people may use different criteria in their 'views'. There is a difference between the vote not going 'your way' and a significant segment of the population not getting any (let alone fair) representation for their votes.

How is that relevant? If the child has a high school diploma, sure. Maybe this will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive

You mean your incoherent Waldo-speak ramblings that made no attempt to address any of the points that I made? Yeah it is unworthy of a response. Maybe you should try actually responding to the points people make.

I.e. you somehow think that using data from laboratory experiments should not be allowed in science. And I provided you with references to tree-ring and fossilized pollen studies to demonstrate the CO2 fertilization effect. But you will probably ignore their existence yet again because you see to suffer from a selective reading disorder.

Thank you for providing a link justifying your claims. With regards to the article posted, fortunately it references 3 papers as sources, but unfortunately 1 of the link is broken. For the two abstracts provided (I didn't want to pay to read the entire paper) they give some interesting estimates for reductions in protein concentrations for increasing CO2 levels. One of the papers gave the following estimates (for an increase from ~357 ppm to ~749 ppm, the range is very inaccurate): 10-15% reduction in protein content for wheat, barley and rice. 14% reduction in protein content for potato. 1.4% reduction in protein content for soybeans. Unfortunately, no estimates of increases in crop yields were given to compare the trade-off between increase in crop yields to a decrease in protein concentration. I tried to find a reference that estimates the increase in crop yields via the CO2 fertilization effect. This was what I found: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569568/ From the above link, it is found that for an increase from 330 ppm to 550 ppm, the crop yields for wheat and rice increase by about 17%, where as the crop yields for corn increase by about 6%. If we use a linear extrapolation to compare this to the ~357ppm to ~749 ppm change in the earlier paper, then this corresponds to approximately 30.3% increase in the crop yields for rice and wheat, and an approximately 10.7% increase in crop yields for corn. From this information, I will point out a few things: - Even with the reduction in protein concentration, it is more than offset by increases in crop yields since you end up with more overall plant protein (10-15% reduction in wheat/rice protein concentration vs a 30% increase in crop yields). - Wheat, rice and barely aren't even major sources of protein, they are major sources of carbohydrates. If you want protein you should eat meat or some other high protein food sources. And didn't the carbohydrate concentration increase since the sugar concentration increased? This doesn't really seem to be a major issue. - Interestingly, the only high-protein food source looked at, soy beans, had a very small reduction in protein content. - Any losses in protein concentration can be easily offset by using genetically modified organisms to increase protein concentration, or by changing crops to something that has a higher protein concentration (quinoa instead of rice for example). - It is interesting to point out that the CO2 fertilization effect is much smaller for C4 plants like corn than for C3 plants like barely or rice; as expected. For the second study, they found that spring wheat had a 10.4% increase in grain yields vs a 7.4% reduction in protein concentration. Again, increases in crop yields more than offset decreases in protein concentration. And wheat shouldn't be a major source of protein in anyone's diet anyway. With respect to the cyanide claims. You could just not eat clover leaves and cassava leaves and it becomes a non-issue. I think it is reasonable to conclude that despite these reductions in protein concentration and increases in cyanide content (for specific parts of plants that people do not eat) the overall effect of CO2 fertilization is positive. Also, as an aside, Waldo (the poster who I was responding to) completely denies the existence of the CO2 fertilization effect regardless of how much evidence I present.

Yes, this is very true. The primary benefit of democracy is that it discourages riots and rebellions.

Well apparently we can since we have a voting age... Your point is moot even if I agree with your premise that a vote is a right.

That is a very reasonable question. I would argue for a HS diploma over university diploma for a number of reasons: - HS diploma is mostly standardized, where as university diplomas are not. Many university degrees are useless while others have immense value. A degree in gender studies is not the same as a degree in theoretical physics. - It wouldn't really be politically feasible to implement a university degree based on political backlash. - Based on HS drop-out rates, it is probably better to add the additional incentive to the HS diploma over the university diploma. - Given that HS is funded by the government, but it is expensive to go to university, many people might claim that they cannot afford to get the diploma to vote. - Many people find success without getting a diploma and it isn't that hard to become educated in other ways (especially with internet availability). So a high school grad can be more informed than a university grad.

I cannot agree with this for a number of reasons. 1. There is no guarantee that these kids will pass the course or pay attention, yet you would still give kids a vote regardless of if they engage themselves in the class or not. 2. You will still have some ageist line that determines who is eligible to vote, you would only lower it. 3. You wouldn't have as much an incentive for people to complete high school. The drop-out rate is poor enough as it is. 4. Such civics classes can be used as political propaganda platforms by various teachers to promote their political ideology. Many secondary schools already waste enough time on propaganda and indoctrination (the way Canadian history is taught, the choice of books used in literature classes, civics classes, playing the national anthem every day, over emphasis on remembrance day ceremonies, etc.) and are starting to waste time on other useless stuff (discovery math, feminism, etc.). High schools need to concentrate on giving the kids useful skills & knowledge that make them productive & knowledgeable members of society not institutions of indoctrination. If they wasted less time on all the other nonsense then maybe young Canadians would have a better understanding of Calculus, Algebra, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Economics, World History, Arts, Geography, Computer Programming, etc.

Not any? So 0? Wtf... You haven't really provided much justification beyond 'I don't think extremists should have any representation because the majority of the electorate will disagree with them'. But what is your justification for this 'justification'? You have not provided any. I on the other hand have given reasons why they should have representation. Your 'example' didn't make sense and I gave 3 reasons why. Even in your 'new' example, you still haven't explained how this Tea Party holds the 'balance of power' where as all the other parties in the legislature do not. Can you give a definition of what you mean by 'balance of power'? Furthermore, if those two parties had a combined total of 51% of the electorate vote for them in the previous election then they had the support of the majority of the people so should have the legitimacy to make policies. 51% cannot be considered 'unpopular'. Proof of this BS claim? You could simply look at how proportional systems have worked in other countries (Germany, New Zealand, etc.) to see that over time the different parties become willing to negotiate with other parties (and also the number of parties increases) after you move from a non-proportional system. You seem to be stuck in the false mentality that somehow if we change to proportional that the viable political parties in Canada will be the same and act the same. So this is like some bigoted version of the golden mean fallacy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation And we aren't talking about 'pushing their views on the overwhelming majority' cause in order to pass laws you would need to support of other parties such that the combined percentage of the vote of the parties that support the policy exceeds 50%. We are talking about having some non-zero representation to express different view points in parliament. ... I was listing 'reasons' that opponents of proportional representation were giving in the thread. I do not agree with the idea that PR favors left or right. Learn Reading Comprehension. I made a conjecture (not a claim) based on posts people provided in this thread and in your last post you have provided more evidence for it. Because you specifically have said that you think that extremists views should have 0 representation in parliament and then gave your bigoted justification that you think all extremists are dumb, ignorant and hateful. By many measures I am an extremist based upon various political positions that I take on various issues. What you are saying is that I and anyone who thinks like me should have zero representation in parliament (even if we make up a significant share of the electorate), while you and people that think like you should be over represented in parliament. Furthermore, you say that I am 'hateful, dumb and ignorant' without justification and you apply these same claims to other fringe groups such as greens, libertarian, communists, etc. Why stop there? Maybe you should advocate implementing some thought police that will make it illegal to think differently from the majority of the population. Then we can protect society from dangerous ideas! Yes there is. Different people vote using different criteria. What are you trying to say here? That groups of people who do not vote strategically and then do not get support in parliament are not allowed to blame the system?

I disagree with this because china doesn't indirectly fund terrorism and is at least slowly modernizing and becoming westernized. Also, their culture is more compatible with western culture than Islamic culture is to western culture. I'm not a protectionist like you. Don't mistake the fact that I support trade restrictions under very specific circumstances with support for protectionism.

If you are referring to the evidence I presented earlier that the CO2 fertilization effect exists, that has nothing to do with the 7800 word post I made about the effects of climate change on jetstreams. If you actually read what I wrote, let alone have the capacity to understand what I write, then you would know that.

Oh look, you again ignored what I wrote. Your denialism of scientific methodology and the CO2 fertilization effect continues. Respond to what I write if you want me to give a decent response back.

How do you even pronounce this? Also, is xyr the possessive pronoun or the object or both? I assume the possessive pronoun since you also have xem, which is probably the object.

Why? What prevents Canada from making both pipelines?

Actually I do. I think western nations should ban imports from Saudi Arabia, Iran and other religious theocracies that indirectly finance terrorism.

There are also morons on the internet that fail to understand science and refuse to understand even when presented with evidence after evidence after evidence.

The premise of your 'argument' is ridiculous. Do you reject evidence that suggests that planets exist outside our solar system because the light went through a 'non-real world, artificial, enclosed' telescope? Do you reject the evidence collected by the Large Hadron Collider that suggests that the Higgs Boson exists because those experiments were in a 'non-real world, artificial, enclosed' environment? There is no reason to think that the laws of physics in a laboratory environment are somehow different than those outside of the laboratory environment and via occam's razor, the burden of proof is on you to prove otherwise. Also, I did provide empirical evidence that was not based on 'non-real world, artificial, enclosed' environments such as tree ring data or fossilized pollen data but you rejected that because you said that historical data was no good. How the heck are you supposed to test the hypothesis that increasing CO2 concentrations increases crop yields via the CO2 fertilization effect if you can't enclose an environment to control CO2 levels and cannot use historical data?

What is wrong with making the vote an incentive to graduate high school as well? Being a right/privilege and incentive are not exclusive.

Where did I make this claim? Nowhere because I do not believe it to be true. You climate alarmists and your continual inability to comprehend that there are more than 2 positions on the issue of climate change (denialism and alarmism) amuse me. It is a single counter example. A single counter example is sufficient to prove your claim false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterexample