1

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Do dogs use tools?

« on: 02/10/2017 09:02:41 »

Dogs are managers.

When our daughter was trying to teach her border collie to fetch a ball, it would never bring it back but leave it some way ahead and the lie in wait. It didn't take long to realise the dog was teaching her the game of 'hide the ball in a small hollow, grass clump etc and see if you can find it'.

2

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Can Indian and African elephants interbreed?

« on: 27/08/2017 11:07:01 »

I'm a bit surprised that those two species have been able to interbreed at all (according to that reference) given the extensive geographical isolation and taxonomical difference. They are not even the same genus.

I'm not sure if there are any specific genetic factors that would make their offspring incompatible with life. However, so much has to "go right" for an elephant between conception and adulthood for it to succeed, that I'd think that any suboptimal physiological factors would surely have to disadvantage such a hybrid (near enough is probably not good enough). For example, I would wonder about the effects of:
- different foetal size vs. placental blood supply
- different foetal energetic/nutritional requirements vs. maternal requirements and intake
- different foeto-pelvic proportion
- slightly different gestational period
- different composition and volume of the milk and colostrum
- different growth rates and possible increased susceptibility to disease (eg. elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus)
- different height ratio between the calf and the mother's teats
- social factors (eg. maternal acceptance, acceptance into the herd)
- dental malocclusion from overcrowding
- skeletal abnormalities combined with an enormous body weight

3

The Environment / Re: Are climate skeptics right that there is no link between CO2 levels and temperature?

« on: 08/04/2016 22:49:08 »

3) As a proponent of climate change weakening your argument in the ways described above weakens the arguments of all proponents of climate change. Deniers will use you as an anecdote to demonstrate the bad science of climate change. That argument is laughably refutable but the point is that it is something a proponent of climate change should never have to address in the first place.

Given that you say you don't like the lying bit would you please point out who has denied any science here.

I ask this as I am sure that I have been part of the group you would describe thus. I feel extremely afronted by the accusation of dishonesty and demand that you either substanciate it or retract it.

Unless of course you choose to do some less than honest stuff yourself.

For starters I've personally never considered the word denier as a pejorative term. Certainly I see no direct connection between the act of denying something and dishonesty. As far as I am aware a denier simply says that some statement is not true and there is nothing beyond that. I also certainly didn't imply anyone here was a denier. If we accept denier as a pejorative term certainly there is room on your side of the debate for those who share your views on climate change but are less than civil just as there is on my side. I certainly didn't mean for anyone to take umbrage at my remarks which should be rather clear from my rather reasoned tone.

Now seeing as you clearly have negative associations concerning the word denier I am willing to make an effort to use the word skeptic. Unless, that is, you have reasons to dislike that word as well. In which case I would have to ask you to provide me an acceptable term as those two words pretty much deplete my thesaural reserves in relation to this particular subject and I am not very keen of proceeding via trial and error.

I do wish to apologize again if I accidently gave you the impression I thought you were being dishonest or lying. That was absolutely not my attention although I do feel the need to point out that your reaction seems perhaps a bit on the harsh side. Not that we all haven't been guilty of that from time to time. It is always good to be reminded that everyone here is a human. That is unless AI has advanced much further than the public has been told.

4

The Environment / Re: Are climate skeptics right that there is no link between CO2 levels and temperature?

« on: 08/04/2016 14:34:14 »

This completely explains the seasonal fluctuations about the mean of the CO2 curve.

Well it would if the CO2 curve peaked in July-August, when sea temperature is maximal, but it actually peaks in May-June. But don't let the facts spoil a good argument!

I apologize for the mistake. Sea temperature changes don't completely explain the seasonal CO2 fluctuations. I neglected the fact that the growth of vegetation in the northern hemisphere (and thereby the world due to a disproportionate area of land being in the northern hemisphere) increases through July and August causing a massive uptick in carbon absorption which is less correlated with temperature changes. Thus shifting the peak CO2 concentrations back a few months remembering the competition between the ocean sink and the plant sink along with general response lag keeps the CO2 concentration from exactly matching to the date any seasonal cycle that drives changes in CO2 concentration.

Please give us a reference to the three independent pre-1900 trans-Antarctic survey records, the corresponding pre-1900 trans-Arctic records, the matching data from the Sahara, Amazon Basin, Manitoba and Gobi, and any three independent data sets from the entire Pacific ocean surface that predate the industrial revolution.

Please cite a temperature proxy that is not also a CO2 proxy.

The links I gave are generally fairly well referenced (especially any that have an intermediate or advanced tab).

For reference there are three major reconstructions of monthly global mean surface temperature and they use data from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN).
https://data.noaa.gov/dataset/global-historical-climatology-network-daily-ghcn-daily-version-3

There are other reconstructions using other data. For example:

https://data.noaa.gov/dataset/global-surface-summary-of-the-day-gsod <-- Maintained by the USAF looking at the station map of the GSOD vs the GHCN (found at the links provided) clearly indicate that the two data sets are independent of each other. As per this link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm

Reconstructions done with the GSOD are mathematically identical (i.e. agree within a relatively small uncertainty) to the reconstructions done with the GHCN. These reconstructions were done by Ron Broberg and Nick Stokes (a software engineer and all I could find about Stokes was that he has a blog). So not in anyway part of organizations that did the major reconstructions nor actually paid for the climate research and therefore have no sane motives fudging the data.

Here is another:

What about satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower troposphere? There are two widely cited analyses of temperature trends from the MSU sensor on NOAA's polar orbiting earth observation satellites, one from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and one from the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH). These data only go back to 1979, but they do provide a good comparison to the surface temperature data over the past three decades.

and another:

Reanalysis data sets also show the same warming trend.  A ‘reanalysis’ is a climate or weather model simulation of the past that incorporates data from historical observations.  Reanalysis comparisons by Vose et al. (2012) and Compo et al. (2013) find nearly identical global surface warming trends as in the instrumental record (Figure .

Links to the cited papers can be found on the cited page.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL054271/epdf <-- Here is the paper that used proxies. Based on the descriptions of the proxies I'd say a good number of them are either independent of CO2 or dependent on CO2 in a different ways which would average out over the large set of proxies used (173).

Please define "global temperature".

I suppose to be exact I should have said global mean temperature or monthly global mean temperature to be even more precise. It should be fairly obvious how one goes about calculating the mean of all temperatures on the Earth over the period of a month. It takes a lot of addition and some division but computers are good at that.

I do not find it in the least surprising that independent groups, starting  with the same data and the same assumptions, end up with the same model, however dubious the data and assumptions.

As above there are several independent data sets showing the same trend. Additionally different groups approached the GHCN data using different data analysis techniques, assumptions and models. There are even comparisons between adjusted and unadjusted data that show the same trend in both. All of this can be found in the following link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm

However when the model fails by more than its error bars to predict the next finding, or explain the observed historic phase shifts, it does rather cast doubt on the validity of the entire process.

I believe the latter point is now firmly addressed with the correction of my earlier misstatement. As for the former I'm not sure what precisely you are referencing but this may help:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

Also I have to point out that the research largely isn't mine as I am using one website.

An interesting mental exercise is to ask the question, what would happen if we took away all the water from the earth. Say we have a waterless earth, but leave the atmosphere with the current CO2. This will allows us to isolate the impact of the water on global climate and weather.

If we took away the water, you would no longer have to worry about hurricanes, cyclones, thunderstorms, floods and any type of storm  event; tornado, that comes from water based clouds. We won't have to worry about El Nino and La Nina affects, which originate in the oceans.

The loss of the water, will alter the thermal capacity of the earth's surface; goes down. This loss will cause higher thermal swings between day and night, as well as summer to winter. Without water in the atmosphere, there are no clouds to reflect the sun or help the earth retain surface heat.

If the surface water was not there to absorb and release heat, less heat would be transferred via oceans based currents. The need for heat transfer will be done mostly by the atmospheres. But the atmosphere can't move as much heat, due to their lower thermal capacity, unless air speed gets super high.

The lack of water, will impact all of life. There will be no photosynthesis, since the two reactants are water and CO2. This means the production of oxygen will stop. The result will be the partial pressure of the oxygen decreasing over time, as oxygen reacts with the surface to form oxides, but is not replaced. With less and less O2 in the atmosphere, we cant form new CO2. We will also lose the ozone layer, allowing more and more UV to enter the earth. CO2 can be broken down wth short wave UV back to CO, O, O2, C. Loss of O2 may shift the CO2 equilibrium back to O2.

I am not sure how one can ignore water, since it is the straw that stirs the global weather drink. The lack of water based disccuson and the fixation on CO2, shows there is a gap in knowledge.

You seem to be laboring under a misconception about what climatologist actually include in their models. As per my citation in the previous post:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

Here are some quotes from the intermediate version of the explanation:

Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. The greenhouse effect or radiative flux for water is around 75 W/m2 while carbon dioxide contributes 32 W/m2 (Kiehl 1997). These proportions are confirmed by measurements of infrared radiation returning to the Earth's surface (Evans 2006). Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and a major reason why temperature is so sensitive to changes in CO2.

Unlike external forcings such as CO2 which can be added to the atmosphere, the level of water vapour in the atmosphere is a function of temperature. Water vapour is brought into the atmosphere via evaporation - the rate depends on the temperature of the ocean and air, being governed by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. If extra water is added to the atmosphere, it condenses and falls as rain or snow within a week or two. Similarly, if somehow moisture was sucked out of the atmosphere, evaporation would restore water vapour levels to 'normal levels' in short time.

Satellites have observed an increase in atmospheric water vapour by about 0.41 kg/m² per decade since 1988. A detection and attribution study, otherwise known as "fingerprinting", was employed to identify the cause of the rising water vapour levels (Santer 2007). Fingerprinting involves rigorous statistical tests of the different possible explanations for a change in some property of the climate system. Results from 22 different climate models (virtually all of the world's major climate models) were pooled and found the recent increase in moisture content over the bulk of the world's oceans is not due to solar forcing or gradual recovery from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The primary driver of 'atmospheric moistening' was found to be the increase in CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

It should be very clear that water is not being ignored by climatologists and in fact is a large part of their models.

5

The Environment / Re: Are climate skeptics right that there is no link between CO2 levels and temperature?

« on: 08/04/2016 07:16:30 »

For the sake of an actual balanced accounting of the facts:

1. I was first shown the Vostok ice core data about 10 years ago (at an alumni conference of the Cambridge Earth Sciences department, just in case Craig wants to play the academic qualifications game) and immediately noticed that the temperature graph was always ahead of the CO2 curve. Now in my universe, the cause always precedes the effect, so CO2 cannot have been the cause of temperature fluctuations. Subsequent published analyses have confirmed what was visually obvious.

Just to make sure everyone is aware of all the evidence:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm

In particular this video specifically sites a paper that explains the current ice core record:

The simple and brief answer is that historically orbital factors have initiated changes in global temperatures. When an increase in temperature was initiated the decreased solubility of CO2 in the warmer oceans caused a release of CO2 that enhanced the relatively weak orbital forcing. This is why in the ice record the CO2 lags the temperature changes. However, it is well known that the orbital factors are not strong enough to account for the observed temperature changes. In fact because it was known that orbital forcing wasn't enough it was actually predicted that the ice record should show a lag between CO2 and temperature for the reasons above before it was actually observed experimentally. We also happen to know that no such orbital forcing is occurring today thus the current rise in CO2 is not only because of us but is also doing exactly what it was always known to do. It just so happens that this time the instigating cause is different.

2. Notwithstanding point 3 below, we do have some very reliable recent data from a single sampling point - Mauna Loa. The temperature curve shows a smooth continuous upward trend in recent years, but the CO2 curve, whilst its mean follows the temperature curve, shows an annual cyclic pattern that is a very regular sinusoid. Now if this reflected anthropogenic carbon dioxide, as you might expect, you would expect to find the maxima in winter when we burn more carbon fuels to keep warm. But it isn't. The maximum occurs in early summer, every year. This clearly implies that temperature drives carbon dioxide.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/warming-co2-rise.htm

So basically as above it is well known that temperature swings can impact the rate at which CO2 enters and leaves the atmosphere via the oceans. This completely explains the seasonal fluctuations about the mean of the CO2 curve. If anything it supports the fact that climate scientists clearly understand the carbon cycle and how it is related to various climatic parameters.

3. I have always been skeptical of so-called recent historic data on global mean temperature, for reasons rehearsed elsewhere - the fact that nobody had visited the poles,let alone made any serious measurements of arctic and antarctic temperatures before 1900; the fact that nobody has ever defined "mean global surface temperature" when asked; the fact that frankly nobody even cared about accurate land surface temperature measurements before 1920; the increasing paucity of such data between 1945 and 1970; the almost complete absence of temperature measurements of the sea surface (75% of the globe), mountains, or deserts (another 20%), prior to 1970; the increasing heat island effect on what land surface measurements we do have; lack of international standardisation of meteorological thermometers before 1926; the extraordinary correlation of the  NOAA "adjustment" of recent data to the known CO2 concentration.... enough for the moment....In short, most of the "data" looks like guesswork massaged with presumptions.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements.htm

In short the analysis of global mean temperature has been done by several independent groups using the same data sets as the three main temperature reconstructions, completely independent temperature records, and known temperature proxies that have a well characterized link to global temperature. The results are mathematically identical. Given that independent groups analyzing the same data and completely independent measures of the same quantity came to the same conclusions it is highly unlikely that the warming trend can be ascribed to any non-climatic factors.

4. In my undergraduate days we studied infrared absorption as part of physical stereochemistry and the quantum mechanics of chemical bonds. We learned (and calculated, and measured) that the O=C=O structure is a rigid cylinder with very few infrared excitation modes. At pretty much the same time (the 1960's) we began exploiting the IR transitions of CO2 to make very powerful lasers - simple and powerful precisely because CO2 has such a narrow IR spectrum. Water, by comparison, has an enormously broad IR absorption spectrum even as a monomer, and exists in the atmosphere as monomer, dimer, trimer and possibly hexamer gases, liquid, and several ice phases with different structures and spectra. Given that the hugely powerful greenhouse gas, H2O, comprises around 4% of the atmosphere, and the weakly absorbing CO2 less than 0.04%, and that the latent heat of evaporation and melting of water (both of which take place in the atmosphere) is responsible for almost all of the energy transport that we call weather(still with us, Craig? that's part of the international syllabus for pilots, and I scored 100% in the meteorology exam)  it does not seem at all reasonable to ascribe any significant change in global surface temperature to the IR spectum of CO2.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-trace-gas.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm

Water is a better greenhouse gas than CO2 but crucially it is often at or near its saturation point. The reason we have clouds and rain being specifically that water vapor has reached the saturation point (actually the air is usually supersaturated before clouds form) and precipitated out of the air. More specifically the fact that water is stable as a liquid (or solid) at most temperatures and pressure found to naturally occur on the surface of the Earth the atmospheric concentration is limited via the vapour pressure to somewhere in the 4% range. What this means is that if the atmosphere starts warming for some other reason that increase in temperature is going to increase the saturation point of water which is going to increase the warming effect that water has on the atmosphere. This is called a positive feedback and is well known by climatologists. The flip side of this is that since CO2 is largely not stable as either a liquid or a gas at basically any naturally occurring surface temperatures and pressures on the Earth it is theoretically possible to have an arbitrarily large CO2 concentration. So unlike water vapour concentration which is largely controlled by temperature and pressure CO2 concentration is only limited by the net rate at which CO2 enters the atmosphere.

5. We also learned that the CO2 absorption spectrum is close to saturation at ground level: adding more CO2 will not affect the overall IR absorption or emission of the atmosphere: the "extinction" phenomenon is of course true for all absorbers of radiation and formed one of the bases of my subsequent studies (PhD (Warwick) in case Craig is still with us)  and career (Chartered Physicist, National Physical Laboratory, US Bureau of Standards, and now a few private companies) in radiation measurement of all sorts. Even in our schooldays we learned that warm air can contain more water than cold air, so if water vapor promotes heating or cooling, the effect has an inherent positive feedback until the air is either  desiccated (as over Antarctica) or forms clouds that cut off the solar input - a bounded chaotic oscillator, just like the Vostok record. 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm

So it turns out surface CO2 concentration only actually matters in that it is a sign that CO2 concentration is increasing higher in the atmosphere. Also, while the strong absorption band of CO2 is nearly saturated there are many weaker sidebands which are not and while individually the may be weak together their impact is important. It should also be noted that even in the strong absorption band increasing concentration does still have an impact because the band cutoff is more gaussian than rigid. This means that as you increase the concentration the width of the absorption band over which meaningful absorption takes places increases even if the amount of absorption at the center of the band has saturated.

So I'm just a teeny bit skeptical about any model that begins with the presumption that CO2 is the primary climate agent (particularly when the IPCC said, in its first report, that it isn't) and then tries to fit "adjusted" "data" to the known or presumed CO2 curve. My skepticism is enhanced each year when the dire predictions of those models turn out to be wrong.

The "technical aspects" outlined above can be summarised us: when studied carefully, the data does not support the hypothesis that CO2 is the driver of climate. And that's the historical problem with scapegoats: the goat hadn't sinned, so sacrificing it did not placate the gods.

Meanwhile the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and climate change is going to exacerbate humanity's selfimposed mess, so the sooner we stop bleating about a non-cause and start dealing  with the inescapable effect, the better. But the solution is politically unpalatable, so intergovernmental panels and treaties will continue to ignore the facts and blame the electorate for burning coal.

I am sure answers to any lingering questions anyone might have can be found at the following link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy

Oh and as an interesting aside there is also this:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm

Which shows my earlier very crude estimate of human waste heat on global temperatures was at least a factor of 10 too high.

6

The Environment / Re: Are climate skeptics right that there is no link between CO2 levels and temperature?

« on: 08/04/2016 00:34:55 »

Just two points of evidence.

So what is wrong or right about these analyses?

Initially, two points of evidence, good scientific practice in questioning the validity of the data, and some simple undergraduate physics.

1. I was first shown the Vostok ice core data about 10 years ago (at an alumni conference of the Cambridge Earth Sciences department, just in case Craig wants to play the academic qualifications game) and immediately noticed that the temperature graph was always ahead of the CO2 curve. Now in my universe, the cause always precedes the effect, so CO2 cannot have been the cause of temperature fluctuations. Subsequent published analyses have confirmed what was visually obvious.

2. Notwithstanding point 3 below, we do have some very reliable recent data from a single sampling point - Mauna Loa. The temperature curve shows a smooth continuous upward trend in recent years, but the CO2 curve, whilst its mean follows the temperature curve, shows an annual cyclic pattern that is a very regular sinusoid. Now if this reflected anthropogenic carbon dioxide, as you might expect, you would expect to find the maxima in winter when we burn more carbon fuels to keep warm. But it isn't. The maximum occurs in early summer, every year. This clearly implies that temperature drives carbon dioxide. 

3. I have always been skeptical of so-called recent historic data on global mean temperature, for reasons rehearsed elsewhere - the fact that nobody had visited the poles,let alone made any serious measurements of arctic and antarctic temperatures before 1900; the fact that nobody has ever defined "mean global surface temperature" when asked; the fact that frankly nobody even cared about accurate land surface temperature measurements before 1920; the increasing paucity of such data between 1945 and 1970; the almost complete absence of temperature measurements of the sea surface (75% of the globe), mountains, or deserts (another 20%), prior to 1970; the increasing heat island effect on what land surface measurements we do have; lack of international standardisation of meteorological thermometers before 1926; the extraordinary correlation of the  NOAA "adjustment" of recent data to the known CO2 concentration.... enough for the moment....In short, most of the "data" looks like guesswork massaged with presumptions.

4. In my undergraduate days we studied infrared absorption as part of physical stereochemistry and the quantum mechanics of chemical bonds. We learned (and calculated, and measured) that the O=C=O structure is a rigid cylinder with very few infrared excitation modes. At pretty much the same time (the 1960's) we began exploiting the IR transitions of CO2 to make very powerful lasers - simple and powerful precisely because CO2 has such a narrow IR spectrum. Water, by comparison, has an enormously broad IR absorption spectrum even as a monomer, and exists in the atmosphere as monomer, dimer, trimer and possibly hexamer gases, liquid, and several ice phases with different structures and spectra. Given that the hugely powerful greenhouse gas, H2O, comprises around 4% of the atmosphere, and the weakly absorbing CO2 less than 0.04%, and that the latent heat of evaporation and melting of water (both of which take place in the atmosphere) is responsible for almost all of the energy transport that we call weather(still with us, Craig? that's part of the international syllabus for pilots, and I scored 100% in the meteorology exam)  it does not seem at all reasonable to ascribe any significant change in global surface temperature to the IR spectum of CO2.

5. We also learned that the CO2 absorption spectrum is close to saturation at ground level: adding more CO2 will not affect the overall IR absorption or emission of the atmosphere: the "extinction" phenomenon is of course true for all absorbers of radiation and formed one of the bases of my subsequent studies (PhD (Warwick) in case Craig is still with us)  and career (Chartered Physicist, National Physical Laboratory, US Bureau of Standards, and now a few private companies - none involved in oil or coal) in radiation measurement of all sorts. Even in our schooldays we learned that warm air can contain more water than cold air, so if water vapor promotes heating or cooling, the effect has an inherent positive feedback until the air is either  desiccated (as over Antarctica) or forms clouds that cut off the solar input - a bounded chaotic oscillator, just like the Vostok record. 

So I'm just a teeny bit skeptical about any model that begins with the presumption that CO2 is the primary climate agent (particularly when the IPCC said, in its first report, that it isn't) and then tries to fit "adjusted" "data" to the known or presumed CO2 curve. My skepticism is enhanced each year when the dire predictions of those models turn out to be wrong.

The "technical aspects" outlined above can be summarised us: when studied carefully, the data does not support the hypothesis that CO2 is the driver of climate. And that's the historical problem with scapegoats: the goat hadn't sinned, so sacrificing it did not placate the gods.

Meanwhile the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and climate change is going to exacerbate humanity's selfimposed mess, so the sooner we stop bleating about a non-cause and start dealing  with the inescapable effect, the better. But the solution is politically unpalatable, so intergovernmental panels and treaties will continue to ignore the facts and blame the electorate for burning coal.

7

Just Chat! / Re: Is Hawking right about Capitalism

« on: 13/03/2016 22:45:25 »

Highly debatable, you need consumers for an ecconmoy to function. As wages stop and stagnate the only way people can consume as they were or increase consuming is through debt, but as we are seeing debt without a real ecconomy supporting and reducing it, it can only increase- but not forever. Debt has taken the place of wages over the last 20-30 years as manufacturing ect has been eliminated, from ecconomies like Britians.

And rather than allowing an ajustment which should have happened in 2008, all the private debts of banks got put onto the public. Germany actually paid off the whole of Greece debt, what once Greece owned to banks and other private institutions, now Greece owes to the people of Germany. Bizzarly historically it was always the debtor that was bailed out, today it's the creditors. Meaning all the debts get continued yet the creditors have no risks with Creditors getting paid double. How can you free up money when all debts are still continuing? It really makes you wonder, it's actually like they did the worst thing they could do, looked for the worse solution possible; with the knock on effect that governments all now burdened with the cost of all of these bank failures, introduce austerity.

Madness, and a madness that's not changed and is getting worse, the bond appocolipse is comming, housing bubbles gonna blow, all the fake paper gold is not gonna keep real the gold price suppresed that much longer.   

Interesting points. I would agree that debt did take the place of wages in fueling the economy and  the perfect storm of near financial collapse in 2008. It's an interesting case study.

In the States, the debacle started with the housing bubble,

No it started with Regan and Thatcher, and with an agenda,

Thom Hartmann: Welcome to Democracyville, USA. youtube.com/watch?v=_-HLFSA76d4&index=45&

 and government initiatives to make home ownership more realizable for lower income people.

Liar loans were not a government initiative, they were banks giving loans to people they knew could not afford them, then putting these loans in boxes of loans with a few class A loans, then labeling the whole box class A loans and selling them on to other banks and institutions, then insuring the loans so they make money when the loans dont pay out- they get the money for the loans when they sell them on and the insurence money when they don't pay out- it's whose left holding the rubbish when it all blows up game? And they all were, accept Goldman sachs who still took government bail out money they didnt need- and just put it all the government money into bonus' and dividens. 

These mortgages required a smaller down payment and some what looser restrictions, but that increase risk was supposed to be effectively monitored and managed by the financial institutions and the government - and they arguably could have been if it had stopped there.

 But events in foreign markets, and deregulation or lack of regulation and transparency of newly invented financial  products like derivatives,  credit default swaps, and Structured Investment Vehicles  were major factors which pretty much blew that all to hell.

These complicated financial packages were just con games to steal.

Bubble bursts, even in things as big the housing markets, are inevitable, and shouldn’t result in horrible chain reactions and a systemic collapse if institutions aren’t over leveraged. The repeal of Glass-Steagall in the US removed the separation between depository banks and investment bank firms. The Glass-Steagall act prevented banks from using their federally insured deposits  to underwrite their riskier, non insured  investments. People argue whether Glass-Steagall repeal  specifically caused the crash,  but it is  what made  banks “ too big to fail”, requiring bailouts, when chickens came home to roost from other bad investments.

That is a way to look at it, it's the banks that call themsleves too big to fail- its not a capitalist idea, the very notion that any company is too big to fail goes against everything that capitalism and a free market is meant to be about. Democracy has a bigger part to play in this, these companies are too big to fail, not for capitalists reasons but for reasons of power, under the new definition of democracy people vote by shopping, and they vote for the companies, the more market share a company has the more power, access to inteligence information ect ect, so if these companies fail, their power goes with them and they are incharge- Reagan and Thather gave them what was once held by Government. A weekening of democracy a transfere of the power of the people to business. So ofcourse if these are the companies in power under the new structure, they become the structure- the death of history.

Credit default swaps, if I understand it, are a type of ‘ insurance’ on investments for a fee

They are insurences, but not on investments rather on Credits or better said debts- they insure a debt someone has to the creditor, the creditor pays a part of the interest they get on a loan to the insurence company, and the insurence company will pay the creditor the whole debt if the debtor fails to pay. Interestingly if the insurence company has AAA rating, then all the debts they insure become AAA, as even if the debtor has a B rating, the loan is insured by a AAA insurer. and there all loans covered by AAA insurers become AAA loans
 
And ofcourse loans started defaulting on mass in 2008 and AIG had insured much of it.

, which was meant to encourage investment  -not entirely a bad idea,  since the investor can’t lose his shirt, unless institutions can’t actually cover the  losses.  This is what sunk AIG. This allowed AIG to write $3 trillion in derivatives while reserving precisely zero dollars against future claims.

Risky investments aren’t necessarily bad if everyone knows they are risky, but not if there is irresponsible or outright fraudulent rating of risky ( and bank fee generating) subprime loans, bundled and sold as a securities to investors, devoid of any accompanying information about their source.  Add to this mix a shadow banking system, in which regulated banks  hide their riskier assets  by selling them to a kind of “virtual” bank, called an SIV. SIVs  allowed regulated banks to circumvent capital requirement regulations. 

The financial sector has increasingly become bets on bets on bets on bets, rather than the stock market most people picture,

The strock market is all about gambling always has been, there is some trade on comodities and stocks but most of the stock market is people gambling on prices going up and down.

youtube.com/watch?v=7EjdC0pjo1A Billy Ray Valentine learns commodities

 in which investors purchase shares in companies that make something – like Ipads or running shoes.  And when something bad happens (like it turns out those mortgages were sold to people who were likely to default  combined with  a deflating housing market making the house worth less than what was owed,) it causes a long chain reaction and a sudden scramble for capital, that may not even exist to cover losses and debts. What also happens as well in this sudden fire sale, is it’s often unclear who owes what to whom or what things are worth.

The 2008 crash, at least in America was about debt,  deregulation, and speculation. "There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product." Micheal Eismen - hedgeman fund manager. "Derivatives are still weapons of massive destruction and likely to cause trouble" -Warren Buffet.

There were no people left to exploit, and yet no bankers have been prosicuted. There are less regulations, the banks have pretty much carried on the same as before, and today the situation is worse than it was back in 2008.

Important to underdstand that as the tax payers have taken all this bad debt, and governments are now runnings austerity programs, democracy as we new it is weaker and weaker, and corporate power is bigger and bigger.

8

The Environment / Re: Are climate skeptics right that there is no link between CO2 levels and temperature?

« on: 10/03/2016 14:57:47 »

But why the consensus? Because it pays the rent. You can't tax a non-problem, and most climate scaremongers are paid from tax revenues.

False. I don't know how many times I have to say this. When they say, "97% of climate scientists agree," that means not just liberal Democrat scientists in the U.S. The IPCC is comprised of scientists from all countries including Russia (not a liberal democracy) and China (not a liberal democracy) and countries of all political stripes.

On a more personal note, if you can't figure out the relationship between applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels and a rise in global temperatures, you might as well join the Flat Earth Society.

Furthermore, scientists operate using what we call the "Scientific Method." That method was adopted to get the politics, religion and personal feelings out of science. You're basically calling all these people liars, hundreds of thousands of people, accusing them of ignoring the scientific method, the very foundation of their occupation. Maybe you're projecting your own lack of integrity on others ??

Do you work for an oil company ??

If I ignore facts and make stupid arguments, can I be a Global Moderator too ??

Here's another quick point. You and I can't agree, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone in this forum and at physforum.com spends every single day telling everyone else that they are completely wrong about absolutely everything. Think about that. Now, you really expect me to believe that hundreds of thousands of scientists of different ethnicities, nationalities and political beliefs in countries all around the world are able to agree 97% on ANYTHING AT ALL, let alone work together to advance an agenda

Give me a break. That alone rules out the idea that climate change is a hoax.

9

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why are the planets such different sizes - and in no particular size sequence?

« on: 08/03/2016 15:47:16 »

By what physics does the cloud collapse?

Gravity, though pressure waves from proximal, or embedded supernovae may trigger the collapse.

10

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why are the planets such different sizes - and in no particular size sequence?

« on: 08/03/2016 11:38:13 »

The answer is complex, but this is a simplified version.

Planets form from a collapsing cloud of gas and dust. They are almost incidental, since most of the mass goes into the proto-star. The rest of the dust and gas form a flat disc around the star in which particles condense and coalesce.

As the star warms up the temperature in the disc prohibits ices from forming in the inner part of the system, so that rocky planets are formed. Further out ices can condense and coat any rocky cores that are formed. Stellar activity also drives gas away from the inner part of the system (and eventually all of it), but the outer rocky cores can attract some of this gas.

Thus we end up with small rocky planets in the inner system and large gaseous and icy planets with rocky cores in the outer system. During this process planets can move around a lot as a consequence of interaction with the disc and mutual gravitational effects. Some are lost into the parent star, some are ejected from the system and some swap places.

11

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Do Flu vaccines increase the risk of pandemic flu?

« on: 06/01/2016 00:07:57 »

The 2009 flu pandemic vaccines (H1N1) was a genetically-modified recombinant virus to generate monoclonal antibodies from low reactors (virus-like-particles).

No, that's not right.

No vaccine elicits monoclonal antibody production; that's something that happens in a test-tube under carefully managed conditions.

Vaccines elicit a polyclonal response; that is, they stimulate a broadly neutralising antibody response which, in the case of the split flu vaccine, recognises a range of epitopes.

Flu vaccine strains are, by definition, all man-made because they are manipulated to ensure that they replicate well in eggs, which is the culture vessel used to produce the (majority of) flu vaccines.

12

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is consciousness a metaphysical experience of reality?

« on: 28/12/2015 00:53:02 »

With current (or near future) technology a likely outcome  is that the ‘volunteer’ will start developing dementia-like syndromes progressing as the replacement of neurons occurs.

This is a thought experiment, the assumption is that the technology will exactly mimic the original.
 

If we get a zombie then we lost some physics, likely at quantum level. Quantum mechanics (QM) is working in anything by e.g. holding atoms together, without QM atoms e- will fall into nucleus, but the question is: is QM directly involved in consciousness? As QM demonstrably play a direct direct role in biology (photosynthesis and taste), I find it hard to believe it is not involved directly in such a special and important process such the aware-ing/conscious-ing of the reality.

Why? Do all 'special and important' processes have to directly involve QM? Is it more than just a case of consciousness is mysterious and QM is mysterious, so maybe they're connected? I'm happy to accept that there may be particular neural processes where QM effects could play an optimizing role, as in other biological systems, but I don't see the rationale behind claiming it is somehow the key to consciousness.

Speculations aside and based on what we know, direct involvement of QM can provide inside our brains two things: i) a more efficient energy transfer from point to point (due to electronic or vibrational states extended over many atoms)

What 'electronic or vibrational states' in particular? How does that help cellular communication? The timescales of the neural membrane depolarisation and synaptic transmission are consistent with the overall activity that's observed, e.g. sensory input takes about 300ms of processing to reach the threshold for the wide-scale activation of the cortex and other areas, that is consistent with the start of conscious awareness - which takes a further 300-400 ms to activate areas associated with generating a response. Where does QM help?
   

ii) faster Turning Machine computations if the results of those computations somehow survive from picoseconds to tens of miliseconds in order to be interfaced with the timescales of NN classical processes – the missmatch of decoherece timescales  is a loooong shot but maybe nature found a way.

I thought the claim was that a Turing Machine couldn't emulate the non-computable functions of the brain, which was what QM was being invoked to explain? having QM speed up Turing Machine computations wouldn't help with non-computability...

..if the QM is directly involved in the process of consciousness (via e.g. space-extended electronic states or quantum vibrational states on certain parts of neurons) then it dramatically restrict the molecular substrate that can be used, and the artificial neuron may have to be very similar to natural one in order to reproduce the quantum states directly involved in conscious -ness (-ing).

That's a big, unsupported 'IF' - but the thought experiment assumes that any QM involvement can accounted for in the emulation - we know how QM behaves, so we could, in principle, duplicate its influence on our artificial system.
 

It is conceivable to end up with a artificial NN that imitates perfectly at the classically describable level of interneuronal connections the original natural NN but it completely misses to generate some quantum states of the natural NN because the ANN does not have the right physical configuration. If those missed quantum states are essential to consciousness then ANN is a mindless machine even if at classical and interneuronal connection level imitates perfectly the natural NN

But if we do generate all the relevant QM states, as the thought experiment assumes?

It seems to me that either you know of some QM effect that can't, in principle, be emulated in an artificial system, or your QM argument is not a valid objection to AI consciousness. I don't know any compelling evidence that QM effects are involved or are necessary, and all the neuroscience evidence I've seen suggests that the brain functions just as one would expect if special QM effects weren't involved.

The EU funded Human Brain Project is aiming to create a neuron emulation faithful to molecular scales, where any required QM effects could be incorporated. So far, their very limited emulations of parts of biological brains (of rats), have behaved just like their biological counterparts; they may be nowhere near complex enough to be more than proof-of-principle models, but no evidence of, or need for, QM effects has been seen.

We can't yet define precisely what we mean by consciousness, so it's not really surprising that we don't yet know how it works.

13

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is consciousness a metaphysical experience of reality?

« on: 24/12/2015 18:07:52 »

I believe John Searle said something like:

One will never get wet from a simulation of rain.
To get wet you still need real rain.

He was quite right. A simulated tornado won't blow your house down.

However, you can calculate with a simulated (or, more precisely, emulated) calculator (I have one on my phone), and you can run real Windows programs on an emulated Windows operating system (e.g. on a Mac). The point being that computation (information processing) is substrate-neutral; you can do it with analogue computers, digital computers, neural networks - any capable real-world information processor (a Universal Turing Machine equivalent) can - in principle - compute what any other can (though some are impractical).

If the biological neural networks in brain are computational in function (and the evidence is very strongly in favour of this) - although not conventionally algorithmic - then their computational functions can be emulated by non-biological information processors, such as digital microprocessors programmed to emulate those networks (assuming all relevant aspects are emulated).

Whether this means that an artificial consciousness is possible depends on whether you think consciousness is a computational process of the brain or not.

my belief is that:
1. A Turning Machine will never generate consciousnesses, because it is an insufficient physical state/structure for such task. Similar with "China Nation" experiment.

Can you explain this? It seems to me that the 'China Nation' thought experiment simply describes a human brain on a large scale, so would have all it's relevant properties (we assume the people behave like neurons in all relevant respects, are organised and inter-connected in the same way, and all other relevant influences are suitably accounted for, e.g. blood dynamics, neurotransmitters, hormones, etc).

14

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is consciousness a metaphysical experience of reality?

« on: 23/12/2015 20:26:20 »

A few thoughts about AI:

Could an AI computer feel sorrow or regret when faced with an error of it's own making?

Could an AI computer fall in love with another AI computer without being instructed to do so?

Could an AI computer appreciate art to the extent that it could distinguish between beauty and ugliness also without instruction?

And lastly, could an AI computer enjoy the activity of "playing" even though the "playing" had no specific profit or progress as it's goal?

I frankly don't know the answers to these questions myself and I would hazard a guess that it's highly unlikely that definitive answers to these questions will ever be answered with any degree of certainty.

If by AI you mean Turing Machine, then my answer is NO. More than just Turning Machine is needed to get "feel", just like more than Turning Machine is needed to solve Halting or tilling problems.

My suspicion is that our minds/thinking rely on physical processes that cannot be completely translated to a Turning Machine, in other words our minds may rely on a computing model superior to Turning machines.

Also, the raw conscious "feel" of something may have nothing to do with any kind of computing model.

15

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is consciousness a metaphysical experience of reality?

« on: 23/12/2015 17:58:41 »

A few thoughts about AI:

Could an AI computer feel sorrow or regret when faced with an error of it's own making?

Could an AI computer fall in love with another AI computer without being instructed to do so?

Could an AI computer appreciate art to the extent that it could distinguish between beauty and ugliness also without instruction?

And lastly, could an AI computer enjoy the activity of "playing" even though the "playing" had no specific profit or progress as it's goal?

I frankly don't know the answers to these questions myself and I would hazard a guess that it's highly unlikely that definitive answers to these questions will ever be answered with any degree of certainty.

16

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is consciousness a metaphysical experience of reality?

« on: 23/12/2015 17:32:00 »

One will never get wet from a simulation of rain.
To get wet you still need real rain.

Real ants are not required for formication.

My point being, disease & drugs are capable of distorting perceptions of reality,
demonstrating that if it were possible to hack-into someone's nervous-system it would be possible to accurately simulate any experience , (including wetness).

17

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Is psychiatry a pseudoscience?

« on: 22/12/2015 21:56:53 »

... In reality, very few "mental illness" has been linked to genetics, and the causes of "schizophrenia" are still unknown to biologists.

The ideal test to determine if something is genetic is a twin-study ...

... studies have shown that if one identical twin develops schizophrenia, the other has a 48% risk, even if they are raised separately.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/07July/Pages/Study-offers-insights-into-genetics-of-schizophrenia.aspx

The incidence of schizophrenia in the general population is around 1% .

I think that genetic disorders could not explain the complex behavior generated from the unconscious mind.

Genes have created all the organs in all the animals which have ever lived on Earth, why are genes not sufficient to build and run a human brain ?.

18

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Is psychiatry a pseudoscience?

« on: 22/12/2015 16:10:10 »

Psychiatry is a clinical disclipline which deals with the physical manifestations of underlying neurological disturbances, including genetic and biochemical disorders that cause depression and other behavioural abnormalities.

To say "psychiatry is a pseudoscience" is like calling cardiology quackery because you elicit a diagnosis by asking someone if they get chest pain when they exert themselves. It's not, and clinical diagnosis is the mainstay of medical practice. We identify the cause of a person's problems, in almost any sphere of medicine, more than 90% of the time just by talking to them. No stethoscope needed.

You want an example of something that is really pseudoscientific? Look no further than chiropractice, reflexology or, why not go for broke and consult a homeopath?