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Started by Shadow.97, August 06, 2016, 11:39 AM

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humbert

Quote from: scarface on March 15, 2017, 01:35 AM
Trumpcare vs. Obamacare: Apocalypse Foretold

I totally agree. My lady has medical insurance through Obamacare. We pay $107 a month. Without Obamacare the bill will rise to probably over $700, and I can't afford that.

The misinformation that exists over the Affordable Care Act is unbelievable. And of course rich fatcats who are covered by companies they own are vehemently opposed to paying taxes to cover the rest of us. One more example of that fact that 1% of the people own 99% of everything.

scarface

Tonight, I stumbled upon an excellent article about Global Warming.
Since humbert is a bit climato-sceptic, maybe he'll be eager to react to this article. And the other users of the forum can also speak in this topic.



If we assume global warming is a hoax, what should we expect to see? By Phil Plait.


I will ask you to indulge me for a moment in a thought experiment. It’s not hard, and it leads to a startlingly simple yet powerful conclusion, one I think you may find both important and terribly useful.

Still, it starts with a big ask, so forgive me. And that is: Let’s make an assumption, one you’ve heard many times before. Let’s say that global warming is a hoax.

I know, I know. But go with this, here. So, yes, let’s say that climate change deniers â€"people like House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith, Senator James Inhofe, and even Donald Trump himselfâ€" are right. Whatever the reasons (Chinese hoax, climatologist cabal clamoring colossal cash, carbon dioxide isn’t a powerful greenhouse gas, or just a liberal conspiracy), let’s say that the Earth is not warming up.

In that case, the temperatures we see today on average should be much like the ones we saw, say, 20 years ago. Or 50. Sure, you’d see fluctuations. In a given spot on a given day the temperature in 1968 might have been a degree warmer than it was in 1974, or three degrees cooler than in 2010. But what you’d expect is that over time, a graph showing the temperature would be pretty much flat, with lots of short-term spikes up and down.

Now, statistically speaking, you expect some records to be broken every now and again. Over time, every few years for a given day you’d get a record high, and every few years a record low. The details will change from place to place and time to time, but again, if the average temperature trend is flat, unchanging, then you would expect to see just as many record cold days as record warm days. There might be small deviations, like, say, a handful of more cool than warm days, but the difference would be very small depending on how many days you look at.

It’s like flipping a coin. On average, you should get a 50/50 split between heads and tails. But if you flip it 10 times, say, you wouldn’t be shocked to see seven heads and three tails. But if you flip it a thousand times, you’d really expect to see a very even split. Seeing 700 heads and 300 tails would be truly extraordinary.

So, if we remind ourselves of our basic assumption â€"global warming isn’t realâ€" then we expect there to be as many record high days as there are record lows. Simple statistics.

So, what do we see?

Guy Walton, a meteorologist in Georgia, took a look at the data from the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. Whenever a weather station in the US breaks a record, high or low, it’s catalogued (Walton has more info on this at the link above). He found something astonishing: For February 2017, the number of record highs across the US recorded was 6,201.

The number of record lows? 128.

That’s a ratio of over 48:1. In just one month.

Again, if temperatures were flat over time, and record highs and lows were random fluctuations, you’d expect a ratio much closer to 1:1. In other words, out of 6329 records set in total, you’d expect there to be about 3165 record highs, and 3165 record lows.

For fans of statistics, with a total of 6329 records broken, one standard deviation is the square root of that, or about 80. So, sure, something like 3265 highs and 3064 lows wouldn’t be too unusual. If you start to see more of an imbalance than that, it would be weird.

Seeing 6201 record highs to 128 lows is very, very, very weird. Like, zero chance of that happening by accident.

Now, Phil, I can hear you thinking, that’s just for the US (2% of the planet) over one month. And you’ve told us before that weather isn’t climate; weather is what you expect now, climate is what you expect over long periods of time. So, maybe this is a fluke?

Walton notes that, if you look at records in the US going back to the 1920s, the six highest ratios of record highs to lows all occur since the 1990s. Huh.

And making this more global, a pair of Australian scientists looked at their country’s data, and found that their ratios were about even...until the 1960s. After that, highs always outnumber lows. From 2000-2014, record highs outnumbered lows there by 12:1.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research collated data from 1800 stations across the US and binned the data by decade â€" by decade, which is a huge sample; any deviation from a 1:1 ratio would be extraordinary over that timescale.

They found this:


Huh. Not only are there more record highs than lows, the ratio between the two is getting higher with time.

So, looking back at our initial assumption â€" the Earth isn’t warming, and temperatures are flatâ€" there’s a conclusion these data are screaming at us: That assumption is completely and utterly wrong.

And of course, all the evidence backs this up. All of it. Earth’s temperature is increasing. That’s because of the 40 billion tons of extra carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere every year (the amount we will see this year, expected to top 410 parts per million, has never been seen before in history as long as humans have walked the Earth). This CO2 allows sunlight to warm the Earth, but prevents all of it from escaping so that a little bit of extra heat remains behind, and that’s warming our planet.

Over time, we’re getting hotter. 2014 was a record hot year, beaten by 2015, itself beaten by 2016. In fact, 15 of the 16 hottest years ever recorded have been from 2001 â€" 2016. That’s exactly what you’d expect if we were getting warmer, and that means our initial assumption of hoaxery was dead wrong.

The science on this is so basic, the evidence of this so overwhelming, that “not a single national science academy disputes or denies the scientific consensus around human-caused climate change”, and also the overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate do, too.

Maybe you should listen to them, and not politicians who seem ideologically opposed to the science.

Or, you could flip a coin. But if it comes up science dozens of times more often than anti-science, well â€"and forgive me if I sound like a broken recordâ€" the conclusion is obvious.

scarface

Tonight, I'm going to introduce you a Palestinian scholar and tomorrow we'll talk about his latest book.



Here is an interview with Waleed Al-Husseini:
I was born in Qalqilya, West Bank, in 1989, in a pious Muslim family and a conservative society. As a teenager, when I was first in my class in Islamic teaching, I had the chance to reflect upon Islam.

Thanks to my curiosity, and above all, thanks to the tolerance of my parents, I discovered the trickery of this religion, used to dominate society and keep it in ignorance. After much research and historical and philosophical readings, I became convinced of the need to leave Islam. But by announcing my atheism, I found myself faced with the hostility of all society - except my family - and the Palestinian authorities.

I was arrested and imprisoned for more than ten months, marked by physical and psychological torture. During my trial by a court martial, I fled to Jordan, and I applied for political asylum to France where I arrived in 2012, thinking to take refuge in a haven of peace and in the capital of Enlightenment and Secularism.

Unfortunately, I discovered a rampant Islamization, a growing obscurantism under the effect of radicalization, and a secularism in danger. I then created, along with several other activists, the Council of Ex-Muslims of France (CEMF). My first book, Blasphemer, the prisons of Allah (Grasset 2015), released on the day of the attack against Charlie Hebdo, details all these adventures. Besides, the title of the book is inspired by the indictment that allowed the Palestinian Authority to persecute me.

humbert

Being a non-believer myself, I can understand Waleed Al-Husseini's frustration when religious authorities try to forcibly impose their ways on everyone else. In my case, however, I know that making these people listen to reason is next to impossible. This is why when it comes to religion, I keep to myself and make every effort to respect everyone else as long as they do the same.

If Waleed lived in Iran, Saudi Arabia or under the Taliban, I can understand being jailed for being an atheist. But in Palestine? Who checks if you visit the mosque or pray 5 times a day? Add to this the fact that Palestine is occupied by Israel.

As for France being victimized by "rampant Islamization", forget it. France's constitution mandates securlarism. Marine LePen - who is adamantly anti-Islamic - stands a chance of being France's next president. They even tried to ban the burkini, which I for one believe is a stupid idea.

Shadow.97


scarface

#65
Tonight, I’m going to show you a shocking video of hens kept in battery cages. These hen’s eggs and the meat are sold to consumers via retailers like Carrefour with the Lustucru Frais brand, or fast foods like Mc donalds. This video was filmed by L214, an association for animal welfare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvhOavlS1s0

After watching thes images, Maher must be wondering if that’s the reason why there is no mcdonalds in Palestine. And the fact that industrial farming and intensive factory-based livestock raising are not common over there may explain why there is no fast-food: it’s not possible for them to buy meat from sick hens, eggs infested by fleas and therefore sell cheap food.

humbert

@Shadow ->  In your post I don't understand the correlation between the pictures shown in your post.

@Scarface, et al -> I couldn't watch the video you posted. Abuse of defenseless animals - human or otherwise - is too revolting for me. I look forward to the day the enslavement of non-human animals will end forever.

P.S. - Remember humans are animals too, hence the term "non-human animals"

Shadow.97

Quote from: humbert on June 01, 2017, 06:20 AM
@Shadow ->  In your post I don't understand the correlation between the pictures shown in your post.

@Scarface, et al -> I couldn't watch the video you posted. Abuse of defenseless animals - human or otherwise - is too revolting for me. I look forward to the day the enslavement of non-human animals will end forever.

P.S. - Remember humans are animals too, hence the term "non-human animals"
Congratulations Macron french president
(Congrats) (Macaron) (Baguette - typically french) (Trump, President)

Vasudev

Quote from: humbert on June 01, 2017, 06:20 AM
@Shadow ->  In your post I don't understand the correlation between the pictures shown in your post.

@Scarface, et al -> I couldn't watch the video you posted. Abuse of defenseless animals - human or otherwise - is too revolting for me. I look forward to the day the enslavement of non-human animals will end forever.

P.S. - Remember humans are animals too, hence the term "non-human animals"
I don't like harming animals too.

humbert

Quote from: Shadow.97 on June 01, 2017, 08:48 AM
Congratulations Macron french president
(Congrats) (Macaron) (Baguette - typically french) (Trump, President)

Gee Shadow, couldn't you have chosen a better example for president than this bastard Trump?