Zoraptor

China certainly has a very high proportion (relatively speaking, and depending a bit on whether you use 'renewable' or 'low carbon') of energy from renewable sources as a lot of the technology for things like solar and wind power are produced in China- there's a lot of solar powered hot water heating, for example. From memory the only ones ahead of it are a few smaller European nations- almost all Scandanavian- and a couple of others. If talking strictly low carbon rather than renewable then a few others with very high nuclear power supplies are also better like France. Unfortunately the non-renewable stuff China spews out tends to be highly unregulated and very 'bad', though, as it's coal fired.

Churchill also advocated the use of poison gas against people so long as they were brown and had a funny religion (well, "uncivilised tribes" at least- Saddam was not the first person to gas Iraqis, WSC thought dropping mustard on Iraqis from planes was an absolutely fantastic new innovation). He was good as a figurehead leader, but pretty much everything he himself developed like the aforementioned Gallipoli was a dreadful failure of the highest order.

You could argue that, but you would be wrong, at least if you are talking in more than the most basic instinctual level (hoarding/ stealing). "Greed" in the capitalist form is a socially evolved construct related to the development of money and advanced social structures, almost all evidence is that 'default' human behaviour is hieracho-cooperative and based on a "tribal" structure of mutual help and protection rather than a dog-eat-dog struggle of individuals against the world. Greed needs a bunch of socially evolved constructs (typically money, individual ownership, laws to protect said ownership) and a level of economic development above subsistence in order to function. Social evolution does not obey Darwinian rules- "culture" is not coded genetically and like other aspects of "extelligence" is passed on and "mutates" by strictly social means. Ironically, the idea that culture was effectively genetic (~Lamark-ism) was especially popular amongst communists because it meant that if you had good communist parents they would, ipso facto, have good communist children- fortunately people don't really work that way.

EA simply shows no interest in getting their old titles on any download service for some reason. I would have thought that there was a decent market for old Ultimas/ Wing Commanders/ System Shocks/ Dungeon Keepers etc which could be exploited with minimal effort but EA seems to like pretending that they never made anything prior to 2005, let alone 2000.

It's preparation for putting carbon taxes on imports as a type of 'justified' protectionism. Having said that, there's a whole lot of uniformed garbage floating around in the UK, perhaps the most amusing is the thought that adding a carbon tax will help home grown production in agriculture. As almost all stock feed in the UK is imported from places like Brazil it would actually make things worse when compared to places where you stick a cow/ sheep in a paddock and it eats grass 24/7/365/chop/ship/chomp. Perhaps the worst hatchet job of the last few years was when some hack in the Grauniad (same guy maybe) decided New Zealand was not clean and green because CO2 emissions had gone up when, going by Kyoto, that's only half the equation and the amount of CO2 absorbed by new forests had gone up by so much more that we were well ahead of the Kyoto target.

Oh come on, that was clearly aimed at taks' blanket claim that no one has died due to capitalism- clue being that it's the part explicitly quoted in Yuusha's reply. I don't think anyone would argue that history is not replete with examples of countries trying to "save" other ones from "evils" where the cure is as bad as the disease, whether the justification is religion, economic system or whatever, and whether capitalist or not. "We had to destroy the village to save it" springs to mind immediately and exactly as much as the Prague Spring or Afghanistan Pt1, or the Inquisition/ 30 Years War etc for that matter. The US made the rod for its own back on that one by screwing up their coup attempt, and Uribe is big enough to know exactly what the consequences would be of jumping into bed with them in a region where they are cordially loathed by most countries for their attempts to save them from the evils of leftists. Everyone knows that if you're going to try and coup a country at least make a decent go of it (see Honduras) and don't do something from amateur hour, 'cos if you do and fail you're just going to convince all the anti US types they were right all along without gaining anything. In any case Chavez is just following established "Cuban Missile" doctrine, with the difference being that no one thinks he's actually going to do anything militarily apart from some clandestine 3rd party support for Uribe's opponents (just make sure that the "proof" he's been doing so isn't some missiles that disappeared during the last US backed military government, because if one does that one ends up looking silly) and a whole lot of political posturing which is, after all, what Chavez is best at.

Nope. According to Bioware themselves Kotor was their most successful game and that wasn't published by Atari.

Careful there, trigger. I seem to remember distinctly someone who thought CO2 had to be directly warmed to have an insulating effect in that discussion, and I'm fairly sure that person wasn't Finnish.

National Socialism is roughly as socialist as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic. It's a conservative ideology as with similar philosophies espoused by groups such as the KKK, with the supposed socialism being appeals to rank nationalism- it was marketed to the poor and ignorant, who know they could be rich and informed if only [groupname] weren't keeping them down.

If that one model, one of a whole lot more, 'proves' that CC is a hoax then the solar output one with its temperatures diverging upwards of prediction over the past decade or so 'proves' denialism is a hoax too and we can all go home happy. The whole point of the climate change models is that a significant water rise would be likely to occur quickly not over thousands of years, making everything you've said with respect to Bangladesh founded upon nothing more the assumption of rote and repetitious denialism right up to there not being refugees because it will take place over millenia. If the climategate emails show more than pettiness then a whole bunch of groups- major press associations like the AP, Factcheck.org etc etc etc- are in on The Conspiracy too, as pretty much every single claim made by denialists has been shown and accepted as inconsequential (eg Jones' supposed attempts to block papers by "redefining peer review? Both papers involved made it into the IPCC report). I find the blanket assertion that one group of scientists are incompetent dishonest money grubbing charlatans happy to manipulate and fabricate data for the purposes of social engineering while another is a brave group of Mavericks standing up to The Man with support only from dedicated lay men bloggers and small Main St groups like the American Petroleum Institute to be utterly unproven and only slightly more credible than the same claims leveled against scientists by proponents of intelligent design.

Preface note: coupled fluid dynamic GCM's- the 'inaccurate' ones- are not the only climate change models, though it's easy to get that impression from wikipedia and there's a fixation on anthropogenic warming. Even a CC denial site like climatehoax.org has a model for climate change- prediction of fluctuation using solar output. It predicts that as we are ~at a solar minimum this year ought to be ~the coolest of the decade, so we'll find out if that model gets thrown off a cliff soon (it shouldn't, of course, it's historically a pretty good indicator even if all indications are that this year is going to be far warmer than it predicts). No they don't, and you've already written that they don't. A scenario is a macro prediction. You're seriously asking me to prove that the majority of climate scientists believe that little gw global warming is happening? Even the vast majority of CC skeptics accept the warming is happening, including you earlier in the thread. Dunno, but if you disbelieve their expert opinions, as with numbersman the onus is on you to provide reasonable evidence they're wrong beyond mere rote restatement that the models contain errors. If you think a RNG could do as well provide evidence that is true, if it's as self evident as you imply it shouldn't take too long. In any case, even models of 'simple' systems like the solar system tend to throw out things like Mercury crashing into the sun, Earth/Venus orbits crossing, moon crashing into the earth etc so the range of possibilities even in that simple model can be... odd. Ain't a shade of emotion in that. Bangladesh has a high population and a lot of very low altitude land area. If nothing is done and sea levels rise they will get displaced. Much like insurance, there does not have to be certainty over the bad thing happening in order for some action to be sensible. Ideally if the levels rise you have had enough time and preparation to make sure that as few people get displaced as possible. That ain't emotion, it's sense, unless you think potentially millions more refugees in south asia is a good thing. No need to, I'm well able to identify the fine art of insinuation. I've read the supposed 'smoking guns' and they aren't, and just about everyone outside the strict denialist camp agrees that while there's a fair bit of pettiness exhibited that's pretty much it.

Deserves a separate reply since it is an important point. You do realise that is what I have been saying all along, right? That you cannot tell specifics from the models but they can be used for macro predictions? The majority of scientists are of the opinion that they are good enough for it to be sensible to act on the scenarios they generate, not that the scenarios are gospel truth that will occur- any stochastic model inherently generates ranges of possibilities. There is no requirement for absolute accuracy when making predictions, they are a model for generating risk assessment primarily. And as such it is eminently sensible to act on some things at least, like deciding where and how x million Bangladeshis will live if the sea level does rise significantly. And that's why I've used comparisons to things like hurricanes, where the processes for predicting their formation and paths are rather poor on an individual basis yet still people act on those predictions, and pointed out that even in simple systems you get divergence and need for correction. And as I've said multiple times, there's barely anyone who doesn't think the earth is warming, the disputation is over how much it will, whether we've caused it and whether we can do anything about it. And to reiterate, I think the 'solutions' suggested for anthropogenic climate change are silly and won't work.

Though my formal qualifications are in science, the stuff I worked on (I'd stress it was not me alone doing the work) was related to tourism, to predict things like changes in transport and infrastructure needed, so not pure science. No, I'm just pointing out that (1) even really simple models are inaccurate (2) inaccuracy does not, ipso facto, mean that they are useless or every model would be useless (3) while most scientists think the climate models are inaccurate they don't think they are useless and you need something more than antifaith or antibelief to justify your opinion that their expert opinions are wrong. And no, rote restatement of base factors endemic to every model, complex or simple, does not count as evidence. Sheesh, even with something as 'simple' as the solar system model they correct for variations from observation and as more and better data becomes available. Glaciation "to cover with ice or glaciers; to affect with glaciers" can of course refer to the micro (single glacier) or macro (large scale area/ global/ ~ice age) process. I simply answered referring to as many variations as possible as I knew if I left one out that would be the one you "really" meant. I have faith and belief that they are, so do not need to provide evidence from those pesky science type fellows with their lieberal biases and need to transfer wealth massively to the third world. Alternatively, the evidence was already posted in the thread showing that the great majority of monitored glaciers are either ~static, or retreating; by taks of all people, who (questionable knowledge of statistical sampling aside) had the sense to make the credible argument that the retreat is natural rather than reiterating rote denial of it happening at all and demanding links for things which had already been provided pages ago or can be found by 2 seconds on google.

Probably- in a lot of cases they may need source to get it 100% compatible and in some cases problems may be quite obscure- though it doesn't explain why some things aren't there (XCOM is available on every (?) digital distributor except GOG using dosbox for its compatibility) and some things seem to just be the publisher, I don't think they have any EA games on there despite it being a natural home for a lot of the old Origin games.

Really, the communist government of China is roughly as Communist as that of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic. ie it isn't. Totalitarian, for sure, it was communist in the past and the state retains a lot of controls but otherwise it's basically standard capitalism with private ownership, stock markets etc. They just haven't got around to rebranding the Communist out of their name yet.

Hm, perhaps a misunderstanding of 'design'? The design (intention) of a model is to try and take what is known ('the past') to create a model which is both accurate to the past, and predicts accurately into the future. It does not have to have the intended purpose of scenario generation though in most cases that is useful. As a simple example if you model the moon/ earth/ sun system your purpose is pretty much solely to predict exactly what will happen (for fishing charts, tidal prediction, eclipses etc which I think you'd agree are useful) and in the medium term all the "variables" (relative masses, orbital position and velocity) are set and not able to be influenced. Practically speaking the models are always designed (fabricated) imperfectly ("simplified") as you can never take all variables into account, barring pure mathematical models, and are almost always probability and range based ("we predict that at time X the moon/ earth/ sun will be in these relative positions, assuming there are no extraordinary influences and with an expected error of Z, and after date A we cannot accurately predict associated phenomenon B"). That is what I've being saying all along, inaccuracies in modeling are inherent but do not in and of themselves disprove the model. I do know what I am talking about though I am perhaps not expressing it well, I've worked on complex models on and off over the past ten years (I'd stress they are population based, NOT climate or weather). The general scientific concensus is that the models are imperfect/ need refinement but should be acted on and are not absurd, and that there is a general trend of little g global little w warming is almost uncontested. You are, of course, welcome to ignore said scientific concensus and you may even be found retrospectively correct to do so, but I'm afraid rote restatement doesn't make your opinion fact no matter how strident your belief. And no, I'm not suggesting you're just another case of someone disagreeing with scientists to further an agenda as I find the evidence inconclusive. No. It's just more evidence that you don't understand models. Whether any given glacier is gaining or losing mass is a micro scale event better predicted accurately at the local level. If you're talking glaciation on the macro scale you are either asking whether glaciers as a collective are losing mass and whether that agrees with the model (yes, and it does), or to predict large glaciation events, which is a separate model. It's obvious you were talking micro due to your other example, hurricanes, so you're just generating non sequitors, or being facetious to give the impression that you know more than you actually do.

Apparently GG's download range is actually the largest (1400+) of all digital distributors. That's according to their advertising, so take with salt. As for which is best it really depends on what is wanted. Steam has the best integration and largest community and generally has the most, best deals, does things which may either annoy or be greatly appreciated like automatically apply patches (saves time but may nuke save games half way through a game and you often cannot play until the patch is applied, patches tend to arrive later than retail) and has certain DRM/ monitoring aspects that some dislike a great deal and can lead to occasional annoyances like not being able to play your games if you cannot contact the Steam servers. Impulse is client based and its selection is limited, though in the US this is considerably less. Unlike Steam you do not need the client running to play, only to install and to update certain games. None of Gamersgate, GOG or D2D use a client which is nice if you don't like them, and their service is perhaps closest to a retail experience. GG has no DRM unless publisher mandated if that's a consideration, GOG has none on any title period. If you buy limited activation software GG is highly advised as they guarantee to get you new activations if necessary. There are other considerations if outside the US like the degree of regional pricing and availability, but since you're in the US they're irrelevant.

That's incorrect, though it's only partly germane to the discussion at hand. To take an extreme example, things like models of the universe ('big bang'/ 'big crunch'/ 'big bounce') are designed to replicate what has actually happened as exactly as possible and to predict 'exactly' what will happen in the future, and have no other purpose- obviously in that case the time scale is such that it's only of interest from a "pure" science basis and cannot be used for making any decisions. I suppose it's possible that you don't realise the bias in your thinking, which is where this misunderstanding comes from. I'm going to try, one last time. I'm losing interest fast. We have to extrapolate for the purposes of preparing for problems- it's the same principle as issuing hurricane warnings even if you're not sure where, or if, the hurricane will actually hit land and at what intensity. If the sea level or temperature is going to rise it is useful to predict in advance so preparations can be made, I think the reasons for this are obvious. The only way to do this is to model it. Models of complex systems are by definition imperfect as they rely on observations about past and present to predict the future and are susceptible to 'butterfly effects' and one off occurrences. This does not mean that you throw the baby out with the bathwater and decide to ignore them. Nor does it imply that you have to have some sort of way to 'fix' things to get an 'ideal' solution for them to be useful. All it implies is that acting on the models you have now to ameliorate predicted problems in the future is sensible and is exactly what gets done for all sorts of imperfect models from predicting bush fire paths and severity to weather prediction to population changes to disease spread to militaries having contingencies in case of the US nuking Russia and vice versa. Risk management essentially. Ultimately the 'proof' for every single complex model can only be found by time and refinement, and even then it will always be a best guess prediction when it comes to specifics. I'm afraid you just don't understand complex systems modeling, which is fair enough as it is, heh, a complex subject. Le sigh. Macro models of complex systems do not have to predict on the micro level- that is perhaps the single biggest tenet of complex system modeling since chaos theory was formulated.

Can't say I agree, if someone's popular enough to get legitimately elected multiple times then good on them I say, no matter whether I like the person/ their politics or not.

Ho hum. Perhaps if you weren't so busy trying to build a narrative (were I a less generous soul I might use the term strawman) to actually read what I wrote and not so eager to start the ad homs you might consider... (1) Your reading comprehension has let you down. I spoke of solutions to getting conclusive data on whether climate change is 'real' and that there is no way to do this except time and hindsight. If the denialists turn out to be right my cryogenically frozen head will be more than happy to admit as such and if the change avowers are right my head will happily acknowledge that too- in the hundred or so years it will take to get actual proof. Until that time we have to extrapolate and model, much as with anything proof only becomes available when it actually happens. (2) There's a clue your reading comprehension was off, you might remember that I've already said, in this very thread, that I don't think there is a solution to climate change and that if climate change is occurring then the poor bastards who are going to be effected are stuffed and nothing anyone can come up with can stop it. (3) If I were the type of zealot who gets riled at such things I would not bring it up, repeatedly, myself. Basically, you've assumed that I've written what you wanted me to have written, not what I actually wrote.

Yes, when it's Chavez doing so it's evidence he's a dictator (and thus the attempted US backed coup against him was an act of attempted liberation rather than a blatant attempt to secure a tame despot oversees Venezuela's oil and gigantic tar oil reserves) but strangely enough when it's his- coincidently- rabidly pro US next door neighbour Mr Uribe in Colombia doing exactly the same thing then apparently that simply reflects the will of the Colombian people.

That is not climate change at all. It is the action and effect of man destroying a glacier, locally, and by very specific actions. It has nothing to do with manmade carbon emissions causing runaway effects or all that crap. Please. As you well know, climate change isn't just about CO2 much as it isn't just about global warming, carbon emission alone is a pure reductionist argument which simply provides an easy windmill to tip at. You'd have a difficult time coming up with reasons why cutting down all the trees -> historic drought != man made climate change. It ain't global climate change for sure (though the effected area of east Africa is huge), but then I think we've already established that some sort of globally consistent model is not really feasible. No, I think it's a barrier of intellectual dishonesty, rather. Those aren't climate changes but weather changes. Again, to establish that they are abnormal climate variations, we would need extensive data, which for the most part, isn't available. Long to medium term changes in temperature and wind patterns are, by definition, changes in climate. Short term is weather. The question is at what point you accept that the changes in weather represent a change in climate- generally if it's prolonged enough to have large effects then it is a climate change, but it is fundamentally a process that can only be identified in retrospect. "We don't have enough data"- while a technically fair statement- is specious as the only way to get 'sufficient' data is to (1) build a time machine to get readings from the past or (2) wait a few centuries/ decades to get the data. Neither of which is a sensible solution now. As such, to paraphrase the great philosopher Donald Rumsfeld; you have to make do with the data you have, not the data you'd like to have.

OK, so the change in climate caused by man's deforestation for farming is not evidence for a change in climate caused by man, hmm? I don't have a degree in philosophy but I think I can spot a logical fallacy there. And yes, I used 'climate change' not 'global warming'. Language barrier? Because warming and changes in wind pattern are climate changes in any and all definitions. If the ice at the edges melts at an accelerated rate mass will eventually be lost in the centres too, primarily because of increased rate of drop (less friction from the 'tail') and increased drop from the terminal face. An accumulation of mass at the tops of glaciers leads to greater speed of the glaciers ('gravity') which usually leads to glacier growth (in some cases it may not, but that's hardly good news as in that case the temperatures at its terminal face must have increased enough to balance out the speed increase). If it did not we would have ended up with the earth being a ball of ice millions of years ago. To put it another way, if Antarctica always accumulates ice for the past 40 million years then a 1mm annual accumulation would see the ice cap there being no less than 40 km (!) high. OK, physics lesson. CO2 is one carbon atom bonded covalently to two oxygen atoms. One of the basic physical principals is that this type of bond absorbs light in the infrared region of the spectrum ('heat'), the bond vibrates and releases the energy as slightly longer wavelength IR. This is how spectrophotometers and such work in chemical analysis. The emitted IR will, on average, go into space (~<50%) or return to earth (~>50). Without the CO2 (/water /methane /..) 100% goes into space. This is obviously a simplification, but the basic science is, well, basic and irrefutable. May as well argue that the earth is flat as argue that CO2 does not cause warming. The kinetic energy of the CO2 itself does not does not does not need to increase. All that is required is for the re emitted photon to hit the earth/ ocean or something else that will absorb it. Nobody bothers proving this for the same reason nobody bothers 'proving' gravity, anyone with understanding knows that that is how it works and proving it all the time is literal def trivial. Frankly there's a lot more I can go into, though I won't as things like sea ice, as I already said, are largely irrelevant (or perhaps considerably less significant than other probable effects like drought) as they won't raise sea levels as the ice is already floating. As numbersman said, the thermal expansion is likely- and hopefully because if we get lots of rise due to ice melt we're in real trouble- more important.

True, but totally irrelevant. Unless the debate has devolved to simply restating scientific principles, in which case climate change people win by default as more CO2 and methane= warming by basic scientific principle. (1) The vast majority of monitored glaciers are either static or receding. (2) Receding is the same as melting for all practical purposes (yes, some can be receding but gaining mass and vice versa, but in the long term if a glacier gains mass it advances, if it loses mass it recedes). (3) What you should have done is combine it with c as "The reasons for that may not be anthropogenic but a progression of the natural inter glacial warming cycle" which is pretty much the only credible defence available. (1) Historic drought is not evidence of climate change? (2) How do changes in land use at the bottom effect snow/ice at the top? (3) Kenya has warmed. Antarctica will 'always' gain mass in its center (and shed it on its edges), and has done since it reached the pole. Ice shelfs on both sides of it are now thought to be melting. Also, again, changes in wind pattern and warming not evidence of climate change? No it isn't, it's losing it. OK, there's a roughly 5% chance that it may very marginally be gaining mass. Of course, the reverse is that there's a 5% chance it's losing it at a rate of near 100 km^3 a year too... No it isn't. The only relevant questions are (1) Are we causing climate change? (2) Is there anything we can do about it? (3) What will its effects be? The warming part itself is pretty indisputable.

On that note, could I trouble one of you chaps to buy me an uncensored version of L4D2? DO NOT. Your uncensored L4D2 will magically become a censored one even if someone with the uncensored version gifts you it. Similarly a gifted Steam copy of any banned game will not work in Australia unless you can get a non Australian IP to activate it on (and you will run the risk of getting your account banned if caught). It isn't Steam's fault, it's just that they are (technically) distributing an unrated game if they allow it and would be liable for prosecution if they did so.