Zoraptor

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.

It's also illegal to import unrated (or more technically, 'refused classification') items. Not that anyone is likely to be caught unless stupid or unlucky but the penalties can be quite severe, IIRC, especially if you do so for distribution purposes.

Yes. So long as it's the "right people" doing the threatening/ kidnapping/ killing and the "right people" on the receiving end it has always been totally fine.

An HIV positive mother has HIV negative children- in the vast majority of cases HIV is transmitted during and after birth rather than in the womb. This is particularly tragic because you can actually stop 99.9% of mother-child transmissions very cheaply and very easily.

No, it isn't as awkward.

Actually, yes I do. IR absorbtion and reradiation is a well understood phenomenon. It is literally impossible to accurately model the earth's climate- it's a fundamentally Chaotic system. Hundreds of years of weather forecasting and they still regularly get it wrong, and that's a relatively simple system with truly gigantic amounts of available data and the ability to monitor in real time. All you can do is make approximations and adjust as and when more data arrives. For long term climate prediction there is basically a century worth of hard data with a few points being able to be extrapolated from other stuff (ice cores, tree ring systems etc) in a system in which changes are measured, one hopes, in the minimum of decades. If you wait for 'proof' you will never, ever, ever, ever.. ever stop waiting. Sea level rises, desertification, more extreme short term climatic events, increased competition for water resources etc are the most likely. Some things like sea level changes are very easy to calculate; if a given volume of non-floating ice melts it will generate around 90% of its volume in water, while other things are inherently more questionable (if permafrost melts will it release huge amounts of methane and CO2 and have an 'exponential' heating effect? Theoretically the gas release is extremely likely, at least). No doubt there will be increases in rainfall and productivity in some places but they are unlikely to balance out- if for no other reason than the earth having a lot less earth at higher latitudes. I personally doubt most of the apocalyptic scenarios, we've had far greater levels of CO2 previously and the planet hasn't gone Venus and the seas haven't died off permanently, but that isn't really the point. It only takes a few small changes, or changes in a few important places, and suddenly you have a lot of people with no food and or water and or sitting up to their necks in sea water- and potentially little cheap and easy energy sources either- and that will make the planet a very unfriendly place. As it happens I think most of the preventative measures are silly insofar as they are meant to prevent changes, if the theories are sound it's far too late to do much. It is eminently sensible to move away from oil though, as the easily extractable reserves will run out and that will cause enormous problems if something isn't done to mitigate it- not least because it will mean bye bye to cheap plastics as well as cheap, convenient power. And the facts have to be faced that even if climate change is bunk we cannot continue to grow indefinitely in population and energy use as if the earth has unlimited resources when it obviously doesn't.

I doubt anyone, even the most extreme climate change advocates would dispute that. I like the smoking analogy for a couple of reasons- you can isolate compounds from tobacco and show that they are toxic/ carcinogenic, and you can isolate chemicals in the atmosphere and show that they do have an insulating effect, so the basic science is sound in each case. At the same time there will always be some smokers who never seem to get effected and live to a ripe old age, and some places on earth seem to get different effects (ie cooler, wetter) to what is thought of as standard (hotter, drier) in the 'accepted' climate change model. The difference being that most people now accept that smoking will significantly increase (layman: cause) cancer even if there are exceptions, but people tend to jump on any exception to the global warming effect as 'proof' that it's unfounded as a whole. And that is largely because PR monkeys and scientifically ignorant or naive pundits tend to control the debate. I don't agree with attempts to silence dissent or massage data at all, but I do understand why it is done in a climate (haha) where every single exception or variation is jumped on as proof that climate change as a whole is bunk.

To clarify, floating ice doesn't matter much, from a water level perspective at least, though there are potential effects on things like currents- it's already displacing water so the arctic ice itself shrinking has little effect. The big problem is when the melting starts over land- such as the gigantic glacier which is Greenland- because that has an exponential type rate of increase, the more ice melts the quicker the remainder melts. The really big problem with climate change is a fundamental one of when the Philosophy of Science clashes with PR and public. The problem being that it is impossible to prove positives with science, even something as simple as a DNA test doesn't 'prove' identity (testimony in court tends to say things like 'one billion times more likely to be from X than a random person', and it can prove it wasn't someone). Unlike in court however, these limitations tend to be used to say things like "climate change is just a theory" or "there's no conclusive proof smoking causes cancer" in order to justify doing nothing. In some cases it's getting to the level of saying that there shouldn't be safety railings on high structures because it's the theory of gravity and it hasn't been conclusively proven that every time someone 'falls' off a height they inevitably drop- which, scientifically speaking, is actually true. That isn't the case with climate change, it's far more complex than basic physics because the earth is far more complex, though the basic science for the theory is 'proven' and there are plenty of examples of significant environmental change on a more local level that have been effected by man. And it's eminently sensible to be precautionary about such things when the consequences are so potentially huge. I really wish those in charge of the answers didn't appear to be showing such an obsession with naked tax grubbing and stupidities like Emission Trading Schemes, which will try to smash the square peg of 'capitalism'- and not even proper capitalism- into the round hole of environmentalism, though.

The dates are all over the place, the retailers have probably been given a vague Q2 2010 timeframe. I've seen dates from late March to June depending on what source you check.

Don't know much about the artillery- though I was under the impression that by far the most common were the 'old' Napoleons and rifled pieces rather than modern types- but neither Monitor nor the Virginia were anywhere near as revolutionary as is made out in the US as the French (La Gloire) and the British (HMS Warrior) had already produced 'proper' ironclads prior to either.

Globally the 'historical outcome' ACW was almost totally irrelevant as it was almost entirely internal and its net result was a return to the pre 1860 default USA. Even the slavery aspect wasn't really much of a (global) factor as that was almost entirely an internal institution by that time. On the other hand, had the Confederates won it would have been very highly significant and would have had enormous repercussions to this day, so it really depends on how you look at it.

Yeah, that John Riccitiello chap (EA) must be really peeved at that John Riccitiello chap (Elevation Partners) for bundling the two studies together... Yes, they are the same person.

It was from the Beeb, so... From memory, HIV (and population growth problems, like famine) were the largest negative factors.

Africa overall actually has a lower standard of living now than it had fifty years ago.

That's flat out wrong. Even leaving aside storming the army barracks in Barcelona against opposition from genuine (albeit also genuinely inept) 'real' soldiers various anarchist columns seized much of SW Spain in the first few weeks of the war. It's hardly their fault that the main republican government spent most of the rest of the war starving them of resources and trying to assimilate them into their (almost always genuinely inept) military ranks, or outright trying to suppress them. There's also fairly decent evidence of the communists tipping the nationalists off to attacks involving anarchist formations.

~two months to 1 million+, ie 1 million sales for 2006 only, return for 2006-7 well above expectations (around 65% above; and if my German ain't letting me down, Google and YahooT seem to agree though). And yeah, Volo, I can link it though it's in German since it's in a report by BVT, the people who funded the game, who are German. I'm a lot less confident about the 3.25 million figure being accurate as it was based on inference, but I implied as much both by me being surprised and using apparently. Now Volo, perhaps some evidence from you that NWN1>2? Have no fear, gentle readers, I will not be holding my breath.

On the main issue, I wouldn't rule out WOTC being involved- they could have got snarky about the modules technically being sublicencing of the D&D licence to EA rather than subcontracting to Bioware now that BW is no longer independent. Oh yeah, apparently NWN2 sold more than NWN1 (I was rather surprised, as much as NWN2 is IMO far superior to NWN1 in every way I never thought it was reflected in sales). NWN1+exps ~3million, NWN2 ~3.25million- and that even excluded SOZ.

Yes, the problem is that, if you have day 1 DLC and especially if you have it ameliorating an 'artificial' limitation (ie inventory space) then it does look like it has (1) been chopped off the main game and (2) the 'artificial' limitation is there specifically to drive people to pay for its removal- whether or not that is really the case. And that perception is most definitively not limited to vocal bioh8ors.

I'm another in the wait for the GOTY camp. Fallout 3 GOTY is about 40% of the purchase price if you bought the game and DLC separately, here, and no doubt DAO will be the same. And when it comes right down to it I've got a ton more games to play than I have time to play them, no patience for such things MS (or Bioware) points and certainly no sympathy for shameless in game money grubbing.