Neurath

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Well, actually, it is an indicator (the plurality of scientists that is). It's not a guarantee, but it's certainly an indicator of truth (however defined)

As has been noted before on this thread, science is not, and should not be, a democracy.

Many of the greatest scientific discoveries have been made in the face of sustained hostility from the "consensus".

In the mid-1930s, a pamphlet called "100 Authors Against Einstein" dismissed as absurd the Theory of Relativity on which we now depend for so many things.

Alfred Wegener had to endure decades of abuse and vilification from the mainstream "consensus" of earth physics before the reality of his tectonic plate theory was finally established. In fact, he had to wait so long that he died long before his theory was finally accepted.

Does that mean there is no place for consensus in science?

The moon is not made of cheese, the earth is not flat, and lightning may strike the same place twice. We believe these claims to be true, yet it is unlikely that we have personally confirmed each of them.

The more difficult things become, the more complex and chaotic, the more we would expect views to differ, and a general "consensus" to weaken.

Although the climate is perhaps the most complex and chaotic phenomenon we can observe, the relentless agit-prop informs us that 97% of scientists agree on a single interpretation of how climate is driven. The only people who can routinely achieve figures like that are the Kim family of the DPRK at election time.

The manufacturing of the 97% figure is an attempt to turn science into a numbers game, a popularity contest, a fact-free zone where the Green/Left feels much more comfortable than in debating the actual science, with its inconvenient data and observations.

Nothing here that I've not already said (apart from the wacky history about relativity) - and in a far more articulate and concise fashion too I might add.

"Of course consensuses resolve and dissolve in the normal course of science, but that in itself is no argument against the truth of a current consensus position. The formation of a different scientific consensus is however.Seems there's pretty much a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. Lot's of interesting dissent too - as there is within any scientific consensus."

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There are still a plurality of scientists and millions of people who believe,

Which is no indicator that what they believe is true. In Nazi Germany, millions of people and lots of scientists believed in the master race theory- were they correct?????

Well, actually, it is an indicator (the plurality of scientists that is). It's not a guarantee, but it's certainly an indicator of truth (however defined). If it wasn't an indicator there simply would be no such thing as science or the sciences - not just with regard to climate science, but with regard to any and all areas of scientific activity. Short of having a god's eye view of things - something I understand some people have, or at least think they have - consensus within a relevant scientific discipline is the best indicator of where truth or approximately truth might be. After all, what are the alternatives - drunk uncle McDermott's lunatic ramblings? Of course consensuses resolve and dissolve in the normal course of science, but that in itself is no argument against the truth of a current consensus position. The formation of a different scientific consensus is however. Seems there's pretty much a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. Lot's of interesting dissent too - as there is within any scientific consensus.

The greatest contribution to global warming? The gigatons of bilious hot air being generated by the misinformed 'debate' about it.

I think you'll find that the 'scientific consensus' is confined to those scientists for whom the 'climate change crisis' pays the mortgage, and hansomely.

It's a gravy train, and a very profitable one for those who continue to promote it. The scientists who disagree with the whole concept of AGW are swiftly marginalised and de-funded before they can rock the boat. They end up disagreeing from the sidelines, ignored by the MSM and unheard by the gullible politicians whose ears are being bent by the Grima Wormtongues from the AGW sect. There's far too much money at stake to allow any serious dissent to be heard.

It's almost exactly the same modus operandum as deployed by 'Public Health' in their pursuit of their neo-puritan ideology.

And the end result is the same; a gradual, salami-slice reduction in your liberties, giving those who rule over you ever more control of your day-to-day life and lifestyle. Your choices are being limited more and more, all in the name of 'AGW' and 'Public Health'. And the rallying cry of both is: "Think of the cheeldren!"

Lying, blackmailing charlatans, all. The sooner they are consigned to the dustbin of history, the better it will be for everyone.

You have gone with the Upton Sinclair:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it". A species of what in olden times, when logic was an idol of the tribe, was called the genetic fallacy.

Be that as it may, I will raise you and, referring directly to post, go with Jonathan Swift:

"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired..."

And so, I'll do no such thing.

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It's caused by the marginalisation of men in western society.
No access to women, no work, no future, drives them crazy.

Actually I agree that this has some validity, but radical Islam gives some losers an excuse to strike at society.

Sure, but if radical Islam didn't exist, they would do it in the name of black power, aryan purity or some other nutty reason.

Not having access to sex or purpose, drives them down violent paths.

Interesting. Do you think one could get by with sex but no purpose? Empirical evidence from Bangkok suggests it's a real possibility.

Anyway, I do like the sexual angle and would suggest purposeful sex as a global panacea for extremism and wickedness. Wilhelm Reich rides again!

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Naomi Klein (who we have discussed before) has finally broken the last taboo, which climate activists have been struggling to avoid uttering over the years.
Yes, if you disagree with the UN on climate matters, you are a racist -- and more, you are a white supremacist.

"Thinly veiled notions of racial superiority have informed every aspect of the non-response to climate change so far. Racism is what has made it possible to systematically look away from the climate threat for more than two decades.
What would governments do if black and brown lives counted as much as white lives?"

These rage-filled people desperately try to portray themselves as reasonable people with the future health of the planet as their only concern, but they can't help the hairy heel slipping out from time to time and revealing their true motivation.
Klein knows very little about people and even less about science, but cannot be ignored given the extreme length of the conga line of emotionally immature dimwits who regard her as some kind of a sage, and even buy her books.

Ok Rick, you found one person who's shrill. You tried to find that person, and you did, congratulations. There are still a plurality of scientists and millions of people who believe, as I do, that burning fossil fuels are a contributing factor to GW. Even if it weren't a contributing factor, it would still be good to lessen burning fossil fuels, if only to render cities less awful places to reside.

There are still a plurality of scientists and millions of people who believe,

Which is no indicator that what they believe is true. In Nazi Germany, millions of people and lots of scientists believed in the master race theory- were they correct?????

Well, actually, it is an indicator (the plurality of scientists that is). It's not a guarantee, but it's certainly an indicator of truth (however defined). If it wasn't an indicator there simply would be no such thing as science or the sciences - not just with regard to climate science, but with regard to any and all areas of scientific activity. Short of having a god's eye view of things - something I understand some people have, or at least think they have - consensus within a relevant scientific discipline is the best indicator of where truth or approximately truth might be. After all, what are the alternatives - drunk uncle McDermott's lunatic ramblings? Of course consensuses resolve and dissolve in the normal course of science, but that in itself is no argument against the truth of a current consensus position. The formation of a different scientific consensus is however. Seems there's pretty much a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. Lot's of interesting dissent too - as there is within any scientific consensus.

The greatest contribution to global warming? The gigatons of bilious hot air being generated by the misinformed 'debate' about it.

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Is Colin Powell and all the enraged con's from Republican party who first mentioned WMD.
Blair played role of voice of his master. Nothing more. I am not denying role played by UK and all dictatorial Arab regimes who participated too.

LIke Obama, Tony Blair carried the hopes of a nation. He may have been genuine when he took office but a blowtorch to the testicles sends a powerful message... http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=2760

'*** The former Prime Minister of the UK is earning an estimated $5 million per year from private business ventures connected to his role in the illegal wars in the Middle East -- particularly the invasion and conquest of Iraq and Afghanistan. The huge personal fortune which he now enjoys is his reward for years of service to American's imperial strategy, and to Israel through major progress in advancing the Zionist cause. It's a bounty of corruption, war crimes and murder. ***

Whoever wrote this has and agenda and is either stupid or a liar.

America has never been imperialist. Hang that one on the Brits. America doesn't have an imperial strategy as evidenced by withdrawal from Afghanistan.

British imperialism is legendary.

If America went to war over a Zionist cause it would be against Iran which seeks nuclear weapons and has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

The writer is an idiot.

Well, call it what you will:

Bases
For this question, we turned to an official Pentagon accounting of U.S. military bases around the nation and the world, the "Base Structure Report, Fiscal 2010Baseline."
According to this report, the U.S. has 662 overseas bases in 38 foreign countries....

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a trillion dollar... now imagine how much could have ment that for education or a plan for free universal healtcare, in that other land of free

No, it shouldn't have been spent at all. It wasn't excess money.

NIH is breaking the UK and it sucks. The US system works just fine and no one can be denied health care. The service, speed and quality exceeds the UK.

The UK has more debt per capita than the US, yet UK plonkers are forever going on about US debt. It's the UK that's in trouble with its economy, debt, and high taxes. LINK to debt.

The US economy is in high gear and doing better than it has in a decade. The UK and Australia's economies can't get going because the people are taxed too much and things cost too much.

The U.S. economy roared into overdrive in the third quarter as consumer and business spending fueled the biggest expansion in more than a decade.

There's no such thing as a free lunch and that includes not only in the military but with health care.

Now get your nose out of the air.

"The US economy is in high gear and doing better than it has in a decade."

Yes, Obama has done a sterling job.

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500 (more than) killed in 2000 bombing raids doesn't sound a very good average and not very cost effective.

The 'one bullet each' method of the IS would be a far more efficient way of doing things.

I've often thought that, the bombing might of the USAF + Aussies and others and IS hasn't been decimated yet? What's the hold up? After all they're just a rag-tag bunch of rebels but basic training and we super-powers can't wipe them off the face of the Earth?

They often hide among civilians and they don't wear uniforms. This is the classic guerrilla army that is all but impossible to defeat if the opposition abides by rules of war. IMHO is this what went wrong in N. Korea, 'Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, in WWII the allies bombed the crap out of Germany 24/7 and nuked Japan without regard for civilians. That was before these new rules of engagement and AFAIK it was the last war the West won outright. Outright to the point of surrender of the enemy.

I don't know the answer, but I know of no important engagement in history where a guerilla army was defeated on its own soil. WWII wasn't guerillas; the armies wore uniforms and could be identified by ground troops.

Yeah, this is what Saddam Hussein thought with regard to Kurds. He'd learnt his lesson from what went wrong in N Korea, and 'Nam.

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So Forbes is publishing "complete nonsense"? Right.

Most publications publish many different writers and many points of view. "Complete nonsense" is trying to claim that the fact that Forbes publishes someone's opinion means that they endorse it.

If it's their Editorial that's exactly what it means.

It was not. It was a random article by one guy expressing his own opinion and it stated that clearly at the top. There are plenty of experts that think his opinion is a load of BS and the American people think Obama is the worst president since WW II. At least Jeb Bush can safely say that he had nothing to do with that nightmare.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Thanks for including my edit. Most gentlemanly.

Winner for rhetorical juxtaposition is found!

On the one hand we have: Random Article/One Guy/Expressing His Own Opinion. On the other hand we have Experts. Experts who aren't expressing Opinions in Random Articles. Nice work, couldn't have made it up had one wanted to

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So Forbes is publishing "complete nonsense"? Right.

Most publications publish many different writers and many points of view. "Complete nonsense" is trying to claim that the fact that Forbes publishes someone's opinion means that they endorse it.

If it's their Editorial that's exactly what it means.

[edit] - which apparently is exactly what it wasn't

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We also know that if Saddam Hussein had let the United Nations weapons do their jobs, there would have been no invasion. Iraq secretly maintained the intellectual and physical capacity to produce WMDs and intended to restart production once sanctions were lifted, so it is not like they were no threat at all.

There are no industrialized countries that don't have the intellectual and physical capacity to produce WMDs. None.

There are plenty of industrialized countries that never had a fairly advanced nuclear weapons program until Israel put a stop to it. Iraq DID. alt=rolleyes.gif>

If Israel did put a stop to it in 1986, then the Mushroom Clouds invading Condeleza Rice's dreams in 2002/2003 were either a clear admission that "putting a stop to it" didn't put a stop to it or that she, like Tony Blair, was getting carried away in the moment.

The nebulous claim that having the 'intellectual capacity" coupled with the "physical capacity" to produce WMDs is sufficient to justify an invasion is pretty sly. Any country that can produce fertilizer has the intellectual and physical capacity to produce WMDs. I suppose one could assassinate all those with the 'intellectual capacity' and so solve the problem that way. I suppose that's what might be meant by bombing a country into the stone age. Then again, I'm sure that some would be able to argue that throwing stones is enough to justify an invasion. In some parts of the world it's certainly enough to have your house bulldozed.

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"The USA is a spent force"

That statement is laughably foolish. The USA has a thriving economy, the most powerful military in the world and is about to achieve energy independence. Your irrational opinions on the United States of America are not worth listening to.

Yep, Obama has done a sterling job.

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His views on illegal immigration conflict with mine. If he and Hillary Clinton are the two choices, it will be a lesser of two evils kind of vote.

Same here. Clinton is too right wing for me, so I'll be voting for Jeb Bush if it comes to that.

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One can maybe draw a Thai/SEAsian parallel to this.

No doubt the 'hardcore' ISIS fighters looked at all the ''privileged'' kids coming to join their cause from cushy backgrounds in the West with a degree of askance, much in the way the Pathet Lao/PLAT hierarchy looked at the soft, privileged Thai kids who joined them after they fled thence to escape possible persecution, repercussions following the Thammasat massacre in '76.

Expecting to be taken as leaders, the educated Thai elite who joined the communists in the Jungles of Laos, NE and Northern Thailand, were not accepted as true communists by the hardline, battle hardened guerrillas, who saw them as pampered elite made them start very much at the 'bottom' doing menial, physical labour, or acting as servants to the leadership of the communist forces which led to severe disillusionment among the new arrivals, many of who abandoned the CPT camps and returned home, often offering information in exchange for immunity from prosecution which may have led to the collapse of the CPT strongholds and training camps in rural Thailand in the late 1970s.

(see The Moonhunter (2001)

Rachel Harrison's introduction to A Drop of Glass - Sridaiouang - Rachel Harrison, Duang Kamol 1997 - or read the story 'our friends have not yet returned from the City)
Becoming Urban; Thai Literature about Rural-urban Migration and a Society in Transition, Ellen Elizabeth Boccuzzi. ProQuest 2007)

Will be interesting if this leads to an end or at least severe drop off in the flood of wannabe Jihadists from the West.

Conclusion (after all that piffle): Battle hardened extremists don't take kindly to soft new arrivals fresh from a comfy bed

Good points. Presumably ISIS would be crazy to 'let go' all of these disillusioned western volunteers - many of whom would presumably go running to western intelligence agencies whereupon they would become assets in the fight against ISIS. One of the gravest problems in fighting ISIS is the difficulty of infiltration and hence difficulty getting solid reliable information on them. Handled properly, the return of disillusioned ISIS terrorists/fighters would be a great asset in the fight against the Islamic State. Politically difficult certainly but strategically solid nonetheless.

There must have been someone in Australia that could have been tortured to find out about the intentions of this lunatic and so head off this tragedy.

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We also know that if Saddam Hussein had let the United Nations weapons do their jobs, there would have been no invasion. Iraq secretly maintained the intellectual and physical capacity to produce WMDs and intended to restart production once sanctions were lifted, so it is not like they were no threat at all.

Yes. They should have eliminated the intellectual capacity to do so making them read over and over again through this thread.

There are no industrialized countries that don't have the intellectual and physical capacity to produce WMDs. None.

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"It hasn't made our world anymore safer."

There is really no way to know that.

If there is really no way to know that, then there is really no way that 'making the world safer' should have been used as justification for intervention in the first place. Making the world safer was precisely the justification that Blair, Bush and Howard used.

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If it smells like a terrorist, acts like a terrorist, looks like a terrorist, torture it as a terrorist. You can always say your sorry later. If one life was saved by doing this I am all for it. Screw the Democratic liberals.

Good thinking! Let's see, if I chop off one of these hydra heads, two more sprout up in its place. I know, let's chop off MORE hydra heads at a faster rate, that will solve the problem!

Something is working. US feels all warm fuzzy this holiday season with no concerns of planes being jacked or buses being blown up.

Just like it felt in August 2001

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Ahh jobs for the boys and girls!

How's the gt200 going and the fraudulent claimns on behalf of that.

Just another yellow elite given a position of power.

She is good in what she did cracked many a case.. id have her doing this any day this is someone with knowledge unlike YL.

The gt200 corruption should be prosecuted of course but has nothing to do with this work. If she is guilty let her pay the price.

The PTP just did not want here anywhere where she could interfere with the "red"police and show the world they were incompetent. Or worse still connect reds to crimes.

Not so sure about that. Forensic science is an evidence based pursuit. If she really does believe in the efficacy of the GT200 scanners as she has stated robustly and in public and in support of those who procured them, then there are legitimate questions (really conclusions) about her ability to understand the concept of physical evidence, physical law and the efficacy of wishful thinking in causing a blank square of plastic detect bombs and do so reliably. So, some might say - of course I would not - that she is either incompetent or she was not telling the truth; that she has turned the truth into a deformed bastard offspring of political expediency.. Either way, hardly sterling recommendation for the position to which she is being appointed. Perhaps useful as a weather vane though.

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Trying to push this case as "another white cop kills innocent black youth" will never work. There is way too much evidence that Michael Brown went out looking for trouble.

If you want to see racism at work in the justice system, you need to look at something like the Trayvon Martin case.

The quickest and easiest way of removing inequality in the justice system in the U.S. would be to get rid of juries.

And Judges. Best just to go with with the conclusions and wisdom of the majority. Like in 12 Angry Men.

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I have to believe that the PM has big balls!

I remember an US President that was assesinated because he mess with the Mafia and the FBI.

Dunno. A Time Machine I suppose since the Federal Reserve was formed in 1913.

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Just how could corruption on such a massive scale go unnoticed ?

Simple answer is that it couldn't so those involved must have had quite an edge such as powerful allies and protection, maybe serious black on others etc.

Not a unique situation here and quite an indictment of Thainess. Nothing will change and when a new regime is in power the only thing that will change is in who have their snouts in the trough.

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.I can see your point. But sometimes to get to the truth you just need to keep digging. This is evidenced by the necessity of multiple congressional committee reports into the the Bengazi fiasco. The case isn't closed, it just needs further investigation. Sure, the Grand Jury saw all the evidence, but can they have really seen all the evidence if the outcome isn't what I think it should be? Absolutely not. More investigation is needed most certainly.

And sometimes you can repeat an event innumerable times and get the same outcome. There is a definition for that somewhere....

Yes. It's called "good optics".

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I still ask the question was it absolutely necessary for officer Wilson to have shot to kill, given that the victim was unarmed when the first few shots should have slowed the victim down considerably?

Witnesses said Brown had turned around and charged Officer Wilson. If it were me, I would not want to have to guess what was "necessary" with a huge, violent criminal rushing at me.

Sidestep? They do it in the NFL all the time - and those folks aren't shot yet.