Comments by Steve Zara

1551. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288498 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 1:40 am

Comment #288495 by JanChan

You know, it doesn't take a super genius to predict what would happen if we applied more liberal economic policies on our countries.

It will help put an end to war and poverty. It will align the planets and bring them into universal harmony. Allowing meaningful contact with all forms of life. From extra terrestrials to common household pets.

1552. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288494 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 1:36 am

Comment #288490 by JanChan

Well, obviously something is wrong with the economy and all your liberal economic ideas aren't working.

That is the first time I have heard Bush called a liberal.

1553. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288491 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 1:34 am

Comment #288486 by Laurie Fraser

Funny how we always seem to end up with irony and sarcasm when dealing with right-wing nutters! Perhaps we should call it the "DP effect".

1554. All aboard the atheist bus campaign

Comment #288488 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 1:32 am

Welcome back brother John.

The whole aim of Christ's life (not myth folks, too well documented

Thanks to the efforts of Philip1978, I consider myself far more educated about the supposed life of Christ that I used to be. Not only is there no good evidence that Christ ever lived, but there is evidence that he did not - such as the use of "Nazareth" in the Bible - a place that did not exist in the 1st century.

1555. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288482 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 1:28 am

Comment #288476 by JanChan

Like everything is black and white. What if they aren't? What if what is right for the country is bad for the environment? Nobody even wanted to consider the black and white parts.

This amounts to nothing more than the phrase "you are just wrong".

If you are going to discuss things, please come up with a counter-argument.

1556. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288473 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 1:18 am

Comment #288468 by JanChan

Things aren't as simple as you seem to be trying to make them. The actions we need to take to deal with global warming and to help conserve endangered species are also good for the economy long term - cut back drastically on use of oil, make industries far more efficient. They are things countries should be doing anyway.

1557. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288467 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 1:13 am

Comment #288464 by JanChan

You see, to young atheists like me you're all being hypocrites.

There is something called "atheist economic theory"?

1558. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288456 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 1:03 am

Comment #288453 by AtheistJon

Posting a video isn't looking someone in the eye, any more than typing here.

I post here under my own name, and I am happy for anyone to quote what I say (not that I could stop them). I understand why others can't or may not want to do that, but to call me a coward is silly, really.

People have also said that I am pretty much in real life the way I come across here :)

1559. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288452 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:59 am

Comment #288450 by JanChan

Well, speak for yourself.

I did. That is what I do when I post under my name, don't you know.

I am also fed up with self-serving "rebels" like you who think they know more than thousands of scientists. Laurie is right. You deserve no more respect than a creationist.

Why should we go with "JanChan science" as against "mainstream science"?

1560. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288448 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:54 am

Comment #288443 by AtheistJon

Next time you call somebody a name like "dumbo" or "twit". Please do so with a video response... otherwise, you are a coward.

Next time you call someone "coward", please do so dressed as Ronald McDonald and standing on one leg while juggling. Otherwise, you are a coward.

Why is it so hard to try and be polite (even if it's toward the stupidest of "right-wingers")? I used to think that British people were amazingly polite compared to Americans. This illusion has been debunked.

I can only speak for myself, but I am tired of being patronised by people who consider they have the one true view of anything from God to global warming.

And if you think "twit" is an insult, you need to get out more.

1561. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288438 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:43 am

Comment #288437 by JanChan

For one thing that was my professor's pet sunspot theory, and even he is not as certain as you are about the case.

At least tens of thousands of scientists have researched global warming.

It is always nice to have pet experts. The problem is that you are picking one person's view which contradicts the consensus of thousands.

I am not saying your professor isn't an Einstein, but I hope you would agree that the chances of that aren't great.

1562. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288434 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:39 am

JanChan-

Who would your rather trust, a guy who you know will always save his own butt, or some environmentalist?

Some environmentalist, actually. Because our butts can only be saved if we work together.

1563. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288432 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:36 am

Comment #288431 by JanChan

Or to put it bluntly - survival of the fittest.

Ah.. A Social Darwinist are we?

1564. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288430 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:35 am

JanChan-

A classic chicken and egg problem if you ask me, its almost impossible to manipulate the factors, inability to manipulate the factors give lousy predictions that we cannot see how much an independent factor affects temperature. And all your lovable environmentalists just enjoy simplifying the problem for scientists.

So what are you trying to say here? That you don't believe the majority of scientists? I would love to see a list of your qualifications in this area.

You asked questions, and I gave you answers. Your pet "sunspot" theory does not work. Global warming is real, and most of it is due to the annual injection of gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere by humans (and before you try and use this excuse - it is vastly more than produced by volcanoes).

1565. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288426 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:28 am

Comment #288425 by JanChan

Well, excuse me, but I didn't think that Ice Ages were the result of just 1 single event, even Wikipedia lists a few factors. Why shouldn't sunspot activity be one of them?

The ice ages weren't just because of orbital changes - they could not have happened if the continents had not been in the right position, or if the CO2 or methane levels had been higher.

But they weren't due to sunspot activity, because it has the wrong periodicity - it changes on a scale of decades, not millenia.

In fact how can we have any discussion about global warming and its causes without someone calculating all these factors and plotting a suitable graph of temperatures. And how can someone do that if all the factors are still not known?

Enough factors are known to explain the change in temperature. The relative contributions of solar cycles, and natural and human injection of gases into the atmosphere are known.

1566. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288424 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:16 am

SPS-

The evidence may lay in the ground, or across the sea. Maybe you need a shovel and not a telescope.

There is no equivalent of the "ground", unless you assume that aliens have all gone off to "hyperspace". And as for "across the sea", what would mean the civilizations may be in distant galaxies. I have no problem with that. I am just talking about local space.

There is no supposition necessary that would be on par with assuming the existence of the supernatural. To me, the search for alien intelligence is no more an act of blind faith than is the building of the Large Hadron Collider.

I am afraid that for many, it is. There is a hope and a longing that we aren't alone that can blind people to the evidence, so that they refuse to take the simplest option - we are alone.

An alien race not threatened by its own members, and finding itself the master of all around it, may find no reason, need, or urge to expend any effort to colonize across the galaxy.

You mean that absolutely no-one in that race would ever want to take a trip to the stars?

1567. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288422 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:13 am

Comment #288420 by JanChan

I beg to differ, the world was once so cold that humans could walk across the English Channel. Something not so consistent with a small cyclical effect.

That was not due to changes in solar activity. It was due to the shape of, and changes in, Earth's orbit.

Of course it's always easier to get landforms from glaciers, evidence of global warming in the past would have been scarce for the single reason that it is more difficult to be recorded on Earth.

Evidence of past global warming is abundant. We can see it in things like isotope ratios.

Climate scientists really do know what is going on. Global warming is happening, and is a real danger. Action is urgently needed.

1568. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288421 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:09 am

Comment #288318 by Wosret

The parallel with theism is clear, I feel. People see a universe that is exactly what it would look like as if there were no God, so attempt to say God is "invisible", and has stopped performing miracles.

We see a universe which is exactly what it would look like without spacefaring civilizations, so people come up with barely-believable explanations to try and fit superfluous technological civilizations into the picture.

Some examples:

All aliens want to stay at home.
All aliens are very cautious in their use of resources.
No civilization has grown up more than a few million years ago.
There is no way to travel between the stars (we already know of several).
Space is too big (not for robot probes, generation ships, or if you can hibernate)

and on and on come the excuses, which are a form of trying to "fine tune" civilizations to fit the evidence.

1569. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288419 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2008 at 12:00 am

Comment #288337 by AtheistJon

Some right-wing dumbo starts quoting Penn and Teller as an authority, and labels this site a liberal propoganda machine, and you get upset because people call him things like "twit"?

Get a sense of perspective.

1570. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288418 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 11:51 pm

Comment #288410 by JanChan

However it is still not certain whether sunspots causes global warming, partly due to diversion of funding to more "important" stuff, maybe some astronomer would like to help me out here.

The influence of varying solar activity on global warming has been much researched. There is a small cyclical effect, but not nearly enough to account for the warming we have already seen.

1571. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288315 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 2:16 pm

Comment #288306 by rod-the-farmer

This is even more question-begging, and neglects the exponential expansion of life.

We would not notice the effect of the construction of one Dyson sphere. We would notice the effect of millions or billions.

1572. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288313 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 2:13 pm

Comment #288310 by decius

The parallelism is entirely appropriate.

In both cases it is an attempt to justify that something exists based on the lack of evidence.

Theists say we can't refute God because he might exist beyond what we see in the universe.

The same argument is used to support alien space-faring civilizations - they might exist beyond what we see in the universe.

1573. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288303 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Comment #288302 by Wosret

That's it? Then I find that an awfully weak reason for dismissing the idea. I think that that is easily accounted for.

That is what theists say when we want evidence for God's intervention in the world.

You propose the idea that there are alien civilizations out there. You need to provide positive evidence. You need to provide the data.

1574. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288299 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 1:48 pm

Comment #288290 by Wosret

Like what?

I have already mentioned this.

Stars that aren't as we expect because their energies are being harvested.

1575. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288285 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Comment #288280 by Wosret

We haven't been looking for very long, and we certainly can't see it very well.

We can see very well indeed. We can see individual stars in neigbouring galaxies. We can see our own galaxy in fine detail.

As I have said, if civilizations were walking throughout our galaxy, we would certainly have seen evidence.

Yeah, anything within like sixty light years.

We have left far more of a signature than the radio and TV broadcasts that decius (controversially) said would be stopped at short distances. We have broadcast signals from vast radio telescopes that could be seen across most of the galaxy.

1576. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288281 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 1:22 pm

Comment #288279 by DarwinsPitbull

Did the government invent oil in the first place?

If they didn't, who did?

1577. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288277 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Comment #288273 by Wosret

The argument I put forward is the exact one you did for a multiverse.

No, it is quite different. We can see the landscape over which alien civilizations are supposed to have walked. We see nothing.

We can't examine the galaxy like that

Yes, we can. We can examine the fine details of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, and we can examine the galaxy at good detail throught its length.

We certainly have left no foot prints in the grass. As far as we know, no one has, that isn't reason to assume we aren't around.

We certainly have left footprints. Any civilizations who looked at our star system would see very odd signatures in the spectrum of radio and TV wavelengths.

We would see similar signatures from stars far away.

1578. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288270 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 1:05 pm

Comment #288266 by decius

I agree with you.

1579. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288269 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 1:04 pm

Comment #288265 by Wosret

Suppose you come across a vast field of grass. The only footprints you see are your own. With your telescopes you can see the grass for miles and miles around. Someone questions if others have been walking around. You see no footprints. And then, the arguments start .... "they have been walking on stilts"... "before they walked, they developed ways to hover above the grass".

That is the level of argument we sometimes see from those who support the idea of alien space-faring life.

1580. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288263 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 12:55 pm

Comment #288259 by decius

You are a very naughty boy! (certainly not the messiah)

1581. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288261 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 12:54 pm

Decius-

Yes, that's clear. But why assuming that they must have risen so much earlier than us or that they care to colonise space at all.

They don't have to have arisen much earlier than us. Only 10 million years (which is nothing at all) and they could have colonised the galaxy.

I assume that some would care to colonise space based on human history - there have always been explorers.

Would it even be moral to send people off in a hollow asteroid to end their days inside a fucking rock in the middle of nowhere, and their progeny too? Would you go?

That hollow asteroid could contain vast cities... millions of people. That is cities worth of culture.

As to whether I would do it, I can say without hesitation, that yes, I would! If I could bring my husband, and my dog, then I would be happy to be the start of a project of tens of thousands of years duration to spread humanity.

1582. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288255 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 12:47 pm

Comment #288221 by Quetzalcoatl

Gazing out from our pitifully small rock into the vastness of the cosmos, we have assumed that all that we see has a natural explanation. But perhaps, in some parts of the Universe, the effects of technological tampering can be seen, if only we learn to look properly.

Not that I want to pick on you, but that is just the same argument that many religious use to justify theism - the universe looks natural, but that is only because we don't understand how God works.

Change "God" to "alien civilizations" and you get the same argument.

I do understand there is a wish that we weren't alone in this cosmos (or at least our neighborhood), but we have to stick with the simplest hypothesis based on the data.

We are! There is nothing we see that can't be explained in terms of purely natural phenomena. We use this argument all the time against theists. We should also use it against those who propose spacefaring civilizations.

1583. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288210 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 10:36 am

Comment #288203 by decius

See? There are major benefits. The conservatives will stay at home and the liberals and Marxists will get out there and meet the Kzinti and Daleks (and then we really will be in trouble).

1584. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288209 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 10:34 am

Comment #288206 by Wosret

No, it really wouldn't. Just try out the mathematics of expansion. The results are amazing. Exponentiation wins over time and distance.

1585. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288208 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 10:33 am

Comment #288202 by Wosret

Why set yourself to an unnecessary mission that will take multiple generations to complete, and the benefits of are not huge, and success is not reasonable to assume?

Imagine a colony inside a hollowed-out asteroid. It is self-sustaining, due to nuclear power. It has little contact with Earth. Why not change orbit to get a gravitational kick from Jupiter and out of the Solar System, so that your grandchildren will have something new to look at?

1586. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288201 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 10:25 am

Comment #288197 by Wosret

I don't take it as a given that anyone would spread to other stars. I just find it a rather extreme view to assume that no-one throughout the history of a civilization would ever want to bother.

We can already come up with ways that this can be done, via colony ships.

1587. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288198 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 10:23 am

Decius-

As we speak, the best thing we have is the Drake equation, far more powerful than any paradox, including Fermi's.

But that isn't what we are discussing, I think. We are not discussing how likely technological civilizations are to arise, but whether or not SETI is going to work. That assumes that a technological civilization has already arisen, and is out there sending messages.

Personally, I think the Drake equation is useless - a string of arbitrary and largely unquantifiable factors.

1588. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288195 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 10:20 am

Comment #288192 by decius

Don't worry. I think Kurzweil is somewhere between very eccentric and a nutcase.

But I think the arguments for the Fermi Paradox are extremely strong.

There are nothing but "fine tuning" and question begging arguments against it. We have to assume that all technological civilizations want to preserve the galaxy, or don't feel like expanding....

Stephen Baxter has dealt with this very well in his book "Deep Future".

1589. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288193 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 10:16 am

Wosret-

Even if the moment a probe or whatever showed up in a solar system it sent a new one to the closet one, it would still take millions of years to visit them all.

A civilization could have several colonies in every corner of the galaxy by now, but it could not have even come close to visiting every solar system. Not even a fraction of them within the (I think it was) ten billion years since the galaxies birth.

No, that is where exponentiation kicks in. All it takes is for a civilization to drift to another solar system at only, say, 1% of the speed of light, and then wait a millenium, and send out two colony ships in different directions, and the whole galaxy will be colonised in only tens of millions of years.

Comment #288190 by SPS

All we need to assume is that *one* civilization wants to spread. In fact we don't even need to do that. All we need to assume is a small fraction of one civilization needs to spread.

1590. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288191 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 10:13 am

JanChan-

Ozone depletion is a greater threat than Global Warming (so much greater is the threat of ozone depletion that it can only be measured in terms of a logarithm scale) and do anyone give a shit about it nowadays?

You really shoot yourself in the foot here.

We don't worry that much about Ozone any more because the problem is being solved. The world has worked together to deal with this.

We dealt with that problem. Now it is time (hopefully not too late) to deal with global warming.

1591. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288176 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 9:35 am

Comment #288170 by decius

That is all question-begging. It is trying to come up with special arguments for what we see out there. This is almost always the case when we try and argue against the Fermi Paradox.

Comment #288174 by hungarianelephant

There is an economic difference if you don't have a compelling need for the extra energy.

Why would a civilization that had the potential to get more energy at little extra cost not get it?

Even if you did, it might make more sense to harvest a tiny proportion of a number of stars.

Again, this is question begging. Why would it?

1592. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288168 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 9:13 am

Comment #288167 by hungarianelephant

There is little or no economic difference between extracting 10% of a stars radiated energy and, say, 80%. You just need more collectors.

We would easily see the effect of 80% extraction - we would see stars that were emitters of infra-red (waste heat) as against visual light.

1593. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288165 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 9:03 am

Comment #288163 by hungarianelephant

They question always arises - why stop harvesting at a certain point?

To see no mass use of stellar energy, we would have to assume that *all* technological civilizations that arose *always* decided that to use 5 or 10% of a stars energy was enough.

That is too much "fine tuning" of civilizations for me.

1594. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288164 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 9:01 am

Comment #288162 by irate_atheist

As Terry Pratchett says, the only thing that can travel faster than the speed of light is monarchy. When a king dies, his eldest son becomes king *immediately* (by definition). There have been attempts to communicate over long distances by slightly torturing inconsequential monarchs, but as yet with no success.

1595. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288161 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 8:56 am

Comment #288159 by irate_atheist

Ah, but once they have colonised enough space, that can't happen, as not even religion can travel faster than light.

1596. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288160 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 8:51 am

Comment #287879 by Cartomancer

Spookily, today I received a recommendation from Amazon for the following book:

"Cheese: A Visual Guide to 400 Cheeses with 150 Recipes" by Juliet Harbutt

1597. I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Comment #288157 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 8:46 am

Comment #287999 by decius

We are a technological spacefaring civilisation in its infancy, I see no reason to assume that all others must have started earlier, or if they did, that they should have already completed the exploration of the galaxy. They might have visited prior to our appearance, or to the appearance of life on Earth, or they might have directed their efforts to select areas of the galaxy

All it requires is for *one* civilization to have started earlier. Even a few tens of million years earlier would have been more than enough. Also, the idea of just being directed at one area of the galaxy makes no sense. Why would they stop there? Even if they did, there has been enough time for a spacefaring civilization to evolve from worms at least 20 times over since the galaxy formed into a stable state.

Why assuming that harvesting must re-model the stars or alter the appearance of anything, when the energy released by a star through natural processes is so gargantuan? An ultra-efficient unaltering method of harvest is perfectly conceivable.

Why do we have nuclear reactors when we could very efficiently harness the considerable energy of wood fires? Because living systems grow exponentially. Why should a civilization stop harnessing the energy of a star at the 1% level? 2%? 20%?

That's most likely true, but the reasons you mentioned are insufficient to close the case.

I am pretty certain they are.

There is only one possibility I can see - that civilizations quickly get to the stage of discovering some other level of reality, and us not seeing them is as irrelevant as worms in the soil not seeing us - we just don't interact that much.

1598. Single-Celled Giant Upends Early Evolution

Comment #288154 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 8:31 am

But if the first traces were instead made by G. sphaerica, it would mean the Explosion was real; it must have been a diversification of life on a scale never before seen.

No. It just means that we have no evidence either way for the timescale of the diversification.

1599. Bush set to relax endangered species rules

Comment #288122 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 7:25 am

Comment #288089 by irate_atheist

The reason why some people get irate is because we have so many master baiters.

1600. Vast stores of water ice surround Martian equator

Comment #288120 by Steve Zara on November 21, 2008 at 7:23 am

Comment #287860 by Titania

Theists don't want to live in this world because in this world they are insignificant, and end up permanently dead.

:)