Pigsaw

Lolwut? Knowlege of subatomic physics is accurate to two dozen decimal places? What was that supposed to mean? We know about atom,protonquark? We don't know a lot about quantum physics, we don't know a lot about subatomic particles, we have to explain gravity by adding multiple universes into account, heck we don't even know what matter is. Even the theory of relativity is now in danger. Khm, maybe i did not make myself clear. You is your consciousness, according to my definition of "you". Your brain is more than that. However, question remains. Can a neuron be activated spontaneously(free will?) Please give me your definition of free will, because i cant think of any except spontaneous activation of neurons, or "choosing" which neurons shall a single neuron activate. And yes i'm religious. Pastafarian to be precise

Grames- I dont plan on reducing neurons to sub atomic particles. I need only neurons for this, since no one on this world knows how sub atomic particles react. Slightly off topic, but has anyone heard/read something about neutrino particles? It shows that we MAY(capital letters) not know jack about sub atomic particles, or lack of elementary ones. I do THINK that determinism is correct, however, currently there is no real way of proving or disproving it with our current knowledge so i don't preach it. Free will however... Back to neurons. When they activate, they activate another neuron or neurons, depending on their bonds with other neurons. For example, light receptors in your eye catch some light, as they always do. Then, the "raw data" is transferred to your brain, where it makes the 3D picture combining 2 2D pictures your eyes catch. After that, part of your brain tries to make sense out of that picture, associating it with other neurons in other parts of your brain. Then your brain decides for you to move to the left, since you were walking on the street and would hit a traffic sign if you dont move. The above example accounts for almost every situation. Now, if neurons cannot activate spontaneously, but must be activated by another neuron, where is there room for free will?

That is correct Grames. Now tell me if you can, how do our brains function? How do neurons act?

So here s a bunch of questions i have for you guys. 1) Where does money come from? Currently, the government prints it, but who will make money in an objectivistic world and leisez fare economy? You cant simply keep the existing currency, because govs own more than 90 % of it. The solution would be to allow private banks to print money if they have gold to back it up. The problem would be who would control that, and who would stop someone else from printing the money without something to back it up? 2) Why do most objectivists say that altruism /socialism/communism etc is wrong? Isn't that equally intellectually dishonest as saying that my religion is right, and yours is wrong. 3)I have seen some threads about free will and they usually start like this: "I ve heard something about determinism and i dont have a counter argument." Reading between the lines that would mean that you have some facts and cannot accept them because you dont like them. Isnt that simply not reasonable? 4)Why is Ayn Rands work consideren basically a bible? Does that mean objectivism cannot improve(because, lets face it, it isn't perfect)?

Question for non determinists. Where exactly in our bodies(or outside) do our decisions form?

@brian then i will repost my link for c) http://www.pewclimat.../hurricanes.cfm if you dont want to bother with reading everything, just skip to the "Is the frequency of hurricanes increasing?" part. Hurricanes depend heavily on air, land and sea temperature, there is no doubt about it. Temperature had risen. Coincidence? I think not. The question that remain is- how do greenhouse gases increase temperature, not how does increased temperature increases weather. About a) According to wikipedia, water vapor makes up to 76 % of all greenhouse effects If you dont know how such things corelate to each other(or anything else really), feel free to google it. @software Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe, therefore divination could not be considered science. I will try to read the book you linked soon.

@egophile Could you google a) and c) please? @software- i told you that i do not want to discuss politics here, if you want me to discuss politics, link me a thread of your choosing @nigel- Well, i lol'd. anyhoe, if you are satisfied with man surviving, i guess your standards are,... low so to say...

here is my promised reply to answer your post Some of this things have not been tested globally, but we do know that a)Increased temperature inscreases water evaporation. You can experience this if you live near sea on a hot day b)man CAN contribute, significantly or not. c)Extreme weather is not good... however, if we are going for the MAJOR ice age, water vapor would greatly decrease which means we would have to pump ALOT of CO2 or methane or something third to compensate it also, when the ice age is over, we would still have those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere d)cant answer that. We cant know for sure if we can do something or not, that is true. What we can do, is to eliminate the possibility that we are causing it, and if it persists, either we adapt, or we make the planet to adapt. Currently, it seems that we do contribute. What we have to do now, is find another sources of energy, and exploitation of that energy(for example fusion, and powerful electric motors). We will have to face that oil will disappear sooner or later(by the way, that bacteria cannot be the global solution). Better we adapt now, and also stop contributing to GW, then to get struck by all these problems in the same time, even if that time is "later"

I dont understand what you are saying. Temperature rising is a fact(and is acting aginst solar activity). Amount of gases in the atmosphere is a fact. Solar activity is a fact. Number of hurricanes is a fact. Predictions of what will happen are not a fact. It is up to experts to make the predictions. I am laying facts and laymans logical conclusions. I seriously doubt that any of us here have the qualification to make accurate predictions. But i can see that temperature is rising when solar activity is falling, assuming graphs i used were correct, i can also see increase in CO2 and methane in the atmosphere. I also experienced local more extreme weather and its effects on agriculture(as i do grow all vegetables and most fruit i eat). My nonexpert logical conclusion is that something is happening. i see your next post now i will edit mine soon

Oh, i see, you cannot accept it because you have to do something about it? you are not refuting my claims, but my motivations, and you are talking about how fixing it impacts human lives, including yours, which means that you dont care so much for the truth as for the "money". I am sorry if i am wrong about you, and would be glad if i am. I for one, care for science, and will here discuss science ONLY, and politics on the other thread(that way discussions have much more sense, and direction) If you are interested on my view on politics, we can talk on the other thread(link meh ) I know that this thread wasnt supposed to be science only, but i cannot create the new one, and this one is kind of old and some arguments have been brought up before so i considered it fine. But please, if we can, keep this science only

read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming quote from wikipedia "The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70 percent of the greenhouse effect; carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26 percent; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9 percent; and ozone (O3), which causes 3–7 percent.[39][40][41] Clouds also affect the radiation balance through cloud forcings similar to greenhouse gases. Human activity since the Industrial Revolution has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to increased radiative forcing from CO2, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide. The concentrations of CO2 and methane have increased by 36% and 148% respectively since 1750.[42] These levels are much higher than at any time during the last 800,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores.[43][44][45][46] Less direct geological evidence indicates that CO2 values higher than this were last seen about 20 million years ago.[47] Fossil fuel burning has produced about three-quarters of the increase in CO2 from human activity over the past 20 years. The rest of this increase is caused mostly by changes in land-use, particularly deforestation.[48]" As we can see, water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas, but it is relatively constant(before GW). CO2 and methane are not. Take into account that one degree change in temperature i was talking about in my last post, greatly reflects on water vapor amount, which further intensifies GW. On the contrary, it is not that bad... Yet. Treehuggers are still idiots, deforestation does not leave a dent in CO2 amount(unless its deforestation by burning) since most of CO2 processings is done by planktons in the sea, and we are not going to all die tommorow because of GW. However, it is a real problem, and will get very bad in a century or maybe two. Altho effects of GW are indeed showing up right now and are bad for alot of people.

@softwarenerd Most of it is actually very recent. Looking at some of the threads here i see some misundarstandings of GW, and i want to explain some things with my limited knowledge on the subject. Here is the global temperature graph since 1880 As we can see, it is rising(and hottest years on record are moslty after 1990 as you can see). Ofcourse, it may seem insignificant because the rise here is barely one degree celsius, but that makes enourmous amounts of energy, and as we all know, energy on earth is not equally distributed, which would mean that we dont experience hot weather everywhere on the Earth at the same time, but we do experience more extreme local weather(Temperature amplitudes are getting bigger, sudden weather changes, and ultimately more hurricanes and such) Here is the link regarding hurricanes and GW http://www.pewclimate.org/hurricanes.cfm quoted from the link "Globally (not just in the North Atlantic), there is an average of about 90 tropical storms every year. According to the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-AR4), globally "[t]here is no clear trend in the annual numbers [i.e. frequency] of tropical cyclones." However, in the North Atlantic there has been a clear increase in the frequency of tropical storms and major hurricanes. From 1850-1990, the long-term average number of tropical storms was about 10, including about 5 hurricanes. For the period of 1998-2007, the average is about 15 tropical storms per year, including about 8 hurricanes. This increase in frequency correlates strongly with the rise in North Atlantic sea surface temperature, and recent peer-reviewed scientific studies link this temperature increase to global warming" Now ofcourse, this might be the Sun, but according to this graph, its not

Well, i sure can experience GW myself. I m in Europe in medditerean climate Almost every year is hotter than the last one(almost) Also, there used to be no snow around here for tens of years: It falls every year or 2 now. Medditerrean climate is supposed to be mild You can now see 20 degrees difference in just two weeks weather IS getting more extreme

Is Irene good enough? or the general state of things in texas?

Hello there Please take a look at this site http://www.skepticalscience.com/ it has covered virtually every anti GW argument i have encountered so far.