Extensions in Heaven come expensive. Two souls and a kowtow.
wl: Who on earth (rather than Heaven where they probably do things differently) wants to talk about Diplomacy day and night? Enough is certainly enough.
Give us a break! Just sayin'.

Why are you discussing the forum? Diplo replies only! VENICE-TRIESTE

Shit, Diplomacy attracts politics buffs, who knew?

Nigee theres more shit threads being posted every day, its too much hassle to mute them all. We need a better way to avoid the endless torrent of awful, awful opinions that appear on this site

Warlord922: To take your question seriously, I would have to say that you don't seem to have grasped the fundamentals.
This is a 'Diplomacy' site? Yes.
This is a site where people of a reasonable level of intelligence can meet? Yes.
This is a site where we can perhaps meet other people who are within spitting distance of our IQ? Yes.
This is a site where we can talk about anything. No subjects barred. Except Diplomacy :~) Yes. Yes. Yes.

Its more like a place for people to pit their half-baked opinions against half-assed responses instead of heading to a much more suitable site such as politicalforum.com and seeing if their viewpoints stand up to the scrutiny of people who actually know their shit.

(spoiler: they won't, mine sure as hell didn't)

If you go to such sites, all you get is stupid people with entrenched religious or political or religio/political views talking what they talk :~/
Cough cough . . . er . . . this is a game. Played for fun. No need to change the government nor the state religion. A game.
Please accept my half-baked opinion and half-assed response for what it's worth.

Yeah erm, real politicians aren't posting their opinions anonymously on a forum. They're ouside canvassing and things.

Mr Cool: In my profession, I have to read a lot of cr*p produced by university students. I need to have some mental stimulation or I's gonna die. This is better than porn, don't you think?

@Timur - No.

As a university student, I approve of Timur's sentiment. God, if I had to read and grade my essays as a job it'd be awful

It's something to do between turns and between negotiations while waiting on a response or for a phase to change. Plus most of the people here are smart, but the variety of viewpoints runs the spectrum. Right-left, religious-atheist, capitalist-socialist. There are a lot of things to talk about with people who actually have an opinion and the intelligence to discuss them.

Whenever a Diplomacy-related thread is created, there will be plenty of responses, so its not like we're lacking in those discussions, its just that sometimes its fun to make fun of people who believe in global warming and think THEY'RE the ones taking the scientific approach. :-P

It freaking snowed in Phoenix last week btw!

Now I know this may seem typical coming from an anarchist, but really, capitalism to socialism isnt really that big of a jump. Like, I know american media likes to frame it that way but they're not diametrically opposed, not even mutually exclusive. I mean look at the european 'socialist' countries USmedia always trots out, most are actually capitalist countries, just with stronger social programs.

If global warming is an unscientific idea how come there is near consensus among scientists

Holy shit! Sicarius is back!! I'm honored to have made the post that prompted your return, my old Flagstaff anarchist friend!

@warlord, another fun thing to do on the forum is hijack threads that have lost your interest.

What have you been up to lately? Any good protests? I imagine you were participating in the 99% protests last year, right?

By the way, can you please pick a fight with Mapleleaf about something? He has been reallllly Fucking grouchy lately since he hasn't had you to fight with.

Hey Sic - You forgot the word "nowhere" immediately before "near" as in "nowhere near consensus".

+1 draug

My knee-jerk reaction to global warming deniers is, "You're retarded." But the reality is that I'm really far from an understanding of science adequate to justify my practically faith-based certainty that this shit is happening. I mean... I'm really pretty sure it is though? Al Gore? Help?

Here's a basic science lesson for you MHN, trying to model a system with thousands of variables is next to impossible. But if you find a way to do it and you make predictions based on it, and your predictions come to be, then kudos. However, if your predictions are completely wrong and many other scientists are explaing that you left out some really important variables (like clouds, for instance), and you response is to hand-wave an argument and change the name of what you are claiming (global warming is now climate change) but still insist that your idea demands global attention that will make someone billions of dollars and that someone isn't a scientist at all, but a lawyer and a politician (Al Gore) and he is the biggest public proponent of your idea ... Then you aren't doing science!

Haha, I said MHN, because I flipped the possession in my head "your humble narrator" when directed to me became "my humble narrator" from my point of view.

As with so many other issues where science has been obscured by political agenda you have to ask yourself - Cui bono? Maybe authoritarian powers have bought 98% of the scientific community in an effort to extend their grasp, or maybe corporate powers have bought 2% of the scientific community in an effort to avoid expensive environmental regulation.

Look up a graph that charts average global temps. Debate over.

Yeah look at temperature graphs with a daily variation of 20 degrees, a day to day variation of 5 to 10 degrees, and a seasonal variation of 40+ degrees and then tell me that you can measure a 10th of a degree rise.

Signal to noise, anyone?

@War

I consider many people on this site to be my efriends. I enjoy talking to them about politics, science, hobbies, etc. This site would be very boring if all we talked about was Diplomacy. How many times can you really discuss the Lepanto?

And, why go to one site to talk about Movies, one to talk about Politics, one to talk about Yellowjacket's mom, when we can talk about all those things here as a big community?

Oh, and welcome back, Sic. Always good to hear from you.

@sunZi - I see the point you are trying to make, that it is more likely to influence 2% than 98%. I don't know what the actual percentages are of for vs against, but I'm certain its not that far out of balance. And personally, I could give a shit. The bottom line is that whether its the governments saying its real or the corporations saying its false, it doesn't change the fact that its not scientific. its akin to creationism, where the conclusion is decided upon, and any contrary data is ignored, and any incorrect predictions are explained away.

What, no warming trend for the last decade? Let's say that our thermometers were out of calibration (yes all of them, shut up denier!) And we'll just add a degree to the data!

Hey philcore - I think you meant you *couldn't* give a shit...

I might have, I can no longer figure that out. I'd -1 for your correction if I could. Don't hijack my hijacked thread for a grammer lesson.

And Sicarius, answer my questions, what have you been up to lately? Protests, jail time, living off the land, chopping wood for meals, I miss your updates, I used to live vicariously through you!

Welcome back, Sic. Now we just eden and putin back too. three of the most interesting posters on the forum

It doesn't have to be corruption of the explicit type you're talking about though, sunzi, where somebody is bought off directly for a particular point of view. There can be systemic, institutional pressures. Things like, on one side, if there's a problem, then the science becomes more important and should be more funded, and will come with more political power; and on the other side, the science is more useful to the oil company and may attract their money.

Institutional pressures, where they exist, can be universal through a whole field, so 98% would be nothing. (So, needless to say, would 2%).

Simple solution to the whole "near consensus" issue. I bet $100 US to the site that I can.find at least 1 anti-climate change reference for every 18 that Sic produces pro-climate change. Sic has to bet the same. And these references must be from scientists and each must be a different scientist. If he has a single paper coauthored, each aithor is a reference. Same for me. But if said author is a coauthor or author of another paper as well, they only get to count once. Basically the idea is to count scientists and if more than 5% in references is anti-climate change, then there is no "near consensus" at all.

its nice that users of this site are starting to question the media line about global warming but have you also started to question that those bailouts were a net positive to the economy?

@Draug

How is just under 95% not near-consensus?

"Why is the Diplomacy forum half full of topics unrelated to the game of Diplomacy? If you want to discuss politics or religion, it would seem to me like there are better websites for that"
- I think he's right there probably are better websites but maybe not as much fun and also I'm old and can't be arsed to troll around a variety of websites just because they are better, I like this one. Any trolling I feel the urge to do I can do here, and I've paid.
Anybody hazard a guess on how much the OP has said ...... apparently nothing. Yet another freeloader trying to call the shots ..... for some of you guys market capitalism is a misunderstood concept. You're all Socialists when it's your turn to pay :-)

said s/be paid

Well, then you all set a number, but anything less than 80% means 20% disagree. That is not a near consensus. You want me to find one scientist for every nine he finds? That's 10%. I'll still bet $100 to the site (meaning Kestas/WebDip gets the money) on that number. Near does *not* mean more than 50%. It has to be a number much closer to 100% than 50% (and I'd say even 75% or 80% isn't near consensus). Near means very close, not just a majority. Otherwise nearly everyone in America who voted, voted for Obama. And that is utter bull.

I don't think it's unreasonable to call anything above 90% near-consensus.

The more important question is, how are you going to judge quality of paper?

He said there was a near consensus in the scientific community. Quality is irrelevant. A consensus is about numbers. Pure and simple.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5R2ykErLy24/T0QjDeSZV5I/AAAAAAAAEv4/H19IoYK_3tY/s1600/1.%2BIPCC%2Bpredictions%2Bv%2Breality.png

lol

On the subject of scientific consensus there is always this little gem to bring us back down to earth:
"When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly... he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science... Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries."
- from a 1924 lecture by Max Planck (Sci. Am, Feb 1996 p.10)

or I rather like this one too:
"So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value." - Spanish Royal Commission, rejecting Christopher Columbus' proposal to sail west.

These quotes are from an excellent informal discussion here: http://amasci.com/weird/end.html

@fulhamish - I love the Planck quote. That's just awesome

@blankflag - I like the graph. Notice the scale - they have to expand it to tenths of a degree to even show anything but a flat line. and they're still off. And if you can imagine a smooth curve following the actual data you would see that the slope of that curve is decreasing over time, and basically flat for the last decade. I'd be willing to bet that the slope is about to go negative, and that we're in for another period of global cooling - although still at the insignificant scale of tenths of degrees.

@blankflag: regarding the bailouts, they were absolutely necessary. Do you know how many tens of bank execs, wouldn't have gotten their million dollar bonuses without them. I'm guessing several tens of them, possibly into the 40s. How many Farari sales would have been lost? How many yacht sales? The US economy would have been in shambles.