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Recently, the U.K. Met Office announced a revision to the Hadley Center historical analysis of sea surface temperatures (SST), suggesting that the oceans have warmed about 0.1 degree Celsius more than previously thought. The need for revision arises from the long-recognized problem that in the past sea surface temperatures were measured using a variety of error-prone methods such as using open buckets, lamb's wool–wrapped thermometers, and canvas bags. It was not until the 1990s that oceanographers developed a network of consistent and reliable measurement buoys.
[...] But that's where the good news ends. Because the oceans cover three fifths of the globe, this correction implies that previous estimates of overall global warming have been too low. Moreover it was reported recently that in the one place where it was carefully measured, the underwater melting that is driving disintegration of ice sheets and glaciers is occurring far faster than predicted by theory—as much as two orders of magnitude faster—throwing current model projections of sea level rise further in doubt.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday August 21 2019, @08:48AM (4 children)
> and fight against centrally planned states (which have long histories of creating massive ecological disasters and huge inefficiency).
1. The only states that do anything are centrally planned. There has never been an anarchy successful enough to make anything.
2. There are many examples of centrally planned states that have not created ecological disasters. Far more than those that have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @10:59AM (2 children)
I dare you.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 22 2019, @08:22AM
> how say pre-WW2 USA was centrally planned
Well, there were a bunch of people called the senate, and another bunch of people called the house of representatives, and a guy called a president, and they got together to make a bunch of laws. The laws enabled the people in those houses and their flunkies to collect taxes, which were used to build roads, railways, electrical power distribution networks and other infrastructure along planned routes to certain regions.
Etc, etc.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:49PM
How pre-WWII America was centrally planned:
1. Starting in the early 1800's, the various state and federal governments, along with private businesses, planned out and created a network of canal and river transportation routes to aid in commerce. Major examples of this were the Erie Canal (connecting New York and the east coast to the Great Lakes) and the Ohio & Erie Canal (connecting the Great Lakes to the Ohio River and from there the Mississippi). Some of these are still in operation today, e.g. the Intracoastal Waterway along the Atlantic coast.
2. Throughout the mid- to late-1800's, the government was working alongside railroad companies to plan both rail routes and what sort of development would occur along those routes. Those rail routes are in many cases still here, and if they're not here as rail routes they are often here as major roads. For instance, Amtrak still runs trains over a section of the original transcontinental railroad route, and a bunch of the rest of it is now Interstate 80.
3. There was a massive central planning effort between 1861 and 1865 which was needed to fight the Civil War on both sides (the Confederates were far more centrally planned than the Union, because they got much more desperate).
4. As you get into the Gilded Age, the central planning stops being run by the government, and is instead being run by JP Morgan and the many many businesses he controlled, with substantial influence of other major industrialists like Andrew Carnegie, John Rockafeller, and Henry Ford. Morgan was instrumental in managing several financial crises, to the point where the US Secretary of the Treasury was often answering to Morgan rather than the other way around. Throughout this period, the US military is regularly deployed in Latin America and the Pacific to take over countries on behalf of US industrialists - they even invent the country of Panama specifically because Nicaragua was refusing to allow a canal to be built.
5. Woodrow Wilson adds a great deal of government central planning to first support the Entente powers (Britain, France, et al) and later send US troops to fight World War I. This process greatly increases the US Army's standing forces and hardware.
6. Franklin Roosevelt spends all of the 1930's engaged in central planning efforts to try to mitigate the worst effects of the Great Depression.
But I'm sure you'll be quite happy to go on pretending that the concept of central planning was invented by Communists or something.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:04PM
Like start wars that kill millions or tens of millions of people? Drain the Aral Sea? Commit the genocides of history? "Do anything" isn't necessarily better than "do nothing", and a vicious state is not better than anarchy.
Perhaps we should go through this list of centrally planned states to see what needs to be thrown out? Either on the grounds that it has actually created ecological disasters contrary to assertion, or on the grounds that it isn't actually a centrally planned state. Central planning is more than just regulation or having some central government that decides a few things. It's allocation of most resources over the entire state based on what an ignorant committee or person decides is appropriate.