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[Douglas]

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2009,09:22)

Quote (WhatIsTrue @ Dec. 09 2009,09:04) To play devil's advocate, while the warming of the planet would certainly have severe climate consequences, aren't they more manageable than perhaps another mini or major ice age?  Wouldn't mankind, and land creatures in generally fare much worse if much of the planet's land masses were covered in ice again?  To the extent that we can ward off another cyclical ice age, isn't that to our benefit? I mentioned this already, but there is a case to be made that by combating global warming we could paradoxically be saving Western Europe from an ice age. Stuart

If I remember correctly, we were headed for an ice age – eventually. I imagine it would have been at least several thousand more years which would have given us quite a lot of time from the present.

I don't think the hypothetical elimination of the next ice age at some indeterminate point in the future is a positive trade for warming driven climate change today.

I don't think millions of people in Bangladesh would think so either, nor the billions (I mean billions, not millions) of people dependent on rain fed agriculture or glacial melt water – in the event those things cease to support them sufficiently.

I read an article recently where a politician from the government of Bangladesh was interviewed, saying he wanted the rest of the world to be prepared to take 20 million refugees from Bangladesh over the coming 4 decades as they lose land usability to the sea. I don't think for one minute that this country would rush to commit to acommodate a large number of those people and yet if I were in the shoes the Bangladesh people stand in – as soon as you told me no, I'd start raising an army to fight for what I need – if the people are doomed anyway and through little direct fault of their own – they might as well get a chance to fight for what they need?

I complete agree that an ice age would be a big problem for the developed Northern hemisphere (which is also suffering problems elsewhere for indigenous peoples due to melting ice and permafrost) but it didn't seem like an imminent threat to me and still doesn't.

The debate will be over soon enough I suspect.

[Douglas]

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2009,19:33)

How likely would you say it is that the planet is growing?  How would that happen? Stuart

It probably is either shrinking or growing very slightly.

On the one hand you occasionally get matter added when things arrive from space, and on the other a certain amount of energy (and therefore mass) is released as heat from the core of the planet from nuclear processes (as opposed to the sun).

Can't think it's a particularly significant effect either way though.

Just realised I probably put the post mentioning thermohaline circulation in the wrong thread.

[Douglas]

Quote (942767 @ Dec. 08 2009,09:47)

Quote (Douglas @ Sep. 05 2009,08:33) This is a link to a story about drought in Africa (amongst other things). http://www.guardian.co.uk/environ….a-10-10 I'm curious – how many of you care? And how many care enough to actually do anything? Hi Douglas: I just read this, and I do care, and since you brought it up, what do you suggest that we do? Love in Christ, Marty

I think I'll stick with the the two things already mentioned in my reply to T8.

Either to go with the mainstream consensus that there still may be a chance to limit the damage and act accordingly (a responsible course of action even if it weren't as bad as it could be in the end).

Or to extrapolate from the historic tendency of the mainstream consensus to be considerably too optimistic and hedge your bets by preparing for the worst.

As pointed out, one can actually do both.

I didn't entirely make the post so much to try to suggest courses of action (since mine is resolved and in progress) as out of interest for the opinions other people here held and what, if anything, other people were doing about it.

[Douglas]

Quote (princess of the king @ Dec. 08 2009,13:15)

Quote As for what I am doing about it, well, if I listened to the IPCC and the more optimistic end of the spectrum, I'd go on about my low carbon footprint. I calculate at around 0.5t household (I don't actually live in a house) annual emissions, and 3.5t travelling (I could cut this dramatically but only if allowed to telework). That's about half the average for my country, although I probably contribute somewhat more than average for in secondary emissions (I like meat). However, it would be hypocritical of me to go on about that given that it's as much a consequence of lifestyle choices to reflect personal economic circumstances (and the price of houses in this country), Although I argue the reduction in emissions is real regardless of the main motivation (and the sacrifices are real too). Otherwise I'm taking the view that the worst case scenarios are utterly catastrophic, and I need to prepare for those. I need to prepare for those because I can not reasonably expect anyone else is going to look after me if those scenarios come to pass and the simple act of surviving could become difficult. Logically having secured personal survival one could consider the case to help other people do the same. ……..or douglas we can do both.

Very true, which technically I am, albeit without much real expectation that my low carbon footprint is likely to make a lot of difference from where things stand today.

[Douglas]

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 08 2009,17:23)

The Medieval Warm Period appears to me to have been an effect concentrated around the North Atlantic, although its effect on oxygen isotopic ratios in stalagmites in New Zealand suggests that there was some global effect in play.  One suggested consequence of global warming is that the Gulf Stream will be disrupted and Western Europe will actually freeze rather than warm up.  I wonder if the MWP and Little Ice Age that followed it are more like extreme effects that happen in particularly susceptible climatic systems when a lesser global fluctuation occurs.  I realise this is too general to be of much use but there is a distinct possibility in this case that Europe might end up under ice. Stuart

Thermohaline circulation is pretty interesting – I've not read anything yet where they put a probability of more than 10% on the Gulf stream shutting down. I have read that it has slowed a little so far, but in this country overall we're still seeing temperatures at the high and sometimes record end of the scale disproportionately often – so overall warming has more than compensated (still small scale effects in this country). Mostly changes in this country to date seem to concern the wind (more of it) and the rain (more extreme precipitation events).

I get the impression the single event that rapidly shutdown thermohaline circulation in the past was likely the release of a large glacial lake from the Laurentide ice sheet – and currently there is no immediate candidate for an equivalent event, although the melt rate is increasing from Greenland – still an essentually gradual process. Recently read a study suggesting a few months was sufficient for the process last time.

The effects of climate shifts are certainly not uniform in either direction or severity – a global average of <1C highlights that with the effects so far today.

Generally disruption to both ocean and atmospheric circulation seem to be likely events at some point or another – potentially happening quite abruptly when they occur, with far reaching implications for weather patterns and local climates, with the consequent result for agriculture.

[Douglas]

Quote (terraricca @ Dec. 08 2009,11:12)

hi doug you right ,i am in no danger my self ,after a while it does not make sense anymore because we allways end up in the oposite corners, on the same argument . what that acomplish?

Nothing if it's a dogmatic exchange of repeated opinions until one or both parties give up in exhaustion.

Everything if it's an intelligent exchange of ideas and opinions with open minded rational consideration by both parties to the thoughts of the other.

Sometimes I find people can correct me or point out mistakes I am making – and I find it very valuable and helpful.

[Douglas]

Quote (terraricca @ Dec. 08 2009,10:32)

hi stu what hell you doing on this site, this site is for believers, so they can enrich themselfs or share theyr experience, i can t see what you are doing here PLEASE EXPLAIN YOUR ACTION ??

I often wonder the same thing too!

Not that I'm complaining – Stuart seems to generally be reasonable and fairly intelligent – plus he probably has one of the larger overlaps with the sorts of things I know a little about than most other people on the site.

I think you should actually welcome his presence – if your beliefs are strong enough that you can logically argue them, you gain by debating them. Debate can help you solidify your own opinions and also – it's really quite bad to become a camp of “yes” men.

As soon as everyone says “yes” that's the only answer you will ever hear, right or wrong (not that I think this site is in any immediate danger of large numbers of members all agreeing on most things!).

[Douglas]

Quote (terraricca @ Dec. 08 2009,10:23)

hi doug in a way you right if it came from man. just a example;supose you just got a new car ,not knowing how to make it work you ask some one for instructions .the person you ask turns around and show you a carton of books he said it is in there,what you thing will guide you to find the right manual?

Even if the bible itself came directly from God (I personally take the view it was written, translated, and printed by people), as soon as any other person tries to use it to alter your behaviour – they are using their interpretation (that of a man) to do so.

So any interpretation of the bible is necessarily coming from a man, even if one didn't believe the book itself did.

In the situation you describe, I would find the right manual by looking through the books. I would be looking for books with titles, covers and contents pages that appeared to contain the information I was looking for. Which is to say, I would necessarily search first for car related books, and narrow that down to books appearing to potentially contain the information I wanted.

Provided the books have contents pages, indexes, meaningful titles etc. I should be able to devise a search strategy that finds me the book fairly quickly, if it's in there.

Ideally of course, they would be logically filed, or even better – all their details would also exist on a computer database to allow me to use a computer to do my search many times faster!

[Douglas]

Quote (WhatIsTrue @ Dec. 08 2009,08:06)

Douglas, You said: {quote]Natural earthly cycles putting us on a course for a climate regime not seen for millions of years?[/quote] Is that really true?  What about the Medieval Warming period? Has your view changed at all in light of recent revelations about outright data manipulation by top global warming scientists? Quote But more dramatic still has been the new evidence from the CRU's leaked documents, showing just how the evidence was finally rigged. The most quoted remark in those emails has been one from Prof Jones in 1999, reporting that he had used “Mike [Mann]'s Nature trick of adding in the real temps” to “Keith's” graph, in order to “hide the decline”. Invariably this has been quoted out of context. Its true significance, we can now see, is that what they intended to hide was the awkward fact that, apart from that one tree, the Yamal data showed temperatures not having risen in the late 20th century but declining. What Jones suggested, emulating Mann's procedure for the “hockey stick” (originally published in Nature), was that tree-ring data after 1960 should be eliminated, and substituted – without explanation – with a line based on the quite different data of measured global temperatures, to convey that temperatures after 1960 had shot up. A further devastating blow has now been dealt to the CRU graphs by an expert contributor to McIntyre's Climate Audit, known only as “Lucy Skywalker”. She has cross-checked with the actual temperature records for that part of Siberia, showing that in the past 50 years temperatures have not risen at all. (For further details see the science blog Watts Up With That.) Source It seems to me that the data is far more complex than the global warming scientists have represented, and that we do not yet fully know how to model the earth's climate.  For example, did any climate scientist predict the current non-warming trend of the last ten years? In many ways, global warming science at the institutional level seems to mirror organized religion in that the dogma is established whether or not the facts support it.  'Heretics' appear to be shunned rather than rationally engaged.

I think it'll turn out to be true. Over hundreds of thousands to millions of years CO2 and temperature move fairly synchronously (although CO2 isn't the only mechanism at work).

Seems to me the medieval warm period was certainly warmer than now in some places, but not thought to be globally so. Certainly it would appear not to have resulted in thresholds being crossed that cause an irreversible process (in human timescales).

I think you'll find the decreased warming trend over ten years requires you to pick your starting and finishing year rather carefully – it's the longer term trend that's most important here. It was predicted to some extent inasmuch as we're leaving a period of unusually low solar activity behind meaning that the sun contributed relatively less to temperatures than normal for much of that (it doesn't all have to be written off as natural variability).

The prediction that you necessarily can make from that is that we will start to see a period of above trend warming to compensate as solar activity picks up again (although other things influence, such as El Nino/La Nina).

Certainly couldn't argue that the data and environment is far more complex than the scientists have represented or indeed than they understand. The problem to me is simple – the rate at which events have started to happen (within the last few years primarily) has tended to be faster than the worst case predictions – in other words we seem to be underestimating the problem scientifically speaking (Arctic sea ice melt is a good example, and total summer time loss might be only years away now).

The models don't seem to be the place to be looking if you want a clear picture – paleoclimate in the past seems a better bet. Using paleoclimate data most of the predicted effects actually come out far worse than the models – though timescale isn't fully determined in many cases (increasingly research tends to suggest shorter timescales are possible for many effects).

The extent of feelings in the climate change discussion are indeed arguably running towards the strength of feeling you get with dogma or religion – it is a deeply contentious issue, presumably because of the scale of the issue (regardless of whether or not you believe this is happening, it's a big issue).

As for the millions of years thing: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8299426.stm

Given the close relationship between CO2 and temperature, I don't think I'm too thrilled to know the figures for the sea level and temperature then.

Actually come to think of it, if you want to claim it's all a conspiracy, it would take something pretty spectacular to get so many different people to work together to arrange even all the articles I've read over the last few years.

Pretty clever to be able to shift the weather in my own country too, even if the changes so far are relatively less dramatic than in other more sensitive parts of the world…

[Douglas]

Quote (terraricca @ Dec. 07 2009,07:58)

the Bible, God's creater record book and futur visions ?for man?how come so much decied ?so much miss understanding,so much divission,so many interpretations. why,why,why.???? PLEASE ANSWER TRUHTFULLY

I would say because in a way it is used as a weapon, a means to try to control other people and to justify whatever one wants to make it justify.

To study it as a scholar is one thing, but as soon as you seek to use your conclusions to change the actions of others, you seek to use it that way if you it in doing so.

P1: “I say you must do this.”
P2: “Why? Ridiculous?”
P1: “The bible says so, therefore I must be right.”
P2: (How can they argue with “divine” authority, save by finding their own quote?)

[Douglas]

Quote (bodhitharta @ Dec. 08 2009,05:20)

Quote (Gene @ Dec. 08 2009,03:37) BD……….This  is your thread and your purpose is to try to divert the faith in GOD and Christ, You have many time denied the Blood sacrifice of Christ Here and have not Part with us in this seeing you reject his blood (life) sacrifice, you seem to be trying to push Islam more then seeking the truth. What peace2all has posted and said is right. Be careful for scripture has not said in vain GOD will affect them who affect Us, you are on dangerous ground .  You continued rejection of the sacrifice of Christ being applied to you, will cause you to dies in your sins. God will not accept you if you reject his (payment) for your sins.  Dump Islam and become a follower of Jesus, who redeemed us from death and delivered us unto the glorious Kingdom of our GOD and FATHER. IMO peace and love……………………gene Actually this thread was to point out that when someone calls Allah the moon god they should understand that even God in the name of Yahweh has also been accused of such and that's because ALLAH is YAHWEH or YHVH or Jehovah or Elohim God goes by many names and the Most beautiful names belong to God.

It does not matter what you call a tree, it remains a tree.

[Douglas]

Quote (Constitutionalist @ Dec. 07 2009,04:20)

Quote (Douglas @ Dec. 06 2009,09:12) Quote (Constitutionalist @ Dec. 06 2009,17:54) Something new about it? Rainfall and drought in equatorial east Africa during the past 1,100 years: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/africa-drought.html Ancient drought 'changed history' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4505516.stm They must have been driving Gas Guzzlers 75,000 years ago. I think the global warming is caused from the global ice age you folks were crying about 15 years ago. I actually have to say thank you on that second link. It's quite interesting. However, are you aware of Toba catastrophe theory and the premise that the last major supervolcanic eruption pushed the human race to the brink of extinction – around this many years ago? Never claimed gas guzzlers were the only mechanism by which large (enough to collapse civilisations) shifts in climate can occur, only that atmospheric pollution is causing this particular climate shift. You could have also mentioned the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs as a time of extreme climate instability, or the PETM, or the Snowball Earth hypothesis. The science however is pretty clear – in this particular event it is our activities causing the changes, not the natural world. Africa is somewhat of a marginal case – always has been pretty arid. So it's a little complex and harder to argue that some place. I can't deny there is precedent for mega-droughts there in the past – again it's interesting that there is a link to warming – which we are now causing though, making this current one collectively our fault. Since you're going to offer explanations in terms of denial can you give me one to explain the net loss of billions of tonnes of ice from both polar extremes? (including Antarctica as of recently) Or the increase in methane outgassing from permafrost? And for that matter the early signs of methane clathrate release from the sea bed in artic regions? If you want to quote precedents from paleoclimate that's fine, this planet has had extremes from near total ice cover to rainforest at the polar extremes. It was also a totally different planet and the human race has never had to survive changes of those magnitudes. For those of us already close to the cliff – Africa being only one example – the little push we are giving things now is already almost enough to finish them. Not denying land use and mismanagement of resources are also issues there. Natural earthly cycles. And the gas guzzling comment was sarcasm.

Natural earthly cycles putting us on a course for a climate regime not seen for millions of years?

Not that I intend to argue the science too much. I had a prolonged and pretty intellectually challenging debate not so long ago with someone (a senior lecturer at a nearby university) who was not only extremely intelligent but very well informed on the subject.

The fact that we both agreed we were within reasonable bounds for rational debate, and that the final consensus (after some weeks) was far closer to my starting position should have been utterly terrifying considering what the topic of the debate was.

Good luck.

[Douglas]

Quote (t8 @ Dec. 06 2009,17:45)

I think everyone cares to different degrees, but there are many problems in this world and each person certainly cannot concentrate on them all. Often what some people do is choose a problem and get in behind it. Some people are involved in spreading the gospel, others provide food banks, still others provide vaccines, and some make saving the planet their concern, and the list goes on. I saw a documentary on Ethiopia once and they talked about seasonal droughts and one criticism (from the US) laid at the foot of the Ethiopian government was that they were not stock piling resources for famine and were just living for the day and in the event of famine would just rely on foreign aid when the time came. It does say in scripture that if you do not work, you do not eat. Sure that doesn't mean that all Ethiopians are lazy and deserve this, but there is a case to be made that we can all help ourselves if we try and even if we live in a land of sever famines. Look at Australia. They have serious droughts at times and it is one of the most prosperous nations on earth. Their standard of living is very high and much of the country lacks basic fresh water and they suffer from some ghastly natural disasters too. Still, in all this there is a place for charity and we should care, but we should also be wise enough to store provision for the bad times. I believe that anyone can do this if they try and sometimes education is the best gift you can give. Of course if you are hungry, learning is not the immediate answer, food is. As for giving, there are a number of reputable charities that we can give to and if we target hunger ourselves, we can invent all kinds of ways of helping those in need. Also, as far as your comment saying that only one person cared enough to respond, I think I need to remind you that there are currently 163849 posts and 2121 topics. I doubt that I have partly read more than 400 topics and of those I may have read a fraction of the posts that they contain. So given that, many just wouldn't have even seen this topic, especially considering that you posted in the “Skeptics Place” category. But now that we are on the topic, what are you going to do about it? And feel free to get others here to back your proposal if you have one.

Well, that was a pretty well thought out reply I think, and a lot of good points that don't merit too much argument. It's certainly true people act in different ways and focus in different areas, with good reason. It's also true there are many posts and topics here (one reason to bump this one), and this isn't as keenly watched perhaps as the believers area – but of course this isn't really a directly religious or belief based matter (not of the variety that would belong in that section of the site anyway).

With respect to Africa, it isn't just climate change that is responsible for their problems – but nonetheless I believe the more prosperous and developed world should take responsibility for their portion of the problems they have caused. If that means drought frequency changed from 1 in 10 to 1 in 3, that's quite fundamental.

I don't dispute that the looking after your neighbour type philosophy is pretty decent, since if everyone did that, everyone would be looked after. However, when it comes to emissions of atmospheric pollutants I will argue that everyone is your neighbour, because the atmosphere belongs to everyone and we can not contain pollutants released into it to the portion that belongs to us – as individuals or nation states. Additionally the more fundamental effects of pushing the climate out of the current stable regime are also global.

Certainly Australia is prosperous, and so is America – both have an extremely high level of per capita emissions however. Prosperity at the expense of others is not something I admire.

As for what I am doing about it, well, if I listened to the IPCC and the more optimistic end of the spectrum, I'd go on about my low carbon footprint. I calculate at around 0.5t household (I don't actually live in a house) annual emissions, and 3.5t travelling (I could cut this dramatically but only if allowed to telework). That's about half the average for my country, although I probably contribute somewhat more than average for in secondary emissions (I like meat).

However, it would be hypocritical of me to go on about that given that it's as much a consequence of lifestyle choices to reflect personal economic circumstances (and the price of houses in this country), Although I argue the reduction in emissions is real regardless of the main motivation (and the sacrifices are real too).

Otherwise I'm taking the view that the worst case scenarios are utterly catastrophic, and I need to prepare for those. I need to prepare for those because I can not reasonably expect anyone else is going to look after me if those scenarios come to pass and the simple act of surviving could become difficult. Logically having secured personal survival one could consider the case to help other people do the same.

So really, if I were to encourage anyone here to do anything – it would be one of those two, depending on how they see things. This said however, my experience to date is that so few people take climate change seriously I wouldn't expect much real response at all to that – a mix of denial, indifference and vague concern perhaps.

It is still something I wanted to start a discussion on though because I think it is increasingly a big issue and given that most people here exhibit beliefs that should promote positive behaviours in terms of both taking care of the world and each other – I was curious to see what take people had on the whole thing.

[Douglas]

Quote (Constitutionalist @ Dec. 06 2009,17:54)

Something new about it? Rainfall and drought in equatorial east Africa during the past 1,100 years: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/africa-drought.html Ancient drought 'changed history' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4505516.stm They must have been driving Gas Guzzlers 75,000 years ago. I think the global warming is caused from the global ice age you folks were crying about 15 years ago.

I actually have to say thank you on that second link. It's quite interesting. However, are you aware of Toba catastrophe theory and the premise that the last major supervolcanic eruption pushed the human race to the brink of extinction – around this many years ago?

Never claimed gas guzzlers were the only mechanism by which large (enough to collapse civilisations) shifts in climate can occur, only that atmospheric pollution is causing this particular climate shift.

You could have also mentioned the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs as a time of extreme climate instability, or the PETM, or the Snowball Earth hypothesis. The science however is pretty clear – in this particular event it is our activities causing the changes, not the natural world.

Africa is somewhat of a marginal case – always has been pretty arid. So it's a little complex and harder to argue that some place. I can't deny there is precedent for mega-droughts there in the past – again it's interesting that there is a link to warming – which we are now causing though, making this current one collectively our fault.

Since you're going to offer explanations in terms of denial can you give me one to explain the net loss of billions of tonnes of ice from both polar extremes? (including Antarctica as of recently)

Or the increase in methane outgassing from permafrost? And for that matter the early signs of methane clathrate release from the sea bed in artic regions?

If you want to quote precedents from paleoclimate that's fine, this planet has had extremes from near total ice cover to rainforest at the polar extremes. It was also a totally different planet and the human race has never had to survive changes of those magnitudes.

For those of us already close to the cliff – Africa being only one example – the little push we are giving things now is already almost enough to finish them.

Not denying land use and mismanagement of resources are also issues there.

[Douglas]

Quote (Douglas @ Sep. 05 2009,08:33)

This is a link to a story about drought in Africa (amongst other things). http://www.guardian.co.uk/environ….a-10-10 I'm curious – how many of you care? And how many care enough to actually do anything?

So, the only person who actually cares enough to even reply is someone who sometimes is accused of spreading hate and various other negative things? (I don't make that accusation of Stuart)

Am I missing something here? Is it what I should expect?

In the event that Africa collapses (entirely) and India and China are next up, I don't suppose I'll bother to post again about it, not here at least. I'm forced to conclude most people here simply don't care.

[Douglas]

Quote (kejonn @ Dec. 06 2009,00:27)

Hey bodi, why are you asking this question in the “Skeptics” section? Many of us have a hard time believing Jesus actually existed! Or maybe you did it because you are “skeptical” of the story? In any case, taking the story at face value, one must wonder why Jesus said “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. Not the words of someone who expected to rise again in three days.

Did he ask it here, or did someone esle move it here?

[Douglas]

Quote (t8 @ Dec. 04 2009,10:34)

Pierre-Simon Laplace suggested that a sufficiently powerful intellect could, if it knew the position and velocity of every particle at a given time, along with the laws of nature, calculate the position of any particle at any other time: An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. — Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, Introduction. 1814 A philosophical look at two things. The Theory of Everything and touching on the idea of an all knowing intellect.

And wouldn't total knowledge and strict pre-destination make it all totally pointless?

Besides when you're talking about things as big as universes, it's absurd to claim that us humans are especially important on a scale that large (even more at the level of the individual).

It did occur to me that if we could find a way to send information back in time we could transmit information only with no currently existing structures to people.

I don't think I subscribe to time travel though. I don't think the past and future exist – only the present. Even if time can proceed at different relative rates around the universe – I don't think it's a fourth dimension in which movement is freely possible as with the 3 we definitely inhabit.

[Douglas]

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 05 2009,07:01)

Quote (t8 @ Dec. 04 2009,10:34) Pierre-Simon Laplace suggested that a sufficiently powerful intellect could, if it knew the position and velocity of every particle at a given time, along with the laws of nature, calculate the position of any particle at any other time: An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. — Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, Introduction. 1814 A philosophical look at two things. The Theory of Everything and touching on the idea of an all knowing intellect. On the first, he had not heard of quantum theory. On the second, he used the word if (or si, probably), which indicates that he did not think there is any such entity that can conceive of the positions of all particles, and although he “was born and died Catholic” according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he saw himself as essentially an atheist, as can be seen in the way he embraced causal determinism and its consequential materialism (although from the point of modern physics it is easier to disagree with this simplistic determinism). In fact the “intellect” referred to is called Laplace's demon by others, and I suppose you could also call it Laplace's megacomputer. As for it being a god, would the god have to know the motions of its own particles?  Are gods made of particles? The very possibility of any gods of a Judeo-christian kind are called into question by the ideas of Laplace. Stuart

Going to wade a little out of my depth here, not being a quantum physicist, but does quantum mechanics necessarily say the position and speed are not certain?

See, as I understand Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, it says we can't know the speed and position of a particle at the same time. I thought though that it was because we can't take the measurement without changing the state of the system we're trying to measure – not because there is fundamental uncertainty to the particle itself.

Is position a quantum attribute, or not? Even if it is, shoudn't a particle still be in a definite quantum state – just one we can't observe without interfering with it?

Isn't that where you come up with Schrodingers cat? It's a black box and we don't know what is going on inside it, so we have to say it is uncertain and the cat has an ambiguous wave function permitting it to be both alive and dead, which is collapsed when we observe it? Now, the cat knows it's alive or dead and in actual fact inside the box it will be one or the other. To require conscious observation to collapse a wave function and select a probability doesn't really make intuitive sense to me – I think the universe has a damn good idea what's going on, the only issue that then causes is that it renders free will an illusion and gives you a predetermined universe where theoretically a computer larger than the universe itself could model it (impossible if you accept the usual definition of the universe as strictly universal and encompassing everything).

I'd hate to commit that all intelligent entities in the whole universe must be strictly particle based but I would go so far to agree that any entity exhibiting memory and intelligence necessarily requires mechanisms of some sort for both computation and data storage. For the entity to exist, so those structures would need to.

Oh and obviously for communication to occur with the physical universe, you must be able to produce some sort of measureable physical affect – even if it's a very small and weak one (the minimum I can think of offhand would be to be able to selectively stimulate specific neurons within a human brain)

Incidentally all my teachers ever taught me was that the uncertainty is fundamental – but none of them ever managed to explain to me why that was necessarily so. It had the odour of people dressing ignorance up as fact and I didn't manage to validate it as something to accept as a fact yet.

[Douglas]

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 05 2009,19:13)

Quote (terraricca @ Dec. 05 2009,11:57) hi all this is a stupid philosophy,you have to accepted first the lie propost. IF. What is a stupid philosophy? Your realise that Laplace's 'demon' is like Maxwell's demon, which sat between two flasks, distinguishing between individual molecules… (from the Holy Wikipedia): … if we conceive of a being whose faculties are so sharpened that he can follow every molecule in its course, such a being, whose attributes are as essentially finite as our own, would be able to do what is impossible to us. For we have seen that molecules in a vessel full of air at uniform temperature are moving with velocities by no means uniform, though the mean velocity of any great number of them, arbitrarily selected, is almost exactly uniform. Now let us suppose that such a vessel is divided into two portions, A and B, by a division in which there is a small hole, and that a being, who can see the individual molecules, opens and closes this hole, so as to allow only the swifter molecules to pass from A to B, and only the slower molecules to pass from B to A. He will thus, without expenditure of work, raise the temperature of B and lower that of A, in contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics… Actually it is only t8 who is trying to force his god into this situation.  He would make a good Catholic apologist actually, if that is not a oxymoron. Stuart

It just struck me that opening and closing the hole isn't entirely consistent with zero expenditure of work?

There are some interesting things that can alter the temperature of fluids in this sort of way, though I suspect they still require expenditure of work and therefore comply with the rather unyielding laws of thermodynamics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube

I haven't thought this all the way through but isn't that a little like the postulated demon? (except I doubt it contravenes thermodynamics)

[Douglas]

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 05 2009,19:28)

Quote (terraricca @ Dec. 05 2009,11:54) hi all if Christ was God,why should he bother to do anything ,he could have clean the planet and start over ,where was the contest? If one global flood just raises the question of god's incompetence, then two should prove it beyond doubt! Stuart

Toba catastrophe theory suggests floods aren't the best way to go anyway!

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