dutchroll

Rain might cool you, your car roof, or your driveway on a hot day (through evaporative cooling), but the water cycle does not cool the whole planet. The only thing which will cool the planet is if more energy is radiated into space from the Earth than it receives from the Sun. Ironically a warmer atmosphere will result in more or higher density rainfall due to basic physics (Clausius-Clapeyron). Also there's no evidence it's raining less today than it was eons ago.

Well... a) I have direct family (including my sister, niece and nephew, and my uncle and his family which include quite a number of first cousins) who live in the USA, are US citizens, and vote there. b) Both my sister and niece have previously been shafted by the US health insurance system - one of the most appalling health insurance/healthcare systems in the modern western world. Although they (just) have their heads above water there now, some years ago it cost my family in Australia a lot of money (in the many thousands of dollars) to help them. What happened to them in the USA would not have happened in any other western country. c) With the USA being one of the most powerful economies in the world, what happens there economically can often be directly relevant to what happens here. The entire Global Financial Crisis which actually sent some Australian companies into bankruptcy was triggered by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis and bank bailout. So it matters whether anyone likes it or not. d) US trade and defence policies directly affect Australia in various ways. Trump will be particularly destructive if he carries through with his threat to slap 40% trade tariffs onto China and start a trade war. We will be collateral damage in that, so I feel I'm entitled to have say about it!

Lol. "I don't like Trump as a person, but I hate others so much I'd love to inflict him on them and the rest of the world!" What a lovely sentiment!

I know and work with a significant number of conservative-voting people. So far I have known two (2) who like Trump (both of whom are twits in more ways than one), the remainder generally despising pretty much everything about him. However if a demonstrated misogynistic womanising so and so who pays no income tax and has spent his entire life becoming rich using other people's money and repeatedly narrowly avoiding bankruptcy symbolises all of your ideals - everything you look for and admire in a person - that's fine by me!

Friend of a friend the other day who is very pro-Trump stated that Hillary supported murdering babies after they were born. I asked him to provide a reference for any occasion where she'd ever said that. Silence. This is what the debate has come down to - people just making crap up because they hate her. Literally anything they want. I don't like her much (and Trump substantially less), but at least I don't make random crap up about either of them.

I tend to agree, in the sense that there is a subset of the population in the US (and elsewhere) who believe that blowing people up or shooting a group of people dead is the best way of expressing your frustration or anger with a situation and a good first step towards fixing the problem. Of course this is completely irrational thinking and behaviour. It causes enough trouble having Islamic extremists think this way, let alone anyone else. I do often wonder what goes on inside people's heads. It's more than simple "anger", which is generally the excuse put up by sympathisers. We all get angry about stuff sometimes, but we don't go out and plan to execute a bunch of people. There's something quite disturbing going on in the minds of some people who appear outwardly friendly, but harbour a deep degree of callous - virtually psychopathic - viciousness within themselves.

Surely this isn't possible. These guys are just patriots trying to do the right thing by their country! I mean, they were only planning to blow up 120 Somali refugees in an apartment complex...... Militia members arrested in alleged plot targeting Muslims

That's false. However being able to speak, read and write Japanese is normally a condition of getting a working visa there. I don't know how many Syrians speak, read and write Japanese but I bet it's not many.

To successfully sue for libel ("defamation" is the legal term these days) you have to prove damage to your reputation, Bull. I suspect that will be very difficult. It's also really, really expensive ($100k or more in legal fees before a judgement in made). If you lose, you pay Octave's costs as well as your own. Good luck.

Gosford-Wyong. Same diff.......

Bull seems to be having problems interpreting statistics in a sensible way (such as this link he posted showing that in 75% of Muslim countries, support for ISIS is in single digit figures - and in Iran and Lebanon it's actually zero). I have a lot of friends in Melbourne, none of whom are cowering in fear thinking they could be the next target of an African immigrant crime gang. However speaking of crime, I am getting heartily sick of the white unemployed aussies in this region stealing cars and setting them on fire near major interchanges and on main roads. It's just getting worse and worse. Honestly, if the muslims want to reach the lofty heights of criminality from their anglo-saxon compatriots around these parts, they really need to work a lot harder at it.

I'm not so sure of the maths behind that. In theory at least, deporting all AFL players and their supporters will leave a greater proportion of rugby league supporters in the country, per capita. In particular, the number of Queenslanders will be virtually unchanged whereas most Victorians, a number of New South Welshmen, plus most South Australians, West Australians, Tasmanians and Northern Territorians will leave. This should, if my calculations are correct, actually significantly lower the average IQ in the country,,,,,

For a start, Sharia law has no legal standing in Australia as such. None. It cannot have any legal standing unless it is actually passed into Australian law by the Government. Chances of that happening? Zero. They are not operating a "sharia court". They were using sharia principles in negotiated family divorce settlements. This allows the women involved to initiate a religious divorce from their religious marriage due to the unique complications in Islamic marriages before stuff ends up with the Family Court. Australian law however is still overriding. Once again, if it does not comply with Australian law, then it is illegal no matter what they are doing. It's no different to stealing from a 7-11. It's illegal and if you get caught you will be punished. Born and bred aussies break the law all the time and get punished for it. If muslims do, they get punished too. In fact where I live, a large number of born & bred aussies have no respect for Australian law at all. What's the difference? By the way, if you strictly want to wipe out all sharia principles from Australian society, you should lobby hard to ban the protection of personal property and family, because in fact that happens to a sharia principle too. Of course that would be a dumb thing to do, but it does show that before calling for a blanket prohibition on things it pays to actually know something about them.

That actually explains a lot. In your post above, Bull, you simultaneously make the following allegations: 1) There are 8.89 million muslims in Australia. 2) There are 2.6 to 3.6 million muslims in Australia. 3) 2.6% of Australia's population are muslim (which would be 598,000 muslims) 4) 14% of 8.89 million = a bit more than 63,000 (well yeah I guess that's "technically" true, although out by a factor of 20) 5) There are 63 million ISIS supporters worldwide (says who?) 6) That the proportion of ISIS supporters in a muslim population is the same in every country (not possible: ISIS are Sunnis, you fail to account for Shia muslims who hate ISIS and are generally singled out by them for execution, and the proportion of each varies hugely by country) This is why I take anything Reclaim Australia says with a grain of salt. My wife hates the fact that I often repeat stuff two or three or four times. I point out that on some forums and in some personal conversations, I seem to need to do this because it takes that number of times for people to actually realise that you've made a particular statement. That's why I repeatedly stated in a couple of my posts above that I am not advocating "doing nothing" about islamic extremism. Suffice to say that tactic didn't work, did it? "[idiot]" - was that comment directed personally at me, Bull?

It's hard to blow a murder a week out of proportion. Yes abuse happens to men too (and is equally wrong), but the stats are pretty clear and unambiguous about which side cops it the most. I've known a number of guys who got into relationships with psycho hose-beasts, but they're far less likely to be murdered by them unless the violence is perpetrated the other way round. So domestic violence is not a danger to society as a whole? And if it's been happening since day dot, it's not so much of a problem to be concerned about? Jesus.......

I wrote this above: So I'm not suggesting to "not worry at all". It is concerning enough to want the authorities to allocate significant resources to neutralising the threat. However I'm suggesting to temper your level of worrying appropriately. There are other bad things happening in our society in this country (e.g. a woman being murdered on average once a week by her domestic partner) which no-one seems to give a crap about because........Islamic terrorism. I never cease to be amazed at how people compartmentalise certain serious societal problems in order to avoid dealing with them, while spending almost all of their time worrying about certain others.

You may not like what Marty said but it's quite true. You've got more chance of being hit by lightning........or being murdered by one of your family.......than being killed by an IS extremist in a western country (please don't misinterpret this as a "we shouldn't bother doing anything about Islamic extremism" statement) However humans don't rationalise statistics or probabilities very well. In fact we're terrible at it. We are largely driven by fear, so even if something is extremely unlikely, we tend to be more concerned about it than other stuff which is far more likely (e.g. being killed in a car accident) if we're afraid of it. This is where ISIS use excellent tactics because the way they commit atrocities is specifically designed to create fear among the general population. You can die an awful death in a car accident, but the concept of dying by having your throat deliberately cut is so many times more frightening, yet so many times less likely. They also regularly claim credit for "lone wolf" extremist attacks - as the majority of the attacks in western countries upon investigation have shown to be. Again this multiplies the fear factor as people think ISIS are much more highly organised in western countries than they actually are.

Let's take a reading comprehension class, Gnarly Gnu. I did not "claim they were all Christian just because they were white and living in the west". I claimed that 2 of the 18 were Christian. I claimed that 6 of the 18 were white supremacists. I claimed that 3 of the 18 were neo-Nazis. I claimed that one was racist. I claimed that 6 of the 18 were antigovernment libertarians. I claimed that one was an anti-abortionist. I claimed that one was anti-immigrant. In 4 cases, I didn't even claim they were anything! All of these claims are backed by trial/investigation evidence, so have your whinge to the judges. The main thing they had in common was in fact that they were all right-wing extremists, and many of them were members of various white supremacist groups (again, trial evidence Gnu - have a whinge to the judge, not me). Certainly none of them were Islamic terrorists. ***reading comprehension note: "Certainly none of them were Islamic terrorists" written above does not mean "there are no Islamic terrorists". It does not mean "Islamic terrorism isn't a problem." It does not mean "we shouldn't be concerned about Islamic terror." It does not mean "we don't need to do anything about Islamic terrorism." So why did I even bother posting this? Admittedly I now have cause to wonder. However it does concern me that there are people out there who actually honestly believe the only organised pre-meditated sectarian killing and terror-driven attacks are carried out by Muslims against Christians. The reality is somewhat different. Had a good one line response to that but thought better of it. However if you could just precisely specify the things I have written or posted above which are "nonsense" and explain why they are nonsense too, that could help me a lot.

You didn't actually read what I said in the first few lines, did you? At no point did I state Islamic extremism wasn't the world's biggest problem as far as terrorism goes at the moment. I simply stated that it's not the only one. It's not that hard to understand. Who do you care more about, Bull? The university professor hacked to death in Bangladesh? Or the 9 year old girl murdered by the anti-immigrant white guys in the USA? It might surprise you to discover that I think they're both equally abhorrent deeds which need to be addressed by authorities and which should cause people to have a good hard look at themselves and their attitudes. It's not a frigging competition.

Mmmmm.....depends on where you look and by discounting a significant string of "minor" terrorist events you're also distorting the numbers a bit. Tim McVeigh executed 168 people in a carefully planned bombing in 1995 in Oklahoma city. He was a white, Christian, born and bred American, anti-government libertarian. In the 15 years until the Orlando nightclub shooting, white extremists in the United States had murdered more people than Islamic extremists. Of course if you look at data from the Middle East where the wars are being waged, it's true that Islamic extremists are mostly responsible for terror bombings and slaughter - by default. The white extremist murders include: 2004 - Christopher Lay murdered a guard in a bank robbery. He had a list of people he was going after whom he deemed responsible for the Government intervention in the Waco siege. 2008 - Jim Adkinson killed two and injured seven others in a rage against gays and liberals. 2009 - Keith Luke, neo Nazi, killed two men and raped and critically injured a woman because they weren't white. 2009 - Robert Poplawski, an anti-government white supremacist, ambushed and murdered 3 police officers. 2009 - Albert Gaxiola, Shawna Forde and Joshua Bush murdered a man and his 9 year old daughter. They were robbing the house to help fund their anti-immigrant organisation. 2009 - James von Brunn, neo Nazi and white supremacist, murdered a security guard and injured a bystander in a planned attack at the US Holocaust museum. 2010 - Andrew Stack, anti-government libertarian, crashed a light plane into the IRS building in Austin Texas, killing one person. 2010 - Raymond Peake murdered a man at a gun range in Carlisle Pennsylvania so he could steal an AR-15 assault rifle to use with an organisation seeking to overthrow the US government. 2011 - David Pederson murdered 4 people to "reclaim our country" and help "purify and preserve the white race". 2012 - White supremacist militia group "FEAR" murdered 4 people in Georgia, including Michael Roark and his girlfriend who had discovered their plans. They were planning many more and had amassed a stockpile of weapons to use. 2012 - Wade Michael Page, neo nazi and white supremacist, murdered 6 people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. 2012 - Terry Smith and accomplices from the anti-government "Sovereign Citizens Movement" ambushed and murdered 2 police officers in St John's Parish. 2014 - Frazier Cross, white supremacist and Ku Klux Clan member, murdered 3 people at Kansas City Jewish institutions. He shouted "Heil Hitler!" as he was arrested. 2014 - Jerad Miller, anti-government libertarian, ambushed and murdered two police officers then murdered a bystander in a parking lot in Las Vegas. They discovered a written manifesto where he planned to target others. 2014 - Eric Frein, anti-government libertarian murdered one police officer and wounded another. They discovered a letter where he called for a revolution and planned to commit mass murder against Government and law enforcement. 2015 - Dylan Roof, white supremacist and racist, murdered 9 black people at a church service in Charleston, stating "You rape our women and you're taking over our country, and you have to go." 2015 - Robert Dear, Christian anti-abortionist, murdered 3 people and wounded 9 others in a planned attack on behalf of "the Army of God" at a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado. Sobering reading huh? Imagine if they'd managed to carry out the rest of their plans or they hadn't been really poor marksmen! I sometimes wonder how many people of similar mindset we have lurking in Australia, but who we're ignoring because Islamic extremists are our "only problem"?

Yeah it's a sad indictment of the darker side of human nature. Kids aren't born to be terrorists (just as they're not born with a particular religion). They're educated that way by their parents. If they're caught at a young enough age they could be un-brainwashed but if they're trapped in that environment into their teen years they're most likely screwed.

In reality a Trump win would be really, really bad for the UK, Australia, and most of the rest of the world. His adulation of Putin would have major strategic consequences for Europe (including the UK) and his isolationism and protectionism would severely hurt our economies.

A fact is something verified to be true. For example, the output of fossil-fuel derived CO2 from human sources is easily verified to a reasonable degree of accuracy by a simple chemical formula and the fact that we know how much fossil fuel we produce (and therefore combust) each year. So for just the USA, the CO2 emissions every year are about 6 billion metric tonnes of CO2. The accelerating loss of ice in the Arctic is a fact verified by a number of different organisations using both direct observation and indirect observation by satellite measurements of Arctic gravitational fields (the thicker the ice mass, the stronger the field). Neither of these are "beliefs". There are many, many more factual examples. Of course if you really want to, you can take facts and edit them to suit your view. Here is a graph I posted several years ago (my own commentary in red) to show Arctic ice extent. It's just simple data, but if you chop out a few parts you can show the decline is just a myth peddled by greenies and really it's staging a spectacular recovery (original data source: National Snow and Ice Data Centre): [ATTACH]48008._xfImport[/ATTACH] So I guess if you wanted to pick and choose what you show people, you could say it's just a matter of opinion whether arctic ice really is in serious and continual decline. Regrettably a lot of the anti-global warming arguments end up a bit like this. But it makes some people feel good about being able to sit back, relax, and carry on with business as usual without feeling guilty about it. We don't like guilt or blame even if the problem we created is totally unintentional, so we tend to pick a position which thoroughly absolves us of any. It's like the guy I saw on a (real-life) medical show recently with a gangrenous foot. He just ignored it, convincing himself it wasn't really that bad, especially because he eventually couldn't feel it anyway (strangely ignored the smell, and the visual reality). It had started in the tips of his toes. By the time he got to hospital it was at the stage where he had to get his leg amputated. Classic human behaviour. For all our intelligence, we're pretty irrational sometimes, particularly when acceptance of a fact might lead to unpleasant consequences.

Yes science is always open to change but the increase in global temperatures is actually both empirically (directly) observed from numerous sources, and also indirectly observed from numerous sources. Indirect observations include significantly changing patterns of flora and fauna behaviour which only happens in adaptation to warmer climate shifts. To suggest it's not actually happening is in contradiction of almost all the available evidence from pretty much every source. Now that's fine if people want to offer an opinion in total contradiction to the available evidence - there's no law against that. But again it's difficult to take such opinions seriously and it's certainly not within the bounds of science to take them seriously unless you actually have robust evidence to support those contradictions. If you do have that evidence - and historically it's certainly possible to overturn scientific consensus - you'll be in line for the next Nobel Prize. Where the real scientific debate is, is trying to answer "how far will this warming go?', "what consequences will this have for us?", "over what timescale are we talking?", "should we mitigate it and if so, what is the best way?" and so on. "Changing the theory to suit the predictions" I'm not really sure what you mean by that. There's no change in the basic theory so far: increasing human emissions of CO2 are significantly contributing to warming of the planet through the greenhouse effect. Adjusting the finer details of scientific modelling to make more accurate predictions (magnitudes of the effect, timescales, etc) is totally normal. If you don't do that, you may as well not do science at all. Just marvel at all these weird and wonderful things (like cancer) without putting in any effort to understand the precise mechanisms by modelling what you think is happening and adjusting it to make accurate predictions. Scientific progress will be halted in its tracks. Completely.

Scientific models (which includes computer models) are always imperfect to start with and the whole idea of them is that they are adjusted if observations don't match predictions so that they are continually improved to the point where, eventually, they give sufficiently good predictions to be considered accurate models. I learned this in Year 9 Science class when we were taught about scientific modelling. It's one of the most basic tenets of modern science. One questions "empirical evidence" as follows: 1) You can question whether the empirical evidence is actually correct, as human perception and observation is far from perfect. This is why such evidence usually needs to verified by other sources before it is considered reliable. The biases in human observation are exactly why in medicine we have "double-blind" trials. 2) Even if it is correct, you can question the conclusions drawn from it. Example, which I've heard numerous times: "It's summer and the last week where I live has been 10 degrees below average, therefore climate change is a crock!" This is a classic "non sequitur" fallacy ("it does not follow"), and it's also "cherry picking". The observer may be correct in their observation, but the subsequent conclusion cannot justified by a single observation from one specific location without looking at the reams of other data from other periods and locations. Yet they are deliberately trying to make it so. Anyone making a global conclusion based simply on a single data point such as "it's not warming on the Antarctic peninsular like we expected, therefore there is no global warming" would be highly unlikely to be taken seriously. Now if it actually wasn't warming anywhere, that would be a different matter, but you have that pesky empirical evidence from multiple sources actually showing quite the opposite. So what do we therefore conclude? Put simply, the specific and unique local climate impacts in some sections of Antarctica are not well understood, but they don't trump what is happening around the rest of the world.