US Politics Mega-thread - Page 295

On June 21 2013 23:38 Klondikebar wrote:


This is true in a technical sense but not a very meaningful one. We can work with near perfect and long term information to make very accurate predictions. Arguing that science is flawed because our information is not perfect is rather silly. And it's setting an unrealistically high standard of proof for an empirical field.

A bipartisan trio of senators is nearing a compromise on student loans that has the potential to break the gridlock before Stafford loan interest rates for million of students double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1.

The framework that is being negotiated by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Angus King (I-VT) would tie the rate to the 10-year Treasury note plus one additional percentage point, Senate sources familiar with the discussions tell TPM.

The deal isn't yet final. The senators are expecting a report Friday from the Congressional Budget Office on how much the plan would cost, one source said.

The idea of tying the loan rate to the market was proposed by President Obama in his fiscal 2014 budget. Republicans support the idea. Top Senate Democrats dislike it. The yield on the 10-year T-bill is currently 2.48 percent.

A Senate Republican leadership aide described the bipartisan negotiations as "good news."

If Congress fails to take action, the average student loan borrower is poised to pay an additional $2,600 over a decade, according to a report Thursday by Congress's Joint Economic Committee.

On June 22 2013 10:43 Souma wrote:
I just graduated the other day. Pleeeaaase let this pass.

On June 22 2013 10:50 aksfjh wrote:

Doesn't it only qualify for new loans being issued?

Confirming weeks of speculation, President Barack Obama said in a web video released Saturday that he is ready to unveil his "national plan" to address the threat of climate change.

Obama said he will lay out his strategy in a speech this Tuesday at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The speech is scheduled to begin at 1:35 p.m. ET.

"This is a serious challenge, but it's one uniquely suited to America's strengths," Obama said in the video. "We'll need scientists to design new fuels, farmers to grow them. We'll need engineers to devise new sources of energy. And businesses to make and sell them. We'll need workers to build the foundation for a clean energy economy. And we'll need all of our citizens to do our part to preserve God's creation for future generations."

Obama’s energy and climate adviser, Heather Zichal, said Wednesday that the President was readying plans to take on global warming. He has reportedly been telling Democratic donors that he is eager to address the environment in his second term, saying at a fundraiser last month that he doesn't "have much patience" for climate change deniers. Speaking Wednesday at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Obama hailed Germany and Europe for leading on climate change.

"There's no single step that can reverse the effects of climate change," Obama said, closing the minute-and-a-half long video. "But when it comes to the world we leave our children, we owe it to them to do what we can."

The Washington Post is reporting that, “Obama will couch the effort not only in terms of the nation’s domestic priorities, but as a way to meet the administration’s international pledge to reduce the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels.”

A serious plan to achieve the 17% cut is considered by many to be the sine qua non for successful US engagement in international climate talks — although it is inadequate from the perspective of what climate science says is required to stay on the 2°C (3.6°F) warming path.

Analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council, among others, makes clear that attaining the 17% cut without further Congressional action will require regulating pollution emissions at existing power plants.

On June 22 2013 08:08 coverpunch wrote:

You're aware that science advances all the time as we gather new information and that pretty much everything we think we know today will eventually be replaced by new theories, yes?

The empirical field has to be unrealistically high. Impossible to deny is the standard if you're trying to persuade scientists and particularly the public to give up a theory in place and replace it with a new model.

Science is always flawed. That's why we keep doing it.

On June 23 2013 07:24 Shiori wrote:

This isn't really true. Most of the grounded "theories" we are working with right now are not likely to be completely replaced at any point, but merely expanded upon and clarified. I mean, a theory like evolution has so much evidence supporting it that virtually everything we know about biology would have to be false in order for it to be proven wrong. Now, the details of how the evolutionary process unfolded are likely to be filled in as we discover more anomalies and compensate for them, but the groundwork of the theory is there. Climate change isn't as well-grounded as evolution, but it has a pretty large body of evidence pointing to it. Even if some parts of this evidence fall under the category of imperfect/temporary evidence, it seems very unlikely that all the evidence we possess would turn out to be completely wrong.

This is why accuracy in science is achieved by repeatable experiments. It isn't the quality of any one experiment that matters, but that after doing the experiment over and over a hundred times, whatever chance there was that the first one was a fluke is weighed against the success of later experiments. Obviously, it's not difficult to see how a hundred flukes in a row is astronomically unlikely, especially if methodology is carefully inspected and accounted for. Really, the only way we're likely to see evidence thrown out is if someone points out a damning flaw in the methodology that couches an unstated assumption which, if removed, kills the theory. That probably isn't going to happen in major theories because there are so many pieces of evidence and codependent results that operate independently of each other.

Like, yes, Newton's classical mechanics were "wrong" in a strict sense, but we didn't just throw out the theory. We took the parts of it that worked and developed QM to account for the rest. And as things go, Newtonian mechanics are pretty much sufficient for nearly every everyday task that comes to mind.

On June 23 2013 07:51 coverpunch wrote:

No, you're very confused. The evidence is not wrong. The facts are the facts. But the models we use to account for those facts can be replaced.

Climate change has a history behind it, a history that can't be reasonably altered. But it is also making predictions about what the climate will look like in 2100, predictions that make up the basis for prescribing substantial changes to the economy and society. It is the predictions (i.e. the model) that have to change if the data over time does not conform to the predictions being made.

And yes, this happens frequently. We don't change the fundamental theory of evolution, but we add new species and our understanding of the mechanisms are updated with regularity. The big things in science stand the test of time, which is why we have things like the periodic table and the laws of themodynamics that have been around for a long time as the basis of our understanding. But so has Christianity, Britain's monarchy, and guns. Being around for a long time is not proof that it will exist forever and certainly not without change.

Hours before dying in a fiery car crash, award-winning journalist Michael Hastings sent an email to his colleagues, warning that federal authorities were interviewing his friends and that he needed to go "off the rada[r]" for a bit.

The email was sent around 1 p.m. on Monday, June 17. At 4:20 a.m. the following morning, Hastings died when his Mercedes, traveling at high speeds, smashed into a tree and caught on fire. He was 33.

Hastings sent the email to staff at BuzzFeed, where he was employed, but also blind-copied a friend, Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, on the message. Biggs, who Hastings met in 2008 when he was embedded in his unit in Afghanistan, forwarded the email to KTLA, who posted it online on Saturday.

On June 23 2013 11:49 coverpunch wrote:
You need to go back and review the history of science. All of the evidence of the last 150 years of scientific history argues against what you're saying. The scientific method has in fact changed quite a bit over that period, especially as the practice of science has become more professionalized and institutionalized. Incorporating statistics on a widespread basis started within your parents' lifetime, for example.

We look at many issues in very different prisms of theories than we did even a generation ago. I would clarify my position that these things are glacial shifts, not outright revolutions. It took centuries for alchemy to die out, long after it was clear that chemistry was a more rigorous and accurate way of looking at things. We don't just throw up our hands and decide Newton is out, Einstein is in. What makes for an influential and great scientist is that the tone and tenor of the entire conversation may change, for which those scientists usually win the Nobel Prize, but old habits die hard.

On June 23 2013 12:16 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I don't want to be one of those conspiracy people but some events are too coincidental.



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