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Comment: Re:Is "impact" such a bad thing? (Score 1) 173

by dave420 (#46474057) Attached to: Power Cables' UV Flashes Apparently Frighten Animals

Just because species have not been negatively affected in the past (to your knowledge) doesn't mean they won't be in the future. Imagine if a new set of power lines were installed across the migration paths of some large herbivores - they might affect their migration, and so the health of the groups affected. That means their normal predators (whose numbers have grown large enough to be sustained by that group of herbivores) are now without enough food. They might just start attacking humans. That's pretty extreme, but it's an example of a much worse secondary effect of what otherwise seems like a rather benign primary effect.

No-one's calling this the "next global warming", and you might want to leave your Al Gore bashing out of this so you don't look quite so ridiculous.

Comment: Re:Is "impact" such a bad thing? (Score 5, Insightful) 173

by dave420 (#46474015) Attached to: Power Cables' UV Flashes Apparently Frighten Animals

I appreciate your stance, but this whole "but X is adaptable!" answer to having to change our behaviour to help X is clearly limited. We need to know the scale of the impact before we know if they're adaptable enough to adapt to the changes we are throwing at them. I'm sure you appreciate that if the change we are talking about is simply making them walk 1 meter out of their way - they can probably adapt to that. If the change is causing them to jump off cliffs, there's not much adaptability that would work in that case.

Are you aware that we rely on other species to survive? We evolved with those other species around - removing them from our environment might indeed change the balance of wildlife to the point where things we directly rely on start being affected by our changes to other species. Yes, humans are awesome and clever and can fly and go to the moon and everything, but we still breathe the same air as other (air-breathing) animals, drink the same water, and live on the same planet.

Our role in nature should be to not mess with nature so much that we die out. The status quo got us this far - changing it too much is not a good idea. Science can tell us what constitutes "too much", and ignoring that is folly. Suicidal folly.

Comment: Re:Established by convention (Score 1) 124

by dave420 (#46465017) Attached to: IAU To Uwingu: You Can't Name That Martian Crater Either

Comment: Re:Dancing on the head of a pin (Score 1) 124

by dave420 (#46464947) Attached to: IAU To Uwingu: You Can't Name That Martian Crater Either

Comment: Re:Does it really cost $100k? (Score 1) 460

by dave420 (#46462127) Attached to: The $100,000 Device That Could Have Solved Missing Plane Mystery
Planes are not always found in a reasonable amount of time, and each second a plane is flying with a defect which could be fixed by knowing what's in the missing black boxes is a second of risk that otherwise would not exist. This really isn't difficult to grasp, and at a cost of a ~1/3rd of a tank (for a 747) to install, it seems bizarre you're so angry about them. It's not as if these devices come with axe-heads installed in the back of each seat, or need to be installed using burning bags of puppies over the course of 75,000 years. Did one of these boxes smack your mother around or something??


by dave420 (#46462105) Attached to: The $100,000 Device That Could Have Solved Missing Plane Mystery
Are you being this obtuse on purpose? The leading method of improving passenger safety is investigation of crashes. This has been the case since the very first crash was investigated. Any device which gets information from a plane in distress has a very strong possibility of directly leading to saved lives, simply due to the very obvious fact that what we learn from one crash helps prevent others of a similar nature.

Comment: Re:Yes. (Score 1) 460

by dave420 (#46462083) Attached to: The $100,000 Device That Could Have Solved Missing Plane Mystery
Yes, they would be, but the people on the next flight which would have crashed in the same circumstances are alive, as the problem was identified from the data received from the crashed plane. That's why every single flight crash is investigated - so the industry learns from failures and does what it can to ensure they don't happen again. Ignoring or not trying to get some information is certain to cost lives in the future.

Comment: Re:A matter of degrees (Score 1) 497

by dave420 (#46454779) Attached to: Can Science Ever Be "Settled?"
Not really, as Eratosthenes accurately measured the circumference of the Earth years before the Bible was written (the new testament of which was written well under 2,500 years ago, obviously), and gravity existed then, too. So no, it's not interesting what-so-ever. What is interesting is that people think the bible is in any way relevant to this discussion, when it is so woefully wrong on scientific matters (and plenty of other matters, too). I guess that's a good indication on how faith is dangerous when discussion science.

Comment: Re:What goes up, must come down... (Score 1) 497

by dave420 (#46454733) Attached to: Can Science Ever Be "Settled?"
People already have paid attention to the variables and inputs, and have stayed open to different possibilities. Time and time again that's pointed to the same science - AGW. Just because the last ice age ended thousands of years ago has little to do with what's happening at the moment. You might as well say there's doubt whether volcanoes are hot, as someone burned their mouth on a particularly hot pizza. The science is in - human industry is to blame.

Comment: Re:Stupid question (Score 1) 497

by dave420 (#46454485) Attached to: Can Science Ever Be "Settled?"
So you are saying that if you split a population in half, and kept them separated for millions of years, and reintroduced them, that they would still be able to breed? Unless you can state "yes", with supporting evidence, you are lying to yourself, and everyone else you tell this silly story to. The only difference between microevolution and macroevolution is time - biologists don't even bother to differentiate the two, as they are the same thing. Heck, ring species show that your nonsense is nonsense, but you either don't know about them, or have sufficiently lied to yourself to make you simply contort reality around your bizarre ideas.
