KnightOfWords
Joined 12 years ago
Karma
378
Submissions
122
Member since
Feb 7
Recent submissions
Comment · 6 years ago
The problem here is the more the virus spreads the more everyone is put at risk.
Comment · 6 years ago
It takes 6-41 days for covid-19 to kill, with 14 days being the median. The death rate is going to lag behind the cases of infection by a few days.
Comment · 6 years ago
Here's a pretty good summary:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1997/01/the-bell-curve-f...
A few things to bear in mind, race is far more of a cultural construct than a genetic one. Compared to other species we don't show much genetic variation, and people of African descent are much more genetically diverse than the rest of humanity. Another is that IQs have been rising steadily around the world, proof that environmental factors such as nutrition and education have a a large effect.
Comment · 6 years ago
The Bell Curve has been thoroughly debunked I believe. Genetics aren't nearly as important as environment for IQ scores, as proven by adopted children.
Comment · 6 years ago
I took the BBC website title and added the word 'could' to make it clearer. Since then they've changed the title a couple times.
Comment · 6 years ago
Because it has a higher lethal rate than Influenza and it has the potential to evolve and become much more infectious than it is currently.
Comment · 6 years ago
I think we can discount it based on its content, written by the kind of manager who should be avoided like the plague.
Comment · 6 years ago
The economic arguments underline why the US aversion to nationalised healthcare is so counter-productive.
Comment · 6 years ago
On the other side of the world, we had record temperatures across Europe as well this year. Fewer deaths than the 2003 heatwave though as people were generally better informed of the risks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave
These events are only going to become more frequent.
Comment · 6 years ago
> ...you'll see that temperatures swung as much as 8C during the ice age. The last glacial period itself covers some 100,000 years.
I could have phrased it better, I'm talking about the temperature difference between the end of the last age and the current day.
> ...Dansgaard-Oeschger events
The recorded temperature swings are local rather than global, global temperature does not rise by five degrees in a matter of decades unless something catastrophic happens.
> There's thousands of papers on the Little Ice Age. It certainly shows up all over the world in the fossil record.
Yes, but average global temperatures were barely affected.
Comment · 6 years ago
Historical civilisations were very vulnerable to changes in local climate as they were heavily reliant on local food production, whereas we routinely ship food across oceans. Events like the [Little Ice Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age) barely show up in the global climate record.
Earth's climate has varied greatly over time but its the current rate of change that is so alarming. During the last ice age it was about 4.5 degrees colder but it took 10,000 years to reach modern temperatures. We're currently on a path to changes of that magnitude within the next 70-100 years.
Comment · 7 years ago
All informed decision making is made on the basis of probabilities. You're setting an impossibly and arbitrarily high threshold for action on climate change.
The burden of proof is on you to explain how CO2 levels not seen for 3 million years won't have a major impact on the biosphere.