71–80 of 242 posts
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If the mean rolling average of all tempreture readings across Australia moved by 0.5 across a twelve month period that would indeed be a significant change that would certainly mean something .
Can you elaborate on that? Why would it be significant and what could it mean?
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It makes it harder (impossible even) to take precise measurements deep into the decimal places if you have massive contours in the very thing (wealth) you are trying to measure with just one scalar number. Diversity is not meant in the modern political interpretation. As an less triggering exercise: try record in a single number the temperature - and change - of a large geographically diverse place like Australia - w…
If the mean rolling average of all tempreture readings across Australia moved by 0.5 across a twelve month period that would indeed be a significant change that would certainly mean something .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fail to see how diversity in the country would change those metrics.
It makes it harder (impossible even) to take precise measurements deep into the decimal places if you have massive contours in the very thing (wealth) you are trying to measure with just one scalar number. Diversity is not meant in the modern political interpretation. As an less triggering exercise: try record in a single number the temperature - and change - of a large geographically diverse place like Australia - w…
We do measure Earth's average temperature for what it's worth and while different metrics might give different results, the absolute value is not really useful. What is useful is the change in that metric. And if our global temperatures change by 0.1C by any one metric, it is a very significant change given that the metric is well designed. And yes, it is possible to design a good metric.
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India is a crucial counterbalance to China. Now that the USA is retreating into internal bickering and giving up its global leadership, Europe should continue building ties with India and helping them lift people out of poverty.
I don't understand the significant of metrics like the international poverty line. Seems like the only point of its existence is to create a sense of progress or maybe exaggerate it. They never account for basic stuff like how many calories people get to eat, let alone the quality of nutrition. Last year I read an article saying like 30% of children in India are stunted.
On the other hand, it's probably useful enough for now. Maybe there are 100x differences between prices for a sack of potatoes across different developing countries and therefore this index is at least that much inaccurate, but poverty problems and income gaps are a lot worse than that anyway, so there are ways this could make sense within reason.
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Where are you getting ice from in 1500s Italy? You get an arrow pulled out of your skull, but what are you doing with the resulting infection? People bring you food from far away, but there's no refrigeration and it's hauled at 15 kilometers a day. You can pay someone a lot of money to bring avocados from 1000 kilometers away by foot today. But you won't want to eat those avocados. Get bit by the wrong mosquito? You'…
> Where are you getting ice from in 1500s Italy? The Romans had ice available even for common people. They harvested it from the mountains. Ice can be stored a surprisingly long time if kept out of sunlight and packed correctly. I know less about 1500s Italy specifically, but obviously the technology existed if people wanted to do it. > You get an arrow pulled out of your skull, but what are you doing with the result…
okay 15km is too short. Average walking speed is 5km/hr and you would expect to walk 10 hours a day. So movement would have been more like 50km per day.
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Now that USAID has been thrown under the bus, it’s actually a golden opportunity for Europe to both rethink and boost aid programs. India is a crucial counterbalance to China. Now that the USA is retreating into internal bickering and giving up its global leadership, Europe should continue building ties with India and helping them lift people out of poverty.
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If the mean rolling average of all tempreture readings across Australia moved by 0.5 across a twelve month period that would indeed be a significant change that would certainly mean something .
That is also something really hard to measure correctly. There are many sources of error that are hard to correct for.
In recent decades daily MODIS (satellite) polar orbit overpasses provide air column and ground temp data that infills station data (from 1900 onwards).
There's a science to ground truthing, error detection, and data correction.
Here's the gross single number continent wide average over a century: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi
It's not hard to find raw data, finer grids, methodology, etc.
I don't understand the significant of metrics like the international poverty line. Seems like the only point of its existence is to create a sense of progress or maybe exaggerate it. They never account for basic stuff like how many calories people get to eat, let alone the quality of nutrition. Last year I read an article saying like 30% of children in India are stunted.
The point is to get a sense of progress or not. It only creates a sense of progress if there actually is some. The alternative is the silly measures of "poverty" we use in the first world which are mathematically unachieveable by design so they can always be used to justify measures politicians want to pass: "won't you think of the child poverty you heartless monster" etc.
I found this article interesting. Personally I think starvation is a very low bar to clear. What matters to the first world is whether or not India has a middle class that is able to buy stuff.