Random Politics & Religion #00

Well my question remains regardless:

Why do we think we're almost surrounded by gays?

Well my question remains regardless:

Why do we think we're almost surrounded by gays?

Doesn't seem like a very interesting question. Cause people don't have the scope of the size of populations?

I would have said 10% gay, while bi something like 40%~. That is including closet people.

So that puts your LGBT total at 50%~? And the self-reported is 3.8%? Are you suggesting that at least 46% of people are in the closet?

Well my question remains regardless:

Why do we think we're almost surrounded by gays?

Story Highlights

Estimate is similar to what was measured in 2011 and 2002
Latest estimate shows that 3.8% actually identify as LGBT
Estimates are lower among those with the most education

Or that most of the people around her are European college aged women.

Either way, I have no statistics, what I said was just what I would have assumed if asked. Nothing more, nothing less.

That would make sense, but it's like me assuming that ~90% of the U.S. population is white just because I live in Utah. Is it really so common for people to grossly extrapolate their views on the world based on their immediate surroundings?

Is it really so common for people to grossly extrapolate their views on the world based on their immediate surroundings?

Well my question remains regardless:

Why do we think we're almost surrounded by gays?

Well my question remains regardless:

Why do we think we're almost surrounded by gays?

Gay agenda.

I've said too much...

Gay agenda.

I've said too much...

Didn't you say once that you thought everyone was a little bit gay?

Yeah but even though I don't consider myself 100% strait (nor anyone else) I still would consider myself "strait" in regards to this poll.

Gay agenda.

I've said too much...

I care not for your "rules".

It is an absolutely horrific way to make policies.

Hey, you are the one that identifies your sexuality in geographical terms.

I hope you can find a nice isthmus to keep you company.

Hey, you are the one that identifies your sexuality in geographical terms.

I hope you can find a nice isthmus to keep you company.

The Central Intelligence Agency is shutting down a research program that offered classified data to scientists to examine the link between climate change and global security threats.

A CIA spokesman confirmed that the agency had ended its MEDEA program, a 1990s-era intelligence program restarted in 2010 under President Obama. The collaboration gave scientists access to intelligence assets like satellite data to study climate change and inform on how its impacts could inflame conflicts.

CIA spokesman Ryan Whaylen said "these projects have been completed and CIA will employ these research results and engage external experts as it continues to evaluate the national security implications of climate change."

The announcement comes just days after President Obama said climate change was a "serious threat to global security" in a commencement address to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Climate change, Obama said, "will impact how our military defends our country. So we need to act, and we need to act now."

Under MEDEA, which stands for Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, gave a group of scientists security clearance and access to previously collected data for study. The program itself was kept largely under wraps and was not largely cited, but scientists quoted in reports about the program say the data was often more high quality than what they could get through other sources.

In a 1996 speech, Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch said the environmental data collected by the intelligence community could be used to predict instability in other nations by, say, measuring crop output in North Korea or the effects of an oil spill in Russia. Deutch also said that CIA assets had been used to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency respond to a wildfire in Alaska, because the existing satellites were able to track its impact faster than civilian planes.

A CIA spokesman did not respond to questions about whether the data would continue to be made available to scientists or other agencies.

The program was started in the 1990s, but was shut down in the early days of the George W. Bush administration. It was restarted in 2010 under the direction of Leon Panetta, backed by former Vice President Al Gore.

The research effort, as with most environmental work, has drawn the ire of congressional Republicans. Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming has particularly been critical of the intelligence agency's environmental work, saying in 2010 that "should be focused on monitoring terrorists in caves, not polar bears on icebergs."

And generally, Republicans have been scornful of the defense community's work on climate change, saying that the administration is ignoring the threat of terrorism and global instability in favor of environmental goals. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma released a lengthy statement this week calling Obama's Coast Guard Academy speech a "severe disconnect from reality," and mentioning ISIS, North Korea, and Syria among the threats he said the military should be focused on.

The CIA in 2012 also shut down its Center on Climate Change and National Security, a group of security specialists who studied existing climate data to game out how changes could impact security threats. That left MEDEA as the agency's primary climate change program.

Global temperature change observed over the last hundred years or so is well within the natural variability of the last 8,000 years, according to a new paper by a former Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) lead author.

Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and climate researcher, examined ice core-based temperature data going back 8,000 years to gain perspective on the magnitude of global temperature changes over the 20th Century.

What Lloyd found was that the standard deviation of the temperature over the last 8,000 years was about 0.98 degrees Celsius– higher than the 0.85 degrees climate scientists say the world has warmed over the last century.

“This suggests that while some portion of the temperature change observed in the 20th century was probably caused by greenhouse gases, there is a strong likelihood that the major portion was due to natural variations,” Lloyd wrote in his study.

The United Nations’ IPCC claims there’s been 0.85 degrees Celsius of warming since the late 1800s, and concludes that most of this warming is due to human activities– mainly, the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use. The IPCC says that “more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” have been caused by human activity.

If Lloyd’s results hold, the IPCC may have to revise how much warming it attributes to mankind. In any case, the IPCC’s estimate of man-made and natural warming (0.85 degrees) is still below the standard deviation for the last 8,000, according to Lloyd’s results. This means that warming is not very significant within the context of the Earth’s recent climate history.

Lloyd arrived at his conclusion after the “differences in temperatures between all records which are approximately a century apart were determined, after any trends in the data had been removed.” Lloyd noted the “differences were close to normally distributed.”

But Lloyd’s study hits at a larger debate within climate science: how much warming is attributable to mankind or nature. Clearly, Lloyd and the IPCC he once contributed to now represent different ends of the spectrum.

“The key challenge in understanding climate change is to *** the natural climate variability,” Dr. Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in April.

At the time, Ronald Bailey, a science write for Reason magazine, wrote that there has still not been enough observed warming to meet the IPCC’s standard of “enhanced warming” — that is, warming above natural levels.

In his article, Bailey noted that there has not been enough temperature rise since the IPCC set its benchmark for “enhanced warming” in 1990. Curry noted that there was a big jump in temperature between 1993 and 1998, but that was basically because of the latter year’s El Niño.

“The magnitude of natural climate variability over the past 1000 years and even the past 100 years is hotly debated,” Curry added. “Personally, I think the role of natural climate variability has been substantially underestimated in our interpretation of recent climate change.”

But not all scientists agree with Bailey’s article, and some argue that signs of human influence on the Earth’s climate were evident in the 1970s. Indeed, by 1995 the IPCC stated that the “balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” The international body has only made stronger statement on man’s climatic influence ever since.

“I would not pin anything on what was said by IPCC in 1990,” Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told TheDCNF in April. “In the reports since then there have been thorough evaluations of past IPCC projections and whether they were out of line.”

Human influence on the climate may have been observable in the 1970s, but scientists have had trouble explaining why satellite data shows that average global temperatures have been virtually flat for more than 18 years. Satellites measure the troposphere — the lowest few miles of the atmosphere — in contrast, to surface temperature measurements, which most climate bodies rely on for estimates of global average temperature average.

But even surface temperature data showed a hiatus in warming for about 15 years or so. Scientists have offered up dozens of explanations for why global temperatures have been flat since the late 1990s. The most prominent explanation is that oceans have been absorbing most of the “heat” from increased greenhouse gas emissions, meaning surface temperatures show less warming than they otherwise would.

“What is evident now is that the signal of global warming emerged from the noise of natural variability about the mid 1970s,” Trenberth added. “There are fluctuations in global mean temperatures: from year to year with El Niños, etc., and from decade to decade, so that trends reflecting global warming need to be taken over at least 20 years.”