[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

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Cutlass said:
Saying it didn't matter 'at all' over states the case. But it didn't matter to the extent it was believed that it would. Production costs are higher with unconventional crude.
Click to expand...

Mise said:
It mattered to GM and Chrysler... If it weren't for peak oil, they might still be churning out gas guzzlers for astronomical margins.
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Monsterzuma said:
that the world economy imploded and failed to convincingly recover for 6 years in the meantime isn't a big deal or anything.

debates aside as to whether there is a causal relation between the two, i maintain that if there had been no crisis in 2008, rising oil prices could very well have brought about another one. who knows where the price would have been had output remained on its pre-2008 trendline.
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El_Machinae said:
Well, I don't think that the skyrocketing oil and then food prices really helped anyone ...
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I posted a short answer on the Peak Oil thread! :)
 
Odd, when you read the "article", it lists New Mexico as #1, and Texas shouldn't even be colored top-tier. Sloppy list is sloppy.

My skepticism is now highly aroused.
 


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/comes-case-shiller-home-prices-134648061.html

us housing price growth rate at bubble levels. what happens when this returns to normal? historically housing prices have barely kept pace with inflation. despite the boost from housing, the economic climate is still not particularly strong. how will it do without housings support?

ofc the alternative is another massive housing bubble, which is worse.
 
Cutlass said:
Click to expand...

Sigh. http://www.cosmologystatement.org/
Spoiler An Open Letter to the Scientific Community :
The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that "science is the culture of doubt", in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry.

Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.

Giving support only to projects within the big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method -- the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from outside the field of cosmology.

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.
 
Some citations for the statements they make would have been nice.
 
SS-18 ICBM said:
Some citations for the statements they make would have been nice.
Click to expand...

The idea that dark matter, specifically, has 'not been observed' is laughable.

edit: oh, wait, dark matter was observed after that article was published. Well, points scored for the theorists (again), I guess
 
classical_hero said:
Sigh. http://www.cosmologystatement.org/
Spoiler An Open Letter to the Scientific Community :
The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that "science is the culture of doubt", in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry.

Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.

Giving support only to projects within the big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method -- the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from outside the field of cosmology.

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.
Click to expand...



The Big Bang theory was proposed by a Catholic Priest. So it's not inconsistent with Christianity.
 
that presumes christianity is consistent with itself :p
 
classical_hero said:
Sigh. http://www.cosmologystatement.org/
Spoiler An Open Letter to the Scientific Community :
The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that "science is the culture of doubt", in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry.

Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.

Giving support only to projects within the big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method -- the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from outside the field of cosmology.

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.
Click to expand...

While this letter starts with making some quite relevant (and well known) points, I don't really support its assessment of the current scientific-political situation in astrophysics.

First of all, we're mostly working our way back. We know what the universe looks like "now" and we know that is has been expanding. So going back in time, it's getting smaller and smaller. We understand that process reasonably well until some small length scale, but before that we're not quite sure. As far as I'm aware, there's currently little strong evidence to suggest that the universe really shrunk to a point, as in the Big Bang, or that something else happened. Beyond some point, our current theories just don't work and we can only speculate.

I'm sometimes a bit annoyed by the presentation of the Big Bang as an established fact in popular science. In general, popular science isn't very good in expressing how we are pretty certain about some things, while some others are more working hypotheses that we hope are in the right general direction but will probably be modified, and some others are just batpoop insane ideas (looking at you string theory).

It doesn't help that the people who are presenting string theory are typically the people making a living from string theory. (See also: Creationism).

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's address some specific points:
In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation.
Click to expand...
The writer clearly hasn't followed particle physics since, well, since it exists. Unexpected finding -> Propose new particle

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe.
Click to expand...
Dark matter is necessary to explain rotation curves, which doesn't have anything to do with the Big Bang, so there are pretty good arguments to believe in dark matter regardless of the Big Bang Theory.
Also, nice absence of proof is proof of absence fallacy.

Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements.
Click to expand...
Inflation is one of the parts that we don't understand very well yet. Hopefully this will change.

And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.
Click to expand...
I thought you were a YEC?

The following couple of paragraphs read exactly like what the typical "EINSTEIN IS WRONG!!!!1!!!" scientist writes. The usual message from a climate change denier, about how the scientific world is one big conspiracy determined to keep their dogma in place.
In the case of cosmology, this is quite strange in my opinion, since it is one of the fields that is most open to giving radical ideas a chance. Sometimes they are proven right but mostly they're proven wrong and tossed aside. Sadly, most of the time, there will be some people clinging on to them (and the associated research grants?). Typically, this involves big conspiracy claims. (Yes, I'm looking at you Modified Newtonian Dynamics)

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.
Click to expand...
Good news! This is the current status.
 
Monsterzuma said:
ofc the alternative is another massive housing bubble, which is worse.
Click to expand...
That's not the alternative but the more likely scenario, in my opinion. It's what unconventional monetary policy does. Little progress in the real economy but massive asset price inflation. Even in Germany, the land of the (for good reasons) flatlining housing market, a bubble is developing, in the process destroying one of the biggest social achievements in post-war Germany: cheap housing.
 
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