JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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Teacher nabbed for using miror to peek up girl's skirt
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Japan's nuclear safety standards flawed, says commission chief
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To be healthy, live in the big city
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4
From carnivores to herbivores: how men are defined in Japan
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Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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yokomoc
Like lambs to the slaughter...
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yokomoc
What's the criteria here - smoothness of brushstrokes? Original fonts? These all look very ordinary.
Posted in: Character-building
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yokomoc
This is one of the unexepected offshoots of the Japanese conformity - once the consensus is (eventually) set to change, the people adopt it quickly and en masse. A bit like the Ents.
Posted in: For Japan, 2010 was a year to forget
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yokomoc
It happened 2 years back when I was in Brisbane, the first 4 days were thunderstorms and torrential downpour, a few homes were destroyed. Still it made for some amazing lightning storms.
Posted in: Flooded communities across eastern Australia face long cleanup
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yokomoc
"Here's my rifle, here's my gun."
Still, at least if he gets fired he's shown the perfect mentality for a job with the keystones down the line.
Posted in: SDF member flashes staff at drive-through restaurant in Saitama
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yokomoc
Would have to be the BP oil spill or Pakistan floods.
Posted in: What do you think was the biggest news, domestic and international, this year?
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yokomoc
The sprectroscopic properties of CO2 etc are known precisely - meaning we know how much of the sun's radiation is absorbed, transmitted or reflected at any given frequency. Basically what happens is the UV light and other high frequency radiation from the sun is mostly transmitted, but when that energy comes back through the atmosphere much of that UV has been converted to infra-red (heat) and other low frequency radiation which is reflected more by CO2 than UV light. The greenhouse gas effect shouldn't even be considered a theory, the real uncertainties come in because the earth is a very dynamic system and there are all kinds of psoitive and negative feedback loops - some of which are understood very well, some not so much.
Of course everything isn't driven by greenhouse gases - it's the abnormal warming in last 100-odd years that is. Noone has been able to come up with an adequate alternative explanation and many, many potential causes have been examined in depth.
Read the comment properly please - there's no such thing as 'just' a cycle. We know that the seasonal cycle is driven by the earth's tilt as it goes round the sun. That's fine, but you can't just pass something the 100 years of warming trend as a cycle without being able to explain what drives it, especially when there's no evidence that it is, in fact, a cycle.
Posted in: Flights resume at NY airports following huge blizzard
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yokomoc
BTW regarding lostrune2's point about solar activity, put "new scientist what's wrong with the sun" into google for a very good article which might explain the extreme winters in Europe/Eastern US the last two years.
Posted in: Flights resume at NY airports following huge blizzard
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yokomoc
We don't 'know', but predictions are based on the best models which themselves are based on the best understanding of weather and climate systems we have. Not perfect, but there's decades of hard work by very smart people gone into those predictions.
There's no such thing as 'just a cycle'. They don't just happen, something drives them. Again a lot of time and effort by some very smart people has gone into trying to determine if anything other than human greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver behind the temperature increase. All answers to date say no.
Given the potential consequences I'd say it's not dramatic enough.
Posted in: Flights resume at NY airports following huge blizzard
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yokomoc
^^^Should read "which HASN'T been considered yet"
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
Sorry but this is just incorrect. Having a spike in the temperatures means it has to be explained because as you know there are no such things as just 'natural' effects. Even natural changes have a driver, the increase came from somewhere. The models to date have not been able to explain the increase in temperature when man-made CO2 emissions are excluded. When its effects are added in the fit is very good. So the projections of temperature increase are not because they simply assume that trends will continue but because the models strongly attribute the warming trend to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere which is ongoing, and even if all industry suddenly ceased and our emissions dropped to zero, the current levels would still cause warming to continue.
So if there's an argument to be made here it's that there is some factor which has been considered yet that's driving the increase. So far noone has managed to find it. That doesn't mean CO2 is 100% definitely the main driver but it's a hard sell to say otherwise.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
In what way exactly? You need to start providing specifics instead of vague accusations. As I said different attempts made to recreate historical temps give some variation in the 'stick' but all show the same basic hockey stick shape. And all do require some selectivity and manipulation as we don't have direct measuremnts however noone has been able to produce a record disproving the hockey stick that has stood up to both peer review and examination, although Exxon Mobil have a good deal of money trying :) The spike is not in doubt, these are direct measurements.
Yes, the oceans have been heating up. Again I bring up the google argument. If you can't use the internet properly in 2010 give your computer to some poor kid who can. Merry Xmas.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
Molenir, it is not a model. It's the best estimate of temperature records over the last 1000 years taken from various sources. The spike is the most reliable part of it since these were direct measurements, the much bigger uncertainty is the 'stick' which is taken from proxies such as tree rings, ice cores etc. Was the temperature as stable over the 100 years as these sources suggest? The error margin is about +/-0.5C pre-1600AD.
It's the job of the models to replicate the temperature records of the past as best as possible. If they can explain trends in the past they should be able to do a decent job of predicting future trends.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
The hockey stick's not a model, it's a temperature record.
At least we're on agreement on a couple of things though. The knee-jerk way people attribute everything weather-related to global warming irks me as well and I have next to know faith in the ability of competing governments to solve anything or change their ways for the betterment of all. Solutions will come (and are coming) from the bottom up.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
I haven't worked in the field, but I've been following it for years out of personal interest. I've seen numerous papers and reports for, against, in between and around. And you're right, the amount of CO2 we're responsible for is a small fraction of those due to natural processes but the naturally CO2 would be reabsorbed by other natural processes (dynamic equilibrium). Out of what we emit about 40% gets absorbed by these same processes, the rest stays. Not much in a year but over the course of a 100+ years it adds up and knocks the equilibrium out. Facts are the CO2 in the atmosphere has increased 100ppm in 120 years where best estimates say it would take 5,000-20,000 years for the same change to take place 'naturally'. Meanwhile the extra absorption required to compensate our emissions is impacting on the sinks e.g. increased acidity in the oceans threatening coral reefs.
Models are first back-tested against historical data. If they can't explain past trends they don't make the cut and are constantly being improved. And predictions are always given as a distribution of scenarios. The inputs ARE tweaked to cater to uncertainties. If anything the models have been conservative in their predictions - actual sea level rise is just within the upper limit of the band predicted in 1990. Arctic ice melt has happened much faster than the models predicted likely due to feedback mechanisms unknown when they were made. Those models will be improved and predictions will become more accurate, this is how science works in real life.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
We're nearly in 2011 and if people still can't even bother to use google to check if they're talking nonsense I think they should forfeit their computer and donate it to poor kids for Xmas.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
For a recent example of how wrong your statement is do some google research on the paper by Lindzen and Choi that was published last year in GRL, claiming that climate sensitivity could be explained entirely by a few parameters in the tropics - about as anti-consensus as you'll find. A comment paper submitted to the same journal highlighting the serious problems in the paper was rejected out of hand.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
Molenir, one day do yourself a favour and actually go out and meet some of these scientists you freely insult. Send an email to your nearest lab, ask for an interview, whatever. Enlighten yourself rather than just throw the media narrative of your choice.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
Contrary to the soundbites you pull your opinions from the majority of climate scientists in the 70s predicted warming. Newsweek picked up on a paper that suggested a new ice age might be coming due to its sensational nature. Newsweek does not equal scientific consensus.
Climate science was a fairly new, unresearched and unrefined genre in the 70s.
Obviously it's not the 'same scientists' now as then as that would mean all climate scientists are at least 50. Plus scientists are generally quite apolitical and aren't adverse to changing their opinion when confronted with new evidence. You could try it some time.
Climate models have been predicting more extreme weather events as a result of global warming for many, many years now.
Posted in: European weather chaos spawns outrage, questions
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yokomoc
My apartment's my private space as well but if I was juggling knives in my kids playroom and the neighbours found out, I expect the cops might have something to say. This is pure and simply about saving children's lives, how can you possibly be against that? What's wrong with you?
Posted in: How much attention do you think drivers in Japan pay to child safety seats or making sure their kids wear seat belts when they are in cars?