few
? Use Few in a sentence
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few
[fyoo] Show IPA adjective, few・er, few・est, noun, pronoun
adjective
1.
not many but more than one: Few artists live luxuriously.
noun
2.
( used with a plural verb ) a small number or amount: Send me a few.
3.
the few, a special, limited number; the minority: That music appeals to the few.
pronoun
4.
( used with a plural verb ) a small number of persons or things: A dozen people volunteered, but few have shown up.
Idioms
5.
few and far between, at widely separated intervals; infrequent: In Nevada the towns are few and far between.
6.
quite a few, a fairly large number; many: There were quite a few interesting things to do.
Origin:
before 900; Middle English fewe, Old English fēawe; cognate with Gothic fawai; akin to Latin paucus few, paulus little, pauper poor, Greek pa?ros little, few
So you can see that 'few' can mean virtually anything. Can you imagine answering a question on your college or high school science exam with the word 'few'? Ha! Ha! I don't think you'd pass.
But 'few' is the greenies way of saying 'WHY ARE YOU QUESTIONING THE GREAT OZ!?'
Or in other words, "So I failed. But don't look there. Nothing to see. Move on!"
It is also obviously both relative and contextual; a 'few' miles to most of us might mean to the nearest convenience store. To an astronomer, it might mean the distance from the earth to the moon relative to the sun or another galaxy. I don't see much of an issue on this score-
I have seen a lot of confusion about what people consider 'tipping points' and this does seem to relate to your question as well, because you reference a date and some have said 'if we don't change our ways by (insert date, 2002, 2008) we will pass the tipping point and there will be no undoing the damage AGW has caused, then when 2008 comes and goes there is hullabaloo like 'well, the apocalypse didn't happen blahblahblah' when this entirely misses what a 'tipping point is.' It's like they think it is like a piece of dishware tipping and falling off the table to be dashed to smithereens on the floor in a fraction of a second. BTW, I am not a fan of 'tipping point' predictions, I think they're complete speculation and alarmism, but I also believe in the proper context tipping points are interesting to contemplate.
The problem is that there are two forms of communication in terms of anything scientific. The first is the scientific language used by scientists themselves. This is not readily understood by the public - have a chat to a physicist about the Higgs Boson, give them a blackboard and piece of chalk, watch the maths that results and you'll get some idea of what I mean as you stand there thinking 'I don't even understand the mathematical symbols they're using'. The second form is explaining the results in a language that everyone understands.
So the answer to your question is 'a 'few' depends on the number of data points that is required in order to reach a certain level of statistical certainty. If you want science to give you a complete, 100% accurate result, immediately well, guess what? Science has never worked like that. If it did, science would stop because we'd know everything.
Science is a process. It constantly adjusts conclusions based on additional data. If you find that annoying, tough luck. It's the best method we have. You might see that as a weakness, but it is science's greatest strength. And uncertainties or errors in the predictions might make you laugh, might even make you feel smug and superior having not contributing anything to those predictions or shown where they were wrong in advance, but they don't change the fact of AGW.
Well for starters, predictions are just that, a prediction, guess, estimate and they have no real intrinsic value and they aren't written in stone. Model predictions are based on a wide range of historical and scientific data and I personally would't bet money on the outcome
This could be a good guide
a=1
couple=2
few = 3-4
some = 5-6
several = 7-10
many/group = >10
Why don't you, instead of asking irrelevant questions like this, spend some time trying to come up with some real climate science to defend the DA denier position. You folks tend to post these distractive questions to bring attention to your lame DA denier philosophy but never any proof of jack ****
BTW Global Climate Change is a reality while the DA denier position is a philosophy of denial, if you will, not even a theory or hypothesis, just a hodgepodge of unaffiliated souls who can't accept the scientific reality of man made global climate change or "flatearthers" of the 21st century as I see them
Its hard to say because while the population is growing exponentially and that in turn causes more and more pollution and climate change, technology and human innovation have also improved and been able to somewhat compensate. Doesnt mean technology is always going to be able to save us though. We should really be trying to set ourselves up for a more promising future.
It means that we do not understand climate as well as we would like to. This does not mean that humans have no impact on climate or that our effect is not harmful. Such claims could only be make if we actually did understand climate as well as we would like.
If Earth keeps warming, all of the ice will melt. If we have a long time, we should thank the Creator, rather than curse the scientists.
This question was obviously inspired by my answer to your other open question:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...
Few referred to what you would get if you did YOUR OWN estimate of when the arctic ice pack would disappear in summer. So why don't you do what I suggested and figure it out for yourself? It didn't refer to any official projection, it was what I said you would get if you did a simple linear extrapolation of the extant data.
I think a quote from Fielding's "The History of Tom Jones, a foundling" is appropriate here:
"Bestir thyself therefore on this
occasion; for, though we will always lend thee proper assistance in
difficult places, as we do not, like some others, expect thee to use
the arts of divination to discover our meaning, yet we shall not
indulge thy laziness where nothing but thy own attention is required;
for thou art highly mistaken if thou dost imagine that we intended,
when we began this great work, to leave thy sagacity nothing to do; or
that, without sometimes exercising this talent, thou wilt be able to
travel through our pages with any pleasure or profit to thyself."
Do you mean other than the very "few" things you know that have any relevance at all to this topic discussed here?
Being informed and having personal integrity obviously means something different to Deniers than it does to the rest of us who are educated and intellectually honest.
Few is the opposite of several. Several usu. Means more whereas few means less. Hope that helps.
Each revision is an ad hoc hypothesis. Its a way of avoiding accountability for the fact that the CAGW hypothesis is busted, I.e. does not validate against real world data.
What does "few" mean? It obviously means something to climate forecasters than to the rest of us.
We are told by alarmists "So and so will happen in year XXXX", when it doesn't we are then told "Oh no, it's going to be a "few" decades later".
What's a "few". Ten, twenty, two hundred? Pray do enlighten we mere mortals.
Misrepresent some more facts, you are very amusing
