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See all of the above. As a geneticist, I'm actually an avid proponent of genetic engineering. Hell, we should engineer anything we can get our hands on as long as it is for something that we can profit from: plants producing enzymes that cure otherwise incurable disorders, plants that do not need pesticides, animals that carry humanized organs... People who fear genetic engineering do so out of ignorance mostly. They do not realize that our efforts are piss-poor compared to what Nature is doing to all genetic material of all living organisms every day.
That said, I do not believe for a single second that genetic engineering will reach the home owner any time soon. Having to do something in the garden can actually be enjoyable, you know. But seriously, however useful it may be, you can betcher sweet *ss that green activists (Greenpeace comes to mind) will sow such fear and hate that GE organisms will not be available for common use for a long time to come. Who do you think came up with the term "Frankenfood"? Go tell to the poor kids who eat Golden Rice that genetic engineering is bad. And, to any fanatic who might be reading this post, before you embark on yet another hate-trip, please check here for a well-balanced discussion of the issue. Hunger is caused in large part by issues other than innate defects in Nature's gifts, but many of those are issues that are not going to be solved any time soon. You can be fundamentalistic about this or you can be realistic. Poor people loose in the first case.

There are many, many countries out there with huge hunger problems-- some have far worse, I'd wager, than anything in North Korea.

Did you that one report estimated that two million people have died from starvation in North Korea since the 90's? Link Link

Carry on with your life and you are still more likely to be killed by a lightening strike than an act of terrorism

Lightning kills about 73 people in the US per year

During the last 40 years, there have been more people killed by international terrorism in the US than by lightning.

"yet you yourself are following these scientists (have have just as much data against them as with them) as though they are you own personal Saviour."

Please see the Science article I referenced in another posting. You'll see that this statement is false. Multiple independent studies have shown that humans are having an impact on the climate, and there seems to be wide agreement among scientists. Hell, even the EPA has a website up about it.

"The last ice age, volcanoes, and the billions of years that this planet has been in existence, yet some scientists using an incredibly short span of history believe they can suddenly prognosticate what impact we humans are having on a planet whose age is so large a number that we can scarcely wrap our minds around it say we're suddenly about to impact it more than all of the previous time combined".

Oh, the planet will balance itself and recover eventually. We just may manage to impact our environment enough so that it won't be very livable for us!

But hey, relax, kick back with a beer, and enjoy your oceanfront property in Kiribati!

You'd think you could google.

NATO document affect on local climate human impact reference ref ref ref ref ref ref ref

So it is amoral and shortsighted to invest in developing local technology so that local industry thrive and help catch a pie of the multi-billion dollar satellite launch market by proving their capabilities, so they get foreign business, creating thousands of jobs in the process, and bringing in billions of foreign capital to grow their economy?

So it is amoral and shortsighted to invest in communications systems to help boost education levels in poor rural areas?

A space program isn't a pissing contest - all countries depend on space technology in one way or another. For a country with more than a sixth of the worlds population it would be lunacy to depend on other countries for things like military surveillance, communications, weather monitoring, etc. It would also be lunacy to let other nations cement their technical superiority and hold onto their grip on a market that is growing extremely rapidly, and will be a vital revenue source in a few decades.

For those who doubt the effects of global warming, I recommend taking up SCUBA. Not only is it a great sport, you'll get to see first-hand the effects of global warming, and it WILL scare you.

The Seychelles reefs are just about gone. What was once arguably the best reef to dive in the world outside the Great Barrier is now a graveyard.

And this knowledge isn't from reading an alarmist's evaluation of the situation, it is from seeing it with my own eyes on dives I did last year on Mahe, Praslin and La Digue. A conservative estimate would be that 90% of the reefs are dead. Probably closer to 95%, but as I didn't dive every square inch, I can't say there aren't some pristine patches somewhere. There very well may be, I just didn't see them.

As for the Florida and Great Barrier reefs, I can also attest to their ailing health. I live just above the Keys and dive them regularly, and I dove the GB Reef about 10 weeks ago. The destruction is real.

Don't take anyone's word for it. Go strap on a set of tanks and see it for yourself. It's a wake-up call.

Tal

Well, at least one noteworthy one:

The Seychelles reefs are just about gone. What was once arguably the best reef to dive in the world outside the Great Barrier is now a graveyard.

And this knowledge isn't from reading an alarmist's evaluation of the situation, it is from seeing it with my own eyes on dives I did last year on Mahe, Praslin and La Digue. A conservative estimate would be that 90% of the reefs are dead. Probably closer to 95%, but as I didn't dive every square inch, I can't say there aren't some pristine patches somewhere. There very well may be, I just didn't see them.

As for the Florida and Great Barrier reefs, I can also attest to their ailing health. I live just above the Keys and dive them regularly, and I dove the GB Reef about 6 weeks ago. The destruction is real.

Don't take anyone's word for it. Go strap on a set of tanks and see it for yourself. It's a wake-up call.

Tal

how many people live in Portland? How many people live in France? Extrapolate. I'll even do it for you. 243,537 people live in greater Portland. France has about 60 million residents. In france 14,000 died which would be the equivalent of 56 people dying in Portland. So, equivalent things do happen here. We're just spared greater numbers because of our low population density and the fact that weather is a fairly localized phenomenon. But in 1988 between 5,000 and 10,000 people died in the US due to a heat wave.

Most fatalities from coal are not from power-plant accidents but from mining. Mining accidents mostly kill miners (who cares about them?), but also can kill many people who live near the mine. The 1972 flood at the Buffalo Creek Coal Mine in West Virginia killed 125 people living nearby, injured over 1000, and completely destroyed 500 homes.

Worldwide, tens of thousands of deaths per year occur from coal-mining accidents, and that doesn't count slow deaths from black-lung and other chronic conditions that afflict miners. In India, the death rate is equivalent to one Bhopal per month. In China, around 5000 people per year are killed in coal mining accidents.

Compare all this to the estimated 2500 deaths due to Chernobyl.

"If you want funding for your AIDS research, you're going to have to convince the organization offering you the money that your research is more important than research that will help tens, or even hundreds, of millions of people over the long term."

Like AIDS, right? According to the United Nations, over the course of the last two decades 22 million have died because of AIDS. They currently estimate that there are another 34.1 million infected persons right now, the vast majority of them in developing nations. Most of those countries are extremely poor and have very limited educational opportunities both in general and to combat ignorance about STD's. Result: explosive growth and a plauge that is decimating their populations--in that most productive 15-45 age group. The World Health Organization presents an even less rosy picture, as can be found here. Wow. A 33% adult infection rate in Zimbabwe for a disease that has what, a 99.9% or better fatality rate? Not even Ebola's fatality rate is that good. Another figure that I found in my very brief web search was that in 2000 alone there were an estimated 5.3 million people newly infected--infection rates are continuing to climb.

Plus "earthquakes."

I live in California. Earthquakes aren't bad. At least if something happens and your house is destroyed, it will all be in a nice neat little pile. (Well minus a fire, but there are precautions for that too).

Let's see. Move Midwest, you have Tornados. Now everything you own is scattered over 2 miles.

Gulf States and East Coast? Hurricanes and tsunamis.

Northeast? Fucking crazy blizzards!
Northwest? Volcanoes!

Hell, anywhere on earth? Possibility of a meteor strikes or lighting strikes or any other series of natural disasters.

While I could understand your reasons for wanting to get out of California, citing a natural disaster doesn't seem to be the most wise decision.

With the recent news of the Antarctic melting at an extreme rate, I must agree with my esteemed colleagues in the fields of meteorology and ecological sciences that something must be done to prevent the nation of Tuvalu from being completely submerged by melted polar ice cap. My ecological chemist counterparts have been predicting these events with exact science for close to a decade. From the looks of this article, it would appear that they've been taken seriously. Look at the facts: CFC concentration is down. With the lack of CFC molecules present to bond with errant ozone molecules, the hole will have to repair itself with said ozone. We're entering a new era of global intellectual foresight with the assistance of my fellow academics.

No it wouldn't. Trains crashing into the buffers happens fairly frequently. You end up with 45 people or 2 people, or even 0 people killed. The worst train crashes tend to be when two trains collide, but even in the non-western countries, the death toll is counted in the hundreds.

Well, it's a conspiracy from Microsoft don't you know : they secretely triggered the explosion of the Soufriere so that the island would eventually disappear and they could lay claim on the .ms tld. It hasn't quite worked the first time, but it's only a matter of time now, and Microsoft is very very patient ...