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... then the rest of the world could also stop complying with the idiotic restrictions (liquids, etc.) initiated by the US.

Perhaps you didn't notice -- the restrictions are being quietly lifted.

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/...

Some research on the subject... https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/ne...

Turkey, which is actually part of the EU

When you make a mistake this big, why should anyone take the other things you say about the rest of the world seriously?

Although it's the only country in the EU with more anti-science idiots than the US

It's also apparently the only country in the EU not actually listed by the EU itself as a member state. Or indeed by anyone else. Except you.

You may want to think about what that says about your system of beliefs.

http://europa.eu/about-eu/coun...

Well... not exactly.

All EU members are also members of the EMU and are bound by its economic policies -- they just aren't necessarily forced to switch to the euro immediately. Being bound by EMU policies can be almost just as bad as switching to the euro for Greece.

Sweden is required to switch to the euro per treaty once certain metrics are met.

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_fi...

All EU members other than the UK and Denmark which specifically have opt-out clauses are required to eventually switch the euro.

But, you make a very fair point. Greece could have negotiated to enter the euro when it made more sense for them to do so. However, no one at the time saw the economic devastation coming, and if there hadn't been a global recession, Greece would likely have instead enjoyed a roaring economy with the boost the euro gave it globally.

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_fi...

They even highlighted it for you.

Luxembourg is an incredibly small but rich country. Why do they appear to be such disproportionate leeches compared to every other member state?

A nifty infographic.

Quote:

In 2013 Luxembourg received €1.6 billion in EU spending, mostly due to the presence of several EU institutions. EU administrative expenditure accounted for €1.35 billion, or 84% of total spending. Regional policy accounted for only 1.2%, far below the EU average of 42%. Farm spending accounted for only 3%, also far below the EU average of 43%. Research and development took €163 million (10%), slightly above the EU average of 8%.

Greece is a warning to France or even spain, italy and other of the eurozone with ramping up debt : get your table cleaned or it might get burn down as a sanitisation process by others.

Spain must be doing something well as they advanced payments of their debt twice already (which the country is supposed to start paying back in 2022...) . Check here and here

Even though the Spanish public debt is still increasing ( 1-2% this year) all the indicators point to a recovery in Spanish economy and we can expect a start of reduction on the public debt by 2017

"The debt ratio will climb to 100.3% of GDP in 2015 and 101.5% a year after, before dropping to 98.5% in 2017. " extracted from here

Greece is a warning to France or even spain, italy and other of the eurozone with ramping up debt : get your table cleaned or it might get burn down as a sanitisation process by others.

Spain must be doing something well as they advanced payments of their debt twice already (which the country is supposed to start paying back in 2022...) . Check here and here

Even though the Spanish public debt is still increasing ( 1-2% this year) all the indicators point to a recovery in Spanish economy and we can expect a start of reduction on the public debt by 2017

"The debt ratio will climb to 100.3% of GDP in 2015 and 101.5% a year after, before dropping to 98.5% in 2017. " extracted from here

Once again we are seeing big bold headlines claiming massive increase in the UK’s contribution to the EU budget in 2013. We provide figures and explanations below, but first a reminder of some general points that put these figures in context: Traditionally, the UK net contributions to the EU budget are less than 1% of UK’s public spending. While all bigger and richer member states are net contributors, as a contribution per capita the UK is behind countries like Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands or Austria, Finland and Belgium. Finally, the estimated benefits of EU membership for the UK economy vastly exceed the UK’s gross budget contribution, let alone its net one. You don’t have to take our word for it – the CBI estimates the direct net economic benefits alone at between £62bn and £78bn every year http://www.cbi.org.uk/campaign...

http://ec.europa.eu/budget/exp...
For once you should inform yourself.
Your health services are not overloaded because of Brussels, it is because you have a lack of capable national politicians that can legally limit the number of people claiming benefits.
There is no EU rule that forces a nation to pay for visitors, of course there is a rule that makes the nations treat workers equal, a sore point for the conservatives.
Those that work can hardly be considered a drain on the system, on the contrary, they contribute to it.

Oops on 1. It was roughly 1980 when America started to emit more CO2 than Europe. Prior to that, Europe emitted more.

I stand by #2, based on the above. You can see that starting in 2008, America's emissions started dropping, and has continued since that time. More importantly, it will continue for the next 4 years, if not longer. And here is EIA saying that much more will close. And IER thinks that 72 GW of 321 GW of coal plants are going to shut down before 2020. Note that Coal plants account for about 3/4 of electricities CO2 emissions in America. Shutting down that 72 GW, which are the worst, will take out roughly 1/4 of that CO2 of Electricities CO2 emissions.

This data from Europe, shows that America's data starts in 1992 at 5.0. hits highest point was 2007 (5.9 billion tonnes) drops to 5.3 in 2013. Likewise, Eu28 data start in 1992 at 4.3 and then sits at it until 2007, where it also drops to 3.7.
Sadly, this article does not do justice to the amount of emissions that Europe kicks out, but the map in it shows how much is really coming out of Europe AND CHINA.

And as to 4 above, that stands on its own. Again, OCO2 shows how much China emits, which is far far more than is generally admitted since Chinese leaders are lying.

and you can look up 5 and 6, or even think about it. China's emissions from 1850 on, exceed America's total. And considering that China and Europe have been burning coal for multiple millennium as well as have been the most populated areas of the world for the last milenium, it makes sense that they account for the majority.

So, CO2 is a pollutant according to: the US EPA, Wikipedia, the EU, and many more. Just like dumping mercury in the water is a pollutant even if it occurs naturally. Ozone is also a pollutant at low altitude, even tought we need it at high altitude. Your definition is full of contradictions.

EU privacy laws are fairly painful for US companies to comply with. To do business with EU individuals, Personal Identifiable Information needs to be handled according to a set of rules - http://ec.europa.eu/justice/da...

It is often simpler for Amazon deployed companies to set up in the Ireland AWS zone.

As others have mentioned, most foreign SIGINT/COMINT agencies can't gather intelligence domestically, so it lowers barriers. Ironically US companies that want to deal with EU customers may end up moving everything to Ireland. However this allows the NSA to gather intelligence indirectly on US citizens.

I'm not sure what you mean. Is this the directive? http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/copyright-infso/index_en.htm#maincontentSec1

If this is what you mean, then I don't think you're correct. I'm absolutely certain that I can legally download audio, video and text works (no software though) - only download, not upload, so no torrents, but a HTTP download is perfectly legal. It also didn't implement any kind of three strikes law or any mechanism that would allow the government to take away my internet access; this might be in some way possible on a court order, but I really don't think it has ever happened.

Facebook - Twitter - Tumblr... and see if the ISPs dare to block these

It would be interesting to see what would happen. Injunctions under s97A can be imposed on "service providers", which is defined very broadly, as " any person providing an information society service", so not just telcos.

My feeling is that the copyright industry would attempt to secure injunctions against Facebook, Twitter and so on, if they had entities in the jurisdiction. Both Twitter and Facebook do, as both have offices in London. However, they are not the entities providing the services, so it would be interesting to see how a court might rule — if the European Court's approach of Google Spain was followed, their proximity to the service provision might be sufficient to bring them within scope...

We don't have the storage technology available to achieve greater than around 20% grid penetration of wind/solar anywhere except for a small handful of places (namely Denmark, who is next to Norway, who have a HUGE hydro power reserve that they can throttle up/down in response to Denmark's supply/demand.)

Totally wrong.
AreaRequiredWindOnly.jpg (JPEG Image, 1000ÂÃ--Â753 pixels)

Europe pumped hydro potential

There are two major reasons why people incorrectly think aspartame causes cancer:

1. In 1975 a bad study was released saying aspartame caused brain and other cancers. This study became “legend”, and is what everyone thinks about aspartame, but it is not true. There is even an article on Wikipedia specifically about this controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy
2. In 1998, a hoax was released saying aspartame caused all sorts of serious diseases, and people believed it: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htm. It’s also on snopes http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

Due to the 1975 study, studies were launched and FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut" (http://web.archive.org/web/20071214170430/www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1999/699_sugar.html)

1. The European Food Safety Authority concluded in its 2013 re-evaluation that aspartame and its breakdown products are safe for human consumption at current levels of exposure (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3496.htm)
2. As do other independent studies (http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408440701516184)
3. The national cancer institute has cleared aspartame as having no links to cancer (http://web.archive.org/web/20090212130028/http://cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/AspartameQandA)

There are many more scientific studies on it by national governments showing it’s safe as well:

• UK https://www.food.gov.uk/science/additives/aspartame/
• Canada http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/sweeten-edulcor/aspartame-eng.php
• Australia / New Zealand http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/additives/aspartame/pages/default.aspx

Either you admit your error or you're effectively advocating anarchy. At which point there is no law. We'd live in some mad max post apocalyptic hell hole in a week if we followed this to its logical conclusion.

That is a great example of the slippery slope logical fallacy. So in your view, if we (i.e., our society) were to reject the death penalty because we decide it is immoral and hypocritical, then the only logically consistent position is to reject all law entirely, which will lead to the inevitable consequence of a lawless, anarchic society.

In case the absurdity of that is not obvious, consider this: The European Union summarily rejects capital punishment as "cruel and inhuman". In other words, as an instrument of justice, it is immoral and cannot ever be justified, no matter how heinous an offender's crimes. Guided by this premise, many EU states have banned capital punishment for decades. Yet, in no case has this led to a subsequent total rejection of the rule of law, and it doesn't appear that any of these countries are on the brink of anarchy.

Your entire argument rests squarely on the unstated assumption that the purpose of the criminal justice system is tit for tat revenge. You might see it that way, but many of us do not. Take away that assumption, and there is no logical conflict at all with rejecting the death penalty because it is inhumane and hypocritical while also supporting a functional justice system with the power to enforce laws and impose penalties.

Sure, a simple statement like "killing people is illegal, ergo the state is hypocritical if it kills people" is not very insightful. But if one accepts the notion that state-sanctioned execution is "cruel and inhuman", then it is perfectly reasonable to wish for a government that does not try to protect its citizens by threatening them with cruel and inhuman punishment.

Finally, since you like slippery slopes, why not take your own reasoning to its "logical conclusion"? Your arguments lead to the conclusion that any sort of punishment is acceptable as long as it is preceded by a trial. Do you really believe that? Or do you believe that certain kinds of punishment are never appropriate, even if their use would not be "hypocritical" (by your criteria) for certain kinds of crime?

Yeah, it does make a difference in people who see where this is heading (and fast) actually do their job as voters. The two Swedish politicians who were voted into the European Parliament under the Pirate Party flag made an enormous difference while they were there, and the German Pirate Party MEP who succeeded them has continued to do so being the rapporteur for the parliament's review of the Copyright Directive - something that's happening right now.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

Add to that the Icelandic Pirate Party who are making a difference in their national parliament, and are currently polling as the largest party in nation.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

The Pirate Party movement is represented in over 70 countries all over the world. The "only" thing that needs to happen to counteract the stupidity of Big Media and Authoritarian Government is for people to do their jobs while at the voting booths.

I can't speak for North America but Europe has massive pumped hydro potential that is untapped.

Assessment of the European potential for pumped hydropower

Pumped hydro can be totally man made, dig a hole, connect a pipe, install some bi-directional turbines, damn off an area with little water flow and you have a giant battery that will last hundreds of years with little maintenance.

"Chernobyl: a crazy design with a strongly positive void coefficient. No one else has ever made such designs, even before Chernobyl because it was always known to be dangerous."

Hmm.. which unit? not widely known, two meltdowns occurred at Chernobyl. NPP, Unit 1, September 9, 1982 and then the Unit 4 explosion April 26, 1986, which was hidden from world until the fallout trigger a Swedish radiation monitor.

Eight days days later, (May 4, 1986), a pebble fuel pellet got stuck in the piping in a German 750MWth, AVR PBM reactor. Efforts to dislodge the pellet caused a release of both core and coolant into the atmosphere. Local plant management tried to blame on the Chernobyl disaster. But a professor at a local university in Frelburg, analyzed the fallout which contained radioactive Pa-233 and determined that a second nuclear incident had occurred nearby.

So their is a list of three(3) incidents, each time management/government tried to cover up and there is much more.

Don't fooled, TMI unit II was only 4 months old when a valve got stuck and melted down.. Fukushima is the worst yet, three(3) fully mature reactor cores have melted down and now reside somewhere below the reactors, releasing deadly fission by products into an underground river flowing underneath it.

Millions of humans have succumbed to early death, and Ten's of millions more are suffering the consequences, and that is just the tip of iceberg. Their is nothing clean about Nuclear Power plants, each refueling cycle discharges a large amount of radioactive gas into the environment, and the effect is detectable in the surrounding population.

Since you obviously haven't been here for a while, many parts of Florida are underwater at high tide.

But not newly underwater. Sea levels have risen about 200 mm, or about 7.8 inches in the last century (1910 to 2008) (also, the rate of rise hasn't changed much, either -- see linked graph again.) Which time period has to include almost all, or perhaps all, of Florida's sewer infrastructure -- Miami was officially incorporated as a city with a population of just over 300 on July 28, 1896. Fort Lauderdale was incorporated even later -- 1911. This tells us quite handily that region's sewage infrastructure was built during that 7.8 inch rise.

So if Florida's infrastructure is seeing drainage run backwards due to an 8 inch change in levels, that is clearly related to absolutely dismal design and implementation -- not to sea level rise. I mean, good grief. What do you think the design criteria were? "If anything at ALL happens, sewers should overflow?" Please refer to the actual data when making claims. Also: If your public officials have been telling you that this is due to sea level rise, they are lying through their teeth, and you should take them to task for it. Good luck with that.

Florida is fighting that losing battle quietly.

Yes, no doubt. But they aren't fighting with sea level rise. They're fighting with incompetence.

Actually, wind is about middle of the field. Depending on which figures you take (this seems to be reasonably balanced), solar is the most expensive and either coal or nuclear (or on this graph hydro) are the cheapest. If you want to reduce environmental impact, nuclear is actually your best option in the short term, although we absolutely need to be pursuing renewables long-term.

But, calculating costs is tricky, because if you want a really balanced view, you need to factor in externalities (indirect or down-system effects), and this puts things like coal and other fossil fuels as horribly expensive, and wind, hydro, and nuclear come out on top.

So, depending on how much of it's effect you are measuring, wind actually can be cheaper. (I haven't even gone into subsidies).

Apparently the goal of the European Systemic Risk Board is to safeguard financial stability in Europe. I have no idea how the CEO of a US video game company came to be the chair of that board, so I can sort of understand people asking questions. On the other hand, I don't really see the conflict of interest either, it just seems to be a weird choice.

Oh, wait a minute... maybe they meant the eSRB, the Pakistani Taxpayer Facilitation Portal?

This isn't really the right website to start talking about 'harmful' rf radiation without any sort of proof.

Proof exists only in mathematics. Science relies on evidence.

The limited evidence so far produced has left experts divided:
http://www.eea.europa.eu/highl...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

"One reason scientists disagree is because the mechanisms by which the radiations from mobile phones could cause cancer are not yet understood. However, waiting for that knowledge could take decades: the biological mechanisms connecting tobacco smoke and cancer are still not fully understood, some 60 years after the first published studies linked smoking and lung cancer."

I would no more support your apparent complacency than [my alleged] paranoia. But to clarify the record, raising discussion about a point on which experts are divided does not strike me as remotely paranoid.

Care to show any credible studies that show this to be a problem?

By "this" I assume we are both referring to near-field RF radiation. According to credible sources, there is insufficient evidence currently to state that it either is or is not a problem, but one consensus of experts agree that mobile phone radiation is worthy of further exploration as a possible risk:

"The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a global authority on cancer, recently concluded that radiation from mobile phones is a ‘possible’ head cancer risk. However, scientific opinion is split on the issue – many different studies have reached different conclusions based on the same evidence." -- http://www.eea.europa.eu/highl...

In Europe they have proposed regulations to reduce exposure of children to mobile phone and wifi radiation: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

So, yes, there are credible experts who don't share your complacent surety. Personally, I am neither convinced one way or the other and adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

But if we grant that it is a possible issue, then we must consider that these earbud things are "ultra low power," but seeing as electromagnetic field strength increases in an inverse proportion to the square of a decrease in the separation distance, putting a transmitter INSIDE your skull makes an orders of magnitude strength difference over even the few millimeters of additional separation present by holding a phone against your ear.

As I said, I avoid paranoia, but I've lived long enough to see lots of "safe" things turn out to be absolutely not safe (like BPA) or at least called into question (like saccharin).

So I raise it as a possible consideration here, but I am absolutely not saying it is a problem; run for the hills!

LOL.
I always laugh when idiots trot out data that is 5-10 years old.
Here is Europe's 2013 numbers on each nation's output.
In fig 2.3, you can see that America's total output in 2012 is about 25% above Europe's and that both of ours are headed in the right direction, which is shrinking.
OTOH, China's is massively moving upwards and continues that growth.

And to take it a step further, look at figure 2.5. That is CO2 / GDP (PPP). Sadly, they do not have one with REAL $GDP, which is a far better measurement. But, regardless, you notice that:
1) EU27 went from about 425 to 300. Not bad. And in real USD GDP (not PPP), they are excellent
2) US went from over 600 to around 375. That is excellent considering that PPP is based on USD.
3) China 1800 down to 900. Excellent drop, except that it was done by money manipulation, not be efficiency. In real $ GDP (not PPP), China actually went UP, not down.

All in all, America is in the right place, while nations like China are total disasters.

Yes they do.

US stats are pretty shit.

Compared to European stats.

Fuck you USA.

Strange, the news than China passed America (USA) was around 2011 or 2012 even, it was big news even here on /. But perhaps the "news about that" was late and came only 2012, at least it was very recent.
Interesting read about 2014 ... https://germanwatch.org/en/dow... USA on rank 41 of the "best performing CO2 reduction countries" ...
However I see now clear numbers are not easy to get: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_w... here it says China produced 27% of the worlds emissions in 2011 (USA 17%)!
And here it says USA and China changed leadership 2006 (as you said): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
Here it is even claimed that basically all nations (except the eU in total, no breakdown by country however) increased their CO2 output in the recent years: http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/... -- which I find hard to believe.
Anyway, the USA still seem to be around 16% share of world wide CO2 production, not 14%, interesting read about various changes the recent years: http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/...

Do you even bother reading the reports? The entire WEST is less than China, and that was in 2012.
America: 5.10 billion tonnes:
Europe 27: 4.01 billion tonnes:
Japan: 1.26 billion tonnes:
Canada: .53
Australia: .36 billion tonnes
And that adds up to 11,26 billion tonnes

What is China in 2012? 9.86 billion tonnes.
Note that the above was 2012. Each year since then, China has increased, while the west, except Japan and Germany, have decreased. China exceeded the west in 2013, and will do more so in 2014.

And much better measure then per capita is emissions per GDP.

LOL.
America is less than 14%. China passed America clear back in 2006. Right now, China, with bad calculations, emits ~1/3 of the world's total emissions.
With America being less than 14%, Europe at 13%, Japan at 3%, along with Canada, Australia and South Korea emit less than 31%.

Wrong. On some estimates so far, that group is actually a minority of the small and microbusinesses affected by these measures. It certainly isn't "most".

Really. Maybe I learnt something new today, or maybe we're talking about different things. You see, I'm not talking about Grandma's Handmade Socks or the local pizza delivery service - they're not worried about cross-border commerce. These businesses are the vast majority of microbusinesses. But they are not affected by this measure.

the rules for issuing VAT invoices, which again differ widely among the 28 EU states.

Really. Apparently I was dreaming when a 30-second Google search turned up this informative overview that includes, among other things, a bullet list of what an invoice has to contain.

However, you are effectively now subject to audit by any of the 28 states' national tax authorities

Again, maybe I will learn something new today, but so far I assumed that existing cooperations of the tax authorities would make it so that only your countries tax agency will ever audit you, however it may do so on request from another tax authority.

Depends on the rate - standard rate must be at least 15% and reduced rate at least 5%. There are other rates.

http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_c...

Its quite simple - if the vendor cannot reliably detect a VAT rate for you, they will use the fallback VAT rate of 15% for standard rate, or 5% for the reduced rate, which are the EU minimums for those rates.

Nuff said really :)

You can check out all the EUs member VAT rates here:

http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_c...

If you compare germany with rest of europe then between 2007 and 2012 germany dropped just by 3% while EU average is 12% drop and even USA dropped more. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t... Germany does two steps forward, one step back. It could do much better if it had sensible energy policy.

And if you begin at a date that isn't cherry picked for your argument...

Question is if german policy of dropping nuclear energy and going all green does help or not? Then you should pick appropriate metric and minimize noise.

Sure - but then you should start in the year "dropping nuclear energy" began, not cherry pick one years before.

E.g. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.euro..., comparing 1990 with 2012, you'll get a drop of 24.76%, with only the UK, Denmark and a couple of East Block states better, the "old" EU at 15% less, and the USA a plus of 26%

You added lot of irrelevant noise to get result you want. In 1990-2007 germany with its sensible policies was leader in reducing CO2 emissions. In 2007-2012 it decided to drop nuke plants and other states fared better. When you combine these two you get that germany was good but that is despite its later policy as other states did not in 7 years to catched lead it made in previous 17 years. If it continued policy of previous 17 years you would get bigger decrease of emissions. BTW you link show 'Invalid session: xtDataset is null.', proof by inacessibility?

Nice try, but there were no new NPPs after 1990, so they can't have anything to do with CO2 reduction. Instead it was back then that more and more renewable energy was used.

If you compare germany with rest of europe then between 2007 and 2012 germany dropped just by 3% while EU average is 12% drop and even USA dropped more. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t... Germany does two steps forward, one step back. It could do much better if it had sensible energy policy.

And if you begin at a date that isn't cherry picked for your argument...

Question is if german policy of dropping nuclear energy and going all green does help or not? Then you should pick appropriate metric and minimize noise.

Sure - but then you should start in the year "dropping nuclear energy" began, not cherry pick one years before.

E.g. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.euro..., comparing 1990 with 2012, you'll get a drop of 24.76%, with only the UK, Denmark and a couple of East Block states better, the "old" EU at 15% less, and the USA a plus of 26%

You added lot of irrelevant noise to get result you want. In 1990-2007 germany with its sensible policies was leader in reducing CO2 emissions. In 2007-2012 it decided to drop nuke plants and other states fared better. When you combine these two you get that germany was good but that is despite its later policy as other states did not in 7 years to catched lead it made in previous 17 years. If it continued policy of previous 17 years you would get bigger decrease of emissions. BTW you link show 'Invalid session: xtDataset is null.', proof by inacessibility?

Nice try, but there were no new NPPs after 1990, so they can't have anything to do with CO2 reduction. Instead it was back then that more and more renewable energy was used.

If you compare germany with rest of europe then between 2007 and 2012 germany dropped just by 3% while EU average is 12% drop and even USA dropped more. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t... Germany does two steps forward, one step back. It could do much better if it had sensible energy policy.

And if you begin at a date that isn't cherry picked for your argument...

Question is if german policy of dropping nuclear energy and going all green does help or not? Then you should pick appropriate metric and minimize noise.

E.g. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.euro..., comparing 1990 with 2012, you'll get a drop of 24.76%, with only the UK, Denmark and a couple of East Block states better, the "old" EU at 15% less, and the USA a plus of 26%

You added lot of irrelevant noise to get result you want.
In 1990-2007 germany with its sensible policies was leader in reducing CO2 emissions. In 2007-2012 it decided to drop nuke plants and other states fared better.
When you combine these two you get that germany was good but that is despite its later policy as other states did not in 7 years to catched lead it made in previous 17 years. If it continued policy of previous 17 years you would get bigger decrease of emissions. BTW you link show 'Invalid session: xtDataset is null.', proof by inacessibility?

If you compare germany with rest of europe then between 2007 and 2012 germany dropped just by 3% while EU average is 12% drop and even USA dropped more. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t... Germany does two steps forward, one step back. It could do much better if it had sensible energy policy.

And if you begin at a date that isn't cherry picked for your argument...

Question is if german policy of dropping nuclear energy and going all green does help or not? Then you should pick appropriate metric and minimize noise.

E.g. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.euro..., comparing 1990 with 2012, you'll get a drop of 24.76%, with only the UK, Denmark and a couple of East Block states better, the "old" EU at 15% less, and the USA a plus of 26%

You added lot of irrelevant noise to get result you want.
In 1990-2007 germany with its sensible policies was leader in reducing CO2 emissions. In 2007-2012 it decided to drop nuke plants and other states fared better.
When you combine these two you get that germany was good but that is despite its later policy as other states did not in 7 years to catched lead it made in previous 17 years. If it continued policy of previous 17 years you would get bigger decrease of emissions. BTW you link show 'Invalid session: xtDataset is null.', proof by inacessibility?

If you compare germany with rest of europe then between 2007 and 2012 germany dropped just by 3% while EU average is 12% drop and even USA dropped more. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t... Germany does two steps forward, one step back. It could do much better if it had sensible energy policy.

And if you begin at a date that isn't cherry picked for your argument...

E.g. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction.do?switchdimensions=true, comparing 1990 with 2012, you'll get a drop of 24.76%, with only the UK, Denmark and a couple of East Block states better, the "old" EU at 15% less, and the USA a plus of 26%

Not to mention that Germany is still a net exporter of energy. IOW you ignored the many steps forward, and only looked at the last three.

If you compare germany with rest of europe then between 2007 and 2012 germany dropped just by 3% while EU average is 12% drop and even USA dropped more. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t... Germany does two steps forward, one step back. It could do much better if it had sensible energy policy.

And if you begin at a date that isn't cherry picked for your argument...

E.g. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction.do?switchdimensions=true, comparing 1990 with 2012, you'll get a drop of 24.76%, with only the UK, Denmark and a couple of East Block states better, the "old" EU at 15% less, and the USA a plus of 26%

Not to mention that Germany is still a net exporter of energy. IOW you ignored the many steps forward, and only looked at the last three.

[quote] [quote] [qoute] well, nuclear power is one option, but there are ... less dangerous ones. Take a mix of solar, wind, water power (not just dammed rivers and such, also tidal). [/quote] That does not work yet, take Germany as counterexample. With its green energy policy it in 2013 managed in to increase its CO2 emissions while most of europe decreased its emissions, only Denmark, Estonia, Portugal have bigger increase. http://phys.org/news/2014-05-g... [/quote] Of course that is ignoring that in 2013 Germany still emitted less CO2 than any year up to 2008 (for several decades) - when all NPPs still were running at full power. [/quote] Which is again misleading as emissions decreased everywhere in developed world. That drop could be explained by better insulation and other improvements in efficiency.
If you compare germany with rest of europe then between 2007 and 2012 germany dropped just by 3% while EU average is 12% drop and even USA dropped more. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t... Germany does two steps forward, one step back. It could do much better if it had sensible energy policy.

I can understand attacking a plant in the US, but Europeans sell anything to anyone with the cash (and then bitch at us for being hypocrites).

No, they don't. There are currently EU trade sanctions in place against a whole lot of countries: see here. Restriction of goods seems to be mostly arms, but the list on North Korea is pretty extensive, although it apparently still doesn't include raw steel.

5 vaccines in Europe? Lies, dear AC. Here's the schedule of vaccination for the United Kingdom:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/v...

Same for Portugal:
http://www.vacinas.com.pt/cale...

Same for Spain (click on each part of the map for regional rules)
http://vacunasaep.org/profesio...

Hare's a handy comparison/search tool for vaccines for all of Europe:
http://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.e...

No Clue indeed. No clue from almost anyone reporting on this piece of news. (it is dissapointing that the BBC headline is so wrong)

Have a read of the Euro Parliament's Press release or (unbelievably better than the BBC) Tech Crunch.

Its a general resolution about online search engines bundling services & about the need to enforce European Competitions laws in the online space.

Isn't the page really the issue? If the information is wrong or out of date then should it be forced to be taken down/edited instead of removing it from Google.

Have you been following this issue at all? The the data doesn't have to be wrong or incorrect, it can also be inadequate, irrelevant, or excessive. That is quite a sweeping definition. This is relevant.

Supposedly, there will be accurate guidelines issued by the end of November.

Norway, while not politically member of the EU is member of the European Economic Area, meaning that for all practical purposes (beside sending representatives to the European Parliament, Commission, and so on), it's member of the EU.

Actually it means that you simply dont' have any idea about the difference between the EU and the EFTA. And this is what the EU thinks about Norway's trade policies:

MEPs urge Norway to lift protectionist duties on EU farm produce
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

Maybe you should warn the european MPs that they are wrong. Or, in alternative, you might avoid discussing topics that you clearly know nothing about.

They go after other companies for antitrust, you just don't hear about it. If you go to their antitrust case search engine and do a search for all antitrust/cartel cases in the last 6 months you will find 8 cases. How many of those 8 cases did you hear about? btw EU is already investigating Amazon over E-Book antitrust.

Anybody with half a brain generally doesn't acquire money for its own sake

The point was that some people would choose non-monetary benefits over monetary benefits. As they say: money can't buy you love or friendship.

most of the interesting jobs you can get in Europe are publicly financed one way or another (research, art, etc.)

False. Unless you wish to invoke a No True Scotsman-fallacy.
1. 'Europe' does not have a centralized policy for funding of 'most of the interesting jobs'. The member states of the EU differ wildly in the extent to which they 'finance' certain jobs.
2. In general: art and research are subsidized, not 'financed'. There is nothing stopping anyone from attracting private investments for their activities. In fact, there are European anti-state aid laws to prevent anti-competitive subsidization by the governements of the member states: http://ec.europa.eu/competitio...
Many universities in Europe cooperate tightly with institutes that are oriented towards commercial(ly viable) research and the associated private investments.

which means you don't get to do what you think is right, you bloody well have to do what society tells you to do

News flash: unless it's your company, you're not deciding what you get to do. You bloody well have to do what was in the bloody job description when you decided to take the job. If you believe that a private institution gives more of a crap about 'what you think is right' than a public one, you're deeply misguided.

I know how the grid works.
If you knew how a grid workes you would not write nonsense like this:
Ok, so pumped hydro is over a century old. But it is most heavily used in France
France has less pumped storage than Germany, capacity wise and power wise.
Infortunately only big plants and no summary about countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Mice read: http://setis.ec.europa.eu/seti...

due to Nuclear power being more cost effective operating at maximum capacity full time.
Simple comment: that is wrong.
Unfortunately explaining what all is wrong and nonsense (starting with the fact that the france nuclear plants don't run full power all the time, *facepalm* )

Germany is at the edge of having too much solar and wind installed on its grid,
Wrong. Germany has four grids. Plus endless transportation grids. The problem regarding wind is that most wind is in the north and most industry is in the south. Feeding wind into the northern grid makes no sense, as there is not enough demand. What we lack are transportation grids from north to south.

HAS dialed back on incentives for new solar and wind installations.
Completely wrong. Germany reduced the feed in tarrifs for future plants, We reduced the governmmet subsidicing for solar. Beyond that is no "dialing back on incentives".

The reality is that if the rest of Europe had even a third as much solar and wind as Germany, the European grid would crash due to massive electrical overloads and underloads.
As I mentioned several posts back. You should read how a power grid works. A power grid can not crash due to your magic 'overload'. There is no overload. The grid operators would disconnect any offending facility, might be plant or even a big inductivity or capacity disturbing the grid frequency.
Your assumptions lack any physical or technical base.

The Germany plan has only gone so far cause they can dump their excess power on their neighbors and buy reserve power at a surplus latter. Lots of buying French (and other countries) nuclear power when wind is weak at night or in a winter's day.
That is wrong on all accounts again. France especially buys from Germany because their grid is at its limits, not because ours is. They mainly buy german power to pump up into their pumped storages. Germany very rarely buys power at all from neighbours. Bottom line we were nearly every month the previous years a net exporter to Europe, we export _ALWAYS_ more than we import. There were a few exceptions where we were importing a tiny bit more from France than we exported to France. Perhaps 4 or 5 months in total in the last decade.
Also please get a damn clue: especially in winter and at night, the wind is not weak but strong. That is an automatic dictation from our coastal climate and the typical european winter climate. (* facepalm *) Every child learns that in Europe in school in 3rd or 4th grade.

I spare me to comment on the other nonsense in the middle ... wind does not 'oscillate' much (* facepalm *)

Geothermal usually is baseload, which is much better for mating with pumped hydro than any other intermittent source.

Pumped storage works in both ways. If you have to much wind you pump water up hill.
Geothermal is usually used for heating, not to produce electric energy. Ofc you can. If you have the right place. Germany has not.
So: no, the typical base load plant mates pretty bad with pumped storage.

Germany is switching from nuclear to wind for its base load, and phasing out coal as well.

Again, learn how a grid works, so you understand why every country has _minimum_ roughly 10% of its daily _power_ production as pumped storage, and why some countries have up to 150% of the daily _energy_ production as capa

If one state can tax a transaction in other state -- for ANY reason -- what's next? Wisconsin taxing your grocery purchases in Los Angeles? It's easy to see how absurd that concept is.

Actually, check out the new changes to the EU VAT Directive effective Jan 1, 2015. They basically say that if you sell digital goods and services to an EU consumer you have to charge VAT tax at the effective rate of the consumer's country. This would appear to apply to all sellers regardless of whether or not they are located within the EU. So a seller in the United States selling to a consumer in Germany would have to charge the Germany VAT rate and collect those taxes and pay them into the Germany tax authority. If the same seller then also sells to a consumer in France he would have to collect VAT on that sale at a different rate (the rate for France) and collect that VAT and pay it into the French tax authority. See http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_c...