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You know, there are news stories I've read that have found a correlation between increased autism rates and being near agricultural fields where insecticides are sprayed. I like pointing out these news stories I've read to people. (See below).

While I will concede that correlation doesn't prove causation, in the face of data contradicting other causes for autism, I find that exposure to known neurotoxins sort of plausible as a cause for autism, much more so than other soundly discredited theories.

I think the apparent correlation between autism and insecticide exposure warrants further study. How about you?

https://www.iflscience.com/hea...

--PeterM

See here. Though it's still not enough to say if your city will be spared or not. We know enough to tell people when to evacuate, which is pretty damn good if you ask me.

Your post seems to be trying to cast shade on scientists, implying that their computer models are purposefully wrong. They're not. Again, these computer models are amazing things that are saving lives.

I'm not sure if you really intended to imply the scientists are lying for the sake of profit, but you are. Comments like yours are part of a broader narrative to discredit scientists in general. That narrative is coming out of right wing, pro-corporate think tanks who don't want their profits jeopardized. It's not even that there'd be all that much less money going around if we fought climate change instead of ignoring it, rather the money might go somewhere else. Somewhere besides their coffers.

Again, I don't know if you were aware of all this when you posted, but if by some chance you read my post, well, congrats, you are now. The only question is what are you going to do with this information?

Not a twin in those regards.

Venus is still the most similar planet to Earth in our solar system. Mercury, Mars and Pluto (if you want to include it) are barren rocks, and Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all balls of gas.

Curiously, near the poles the Venusian atmosphere is colder than anywhere on Earth, and with a surprisingly low atmospheric pressure. There's probably a thermal sweet spot somewhere on Venus.

https://www.iflscience.com/spa...

Many humans can't see the "elephant" hiding in this wall.

https://cdn.iflscience.com/ima...

5) Windshield/Bug

4) Ampulex compressa / Periplaneta americana

3) Eastwood / Punk

2) Wall / Mime

1) PC / Wrongthink

Here's the part that you're missing:

While you can consume calories, what gets absorbed by the body, and then how it is used by the body varies greatly. I'd love to see tests that count calories before consumption and then check for calories when it comes out the other end.

Bacteria in the gut plays a huge role in this. Here's an example: "Woman Becomes Obese After Fecal Transplant From Overweight Donor" https://www.iflscience.com/hea...

I see a lot of claims with no sources or evaluations of magnitude or probability

Yeah but but pulling the claim that micro and nano plastics are completely harmless in every way out of your ass without a shred of evidence to back it up is just fine?

https://www.lunduniversity.lu....
https://www.nature.com/article...
https://www.iflscience.com/env...
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...
https://www.iflscience.com/pla...

I see a lot of claims with no sources or evaluations of magnitude or probability

Yeah but but pulling the claim that micro and nano plastics are completely harmless in every way out of your ass without a shred of evidence to back it up is just fine?

https://www.lunduniversity.lu....
https://www.nature.com/article...
https://www.iflscience.com/env...
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...
https://www.iflscience.com/pla...

Now, you raise a different question, namely whether a rapid rise in global average temperatures by 4-5C would lead to mass extinctions. There have been many such temperature increases in the past, and they were not usually associated with mass extinctions. Mass extinctions are extremely rare and seem to require multiple factors to coincide.

We ARE currently living in the middle of a mass extinction event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

We have limited information about the cause of past extinction events, but we've got some good evidence that climate change played a major role in some of them. When the ocean heats up and stores more CO2, it gets more acidic, and shells get weaker for many sea creatures. That can lead to extinctions at the bottom of the food chain, and those can quickly propagate through the rest of the ecosystem. In the case of the Permian extinction, 96% of all species went extinct. And we've got some good evidence to suggest that climate change was a major contributor to that event.

Summary: http://www.iflscience.com/envi...
Some real science: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

The vast majority of countries are missing their Paris agreement targets.

Interesting article. They left out the US. Check out this article from Scientific American:
https://www.scientificamerican...

Especially this:
"Those increases stood in contrast to the United States, which posted the largest year-over-year decline in carbon emissions of any advanced economy. The decline was all the more notable given President Trump’s outspoken opposition to global attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and his plans to withdraw from the Paris deal."

The vast majority of countries are missing their Paris agreement targets.

And globally, the increase in energy production by renewables has pretty much been canceled out by the reduction in nuclear power, meaning the percentage of energy produced by fossil fuels has remained about the same. So if you want someone to blame, blame the anti-nuclear activists.

So then, the decline in temperatures from ~1940 to 1975 was caused by rising CO2?

Yeah, what could possible have happened between Sep 1, 1939 and Sep 2, 1945 that could have an effect on the world? I'm sure everything was totally peaceful and nothing at all changed during those years.

Or the pause for most of this millenia (and we're almost back down to that temperature, now the big El Nino of 2016 is over) is also caused by rising CO2?

What pause?

Perhaps it's not CO2 that is the big culprit here - if the trends don't correlate, than the chance for causation is essentially nil.

Who says the trends don't correlate? You? Did you account for confounding variables when you were measuring your correlations?

That's always been the case, though. Those "3 or 4 probable paths" are the most likely out of the thousands of predictions from a dozen different models. Those models, however, have been getting more accurate over the past decade, significantly narrowing the cone of probable locations several days in advance of the storm.

However, slower-moving storms still bring higher risk. Yes, people should have more time to evacuate, but the damage left behind will still be significantly worse, due to the increased flooding and longer duration of high wind, which in turn means more debris impacts. Those who won't (or can't) evacuate face the prospect of surviving not just a day of hiding in a shelter, but days or weeks of canned food, boiling water, and battery power... and years of work to repair the damage.

But again: are there really a lot of people who'd rather eat insects than plants?

Yes. They are all over asia, and central/south america.

If you wanted the answer you would have done some research. You just wanted to seem clever, right? You'll get 'em next time, tiger! Maybe you should consider changing your diet, I don't think it's working for your brain. Or maybe it's CO poisoning, from all that time exercising in traffic?

I don't recall that being mentioned in the article(s) I read earlier about NASA's involvement.

It's mentioned in this one.

The latest news regarding the EM Drive, which produces a thrust seemingly from nowhere, comes from Paul March, one of the principal investigators on the EM Drive, and was published on the NASA Spaceflight forum. The post is in reply to an unpublished paper that claims the unaccounted thrust is generated by the Lorentz force between the EM Drive and the Earth’s magnetic field, something that March says his tests prove is not true.
“I will tell you that we first built and installed a 2nd generation, closed face magnetic damper that reduced the stray magnetic fields in the vacuum chamber by at least an order of magnitude and any Lorentz force interactions it could produce,” commented March in the post on October 28. “And yet the anomalous thrust signals remain...” he added.

People can "claim" a lot of things but where is the proof to backup their claims?

I can find at least 3 articles claiming that the Indian spaceflight to Planet Mars cost only $7.5 Milliions

http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...

https://economictimes.indiatim...

http://www.iflscience.com/tech...

Can Space-X launch a space mission to Planet Mars for less than $7.5 Millions ??

Recently an astrophysics professor announced the discovery of a fantastic new object he discovered on his long exposure images. He announced it to the world, but he had to send out a retraction when someone pointed out that it was the planet Mars. http://www.iflscience.com/spac...

What is really surprising is bacteria has been found growing in space, on the outside of the International Space Station. Is it possible that our exploration of space could inadvertently be leaving a trail of life in its entirety, or at least highly developed constituent parts? If it doesn't yet exist, Earth might become the origin of extraterrestrial life.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/mars-soil-earthworm-agriculture-science-spd/

http://www.iflscience.com/space/cosmonauts-find-live-bacteria-on-the-hull-of-the-iss/

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1219_TVsugarmeteors.html

The only reason why 2017 was notable is that hurricanes decided that the best places to mow down were wealthy US cities. Worldwide costs were up, disasters and deaths were down.

http://www.iflscience.com/envi...

Where from? The amounts of rock minerals from space dust and organics from reactions on the surface are probably minute.

Io is right next door (so to speak), and spews forth a lot of material from its volcanoes. Some of that material makes it into the Jovian space between the moons. Jupiter's magnetic field is a transport mechanism.

Also: we know that tons - literally, tons - of extraplanetary material rains down on the Earth each day. Jupiter, being as massive as it is, probably sucks up a lot more. Europa is a small target, but is traveling through this inward flux of material and is sure to pick some up.

Right on the number, wrong on the "not all of them recoverable". That number is the "proven reserves" of coal.

I gave the total recoverable number simply to give some perspective on the IPCC prediction of 1000 ppm under their high emission scenario. That prediction requires extrapolating 20th century carbon emission growth until 2100, which is economically utterly implausible, no matter how many additional reserves we discover.

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future," according to Niels Bohr.

However, they don't label this a prediction, they label this as "here is the high emissions scenario." The question "what happens if current trends continue" seems like a reasonable thing to ask. If I were looking for something to call their prediction, I'd look at the middle of their many scenarios, not the most extreme one.

But, by the way, why should "current trends continue" be "economically utterly implausible"? It's not economically implausible now, why does it suddenly switch to being implausible?

Bottom line, however, is that the comment subject is accurate: "Runaway effect? Nope" is right on the mark. "Slow but real increase in temperature over a time scale of a century" is more like it

No, the bottom line is that people keep misrepresenting IPCC predictions as being "established science", when they are a mix of a core of "basic science", and (I quote you) "feedback loops that are much more complex and less understood",

As you pointed out very clearly in your previous post, the current IPCC best estimate of climate sensitivity, 3 plus or minus 1.5 degrees per doubling, is pretty much identical to the one-dimensional constant-humidity model of Manabe and Wetherald. The only "feedback loop" is the assumption of constant humidity, which I don't think is particularly "complex and less understood."

predictions about poorly understood "effects of government action", and economic forecasts that assume that by 2100 we extract and burn the equivalent of all known fossil fuel reserves.

There needs to be a name for this logical fallacy; it's similar to strawman, but not quite identical. Basically, you took a whole array of different scenarios put forth by IPCC to look at the effect of all sorts of different possible things that could happen, you took the most extreme one, and you say "look at their prediction! It is absurd!". That wasn't their "prediction". That was their analysis "here is the result if this one particular scenario takes place."

On top of that misrepresentation comes even more fear mongering by famous scientists warning of runaway greenhouse effects (examples of which I quoted).

The one famous scientist you quoted was Stephen Hawking. He's not a climate scientist. He has said all sorts of silly things, among them that we should be afraid of aliens, AI, robots and nuclear war. What Stephen Hawking is afraid of is not really terribly relevant to climate science; if you want to know about climate, I'd listen to climate scientists.

The "slow but real increase" that you refer to and that basic physics tells us about is of sufficiently small magnitude not to warrant concern or intervention

That's a judgement call. I don't even disagree. I'm annoyed at people attacking the science beca

This is exactly the sort of thing that would have been caught during the rigorous, diligent, inherently skeptical peer review process.

Oh really? Well, you'll believe what you want. Note this is hardly the first example, just one of the more hilarious ones.

Science is like government or any other large institution: there's the way it's supposed to work and everyone loves that. Then there's the way it really works. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Excellent commentary and it's the type of discussion I was hoping for when I made my initial comment. (moderators, please mode swillden's post up).

I would invite you to look at the series "The Expanse" for a good Smartphone design—certainly one we will have long before this particular science fiction story takes place. Oh, by the way, it's well-acted.

If I understand what you are saying, the phone has pretty much gone as far as it can go and the fact that the ecosystem is in the cloud means it is not platform-specific (something Microsoft completely did not understand in the late 1990s). I do not necessarily disagree with your assessment.

Where innovation will take us will probably be the automobile. Self-driving is one direction, but another is the control systems within cars. If you look at the Tesla (please understand that I am not promoting this car) Model S, it has what looks like a tablet for controls. The Model 3 has a 15.0-inch touchscreen. The problem with the automobile is that these touchscreens and controls tend to never be upgraded, They are also very easy to crack, with very dangerous results see this report of a zero-day exploit. Obviously securing the automotive sector's systems and technologies is an area we really need to look at, but there is obviously loads of room for innovation here.

I would also note that a long-distance driverless truck would completely transform our national system of logistics.

We are just entering the era of the electronic pantry generating our shopping lists. At this point, we have refrigerators that know when we're out of milk. One wonders whether or not people who are on a diet could keep stuff they ought not to eat out of the home completely.

Yes the cooling plan got some recent attention. http://www.iflscience.com/envi...

As customers flock to these new offerings, companies have to hire more people.

Only if the new offerings are not produced by robots. That's where the breakdown happens, why the advent and adoption of general-use robotics and algorithms isn't another example of historical automation.

Buggy whips went out of demand, so the people went to build cars. Cars started to get automated, so people went to build the increasingly-intricate car parts. But now car parts can crafted wholly by robots (or, for a continuously-expanding class of parts in general, "printed"). Automation in the past was about very specific processes for very specific outputs; you couldn't take a line used to make cars and easily change it to one that makes bicycles (or soup.) But soon we'll have a robot chef that works mostly by mimicking human actions, so if it can cook it can assemble.

The "creative" jobs will hold out longer, but algorithms will replace many of these, too: IBM's Watson has made a movie trailer. A lot of marketing these days are applying set rules to things (certain colors evoke certain responses in certain demographics, etc.) A lot of music is based around similar setups. Hell, Japan has a popular singer who's not even a real person.

The only question I see is: how fast will this happen? If it's extremely slow then make-busy work might fill in the gap as robots and "AI" take over most regular production. If it's very fast then we'll have a lot of robots producing things that most people can't afford to purchase, and "things" will eventually include food.

Basic statistics are now considered "AI": http://www.iflscience.com/tech...

Something similar has happened with "algorithm", as it seems to appear whenever Facebook, Google etc. are doing something sinister with your data. I guess elementary school was being super evil when I was taught long division.

What is this "right to be forgotten"? I don't think, it exists — or ever existed — nor should exists. My memories, what I have seen, heard, and otherwise experienced are mine, however and wherever I recorded it.

Suppose, technology allowed (wait, it already does!) to carefully erase human memories — would it suddenly become your right to demand, for example, your ex submits to wiping out his memories of your time together?

Would it be Ok for employers to wipe out the memories employees may have associated with the employment upon its termination?

There is no such "right", we all better stop pretending it exists.

... and that includes the climate scientists. I imagine it would be hard to find a climate scientist who would be willing to bet his house on a measurable and non-trivial prediction about the future -- one that he would make from his climate models in the span of a few years.

I don't think anyone has bet a house, but a scientist and economist did bet £1000 against some of the GWPF advisors, (spoiler: the GWPF people lost)

Of course, Bill Nye offered to bet $20,000 against Marc Morano's predictions of cooling but Morano turned him down. He offered a similar bet to Joe Bastardi who also turned him down.

Gone are the days of:

sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me

The Illiberal Left's War on Speech continues and we've almost lost it... Major positions have been surrendered without or with little fight:

• "Safe spaces" on campuses have been weaponized and are used to suppress opinions, that make others "uncomfortable";
• The nonsense of "gender-neutral pronouns" and "transgenderism" in general came out of nowhere — a pregnant woman coming to a hospital to give birth claims to be a man, and is offended, when referred to as "mommy" by the nurses.
• Though one can not (yet!) be arrested for making others "uncomfortable" with one's opinion, one may already be fired for same.
• "Hate speech" is already illegal in many Western countries — with movement afoot to bring the same oppression into the US.
• Though the Bill of Rights is still, supposedly, the law of the land, its treatment has changed:

  “This isn’t really the ’60s anymore [...] people can’t really protest like that anymore.”

• The "right to be forgotten", having never existed before, is suddenly "a thing". Can't wait to discuss the court-ordered memory-erasures on SlashDot...

18-25 years of financial drain, emotional stress, and missing free time, MIGHT lead to an end-of-life benefit of ~2 year extension.

That's not really what it's about, but to each their own.

I don't regret having my son at all...he's grown up to be a good person and I'm proud of who he's become. .

Of course you don't regret having your song. Having a child alters your neurological pathways to become more nurturing, which is how the human race continues. There's an ample body of work out there on it. If I'd had kids, I have no doubt that the same biological changes would have affected me and made me strive to raise my child well. But I didn't - and am financially, emotionally, and free-time(ly) glad that I didn't.

http://www.iflscience.com/brai...
http://www.popsci.com/pregnanc...

this is old news...they have turned it on and it was able to sustain containment of the helium plasma for it's test run of one 10000th of a second. they have apparently also sustained containment of a hydrogen plasma too since then... http://www.iflscience.com/phys...

http://www.iflscience.com/envi... (2016)

"there is an overwhelming consensus ( http://www.desmogblog.com/2012... (2012)) when it comes to the link between human activity and climate change. The figure most frequently cited is that 97 percent of scientists agree on the link, but a new meta-analysis puts that figure at 99.9 percent."

It has a nice easy pie chart for you too.

I recently discovered, that my VoIP-provider had the history of my calls from ever since I opened the account 7 years ago. It is conveniently searchable and downloadable in several spreadsheet-formats.

I suppose, when I get to writing down my memoirs, it will come very handy, but it is a little irksome in the mean time. I doubt, I can turn it off or somehow request the records to be removed — I would be the first to object to any legislation forcing people to forget anything.

And evolution. You know, those big teeth at the front of your mouth that are there specifically for ripping apart flesh?

Also, as you are probably a fan of the "Least Harm Principle" I'll share this article with you about how eating large herbivore meat in moderation actually results in less deaths than a vegan diet. Also, some work done on the same principle in Australia.

Won't you think of the grey-tailed vole?

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/...
http://www.iflscience.com/heal...
http://www.livescience.com/547...

Propylene glycol, a chemical found in e-liquids, can irritate the eyes and airways, Siegel said. Early studies have also revealed that when propylene glycol or glycerin are heated and vaporized, they can degrade into formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, he said. Both of these chemicals are considered carcinogens, although it's not yet clear how repeated exposure to them may cause cancer, he said.

does not require much looking..

Does not require much looking...

Does not require much comprehension, either.
I know English is hard, but try and look up the difference between will and can and will and may.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/...
http://www.iflscience.com/heal...
http://www.livescience.com/547...

Propylene glycol, a chemical found in e-liquids, can irritate the eyes and airways, Siegel said. Early studies have also revealed that when propylene glycol or glycerin are heated and vaporized, they can degrade into formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, he said. Both of these chemicals are considered carcinogens, although it's not yet clear how repeated exposure to them may cause cancer, he said.

does not require much looking..

Does not require much looking...

Science Fiction, given enough research sometimes becomes science fact. Who would have thought we would have wireless personal communications devices, or portable computers in our pockets? Well, Star Trek suggested the personal communications devices, and the PADD, which looks pretty much identical to a tablet. You seem to assume that anything we aren't currently doing is impossible, so will never happen, but even NASA doesn't agree with you. Most issues with space travel and colonization has more to do with money than technology. Currently, NASA is funded with a miniscule budget, if they were given more, they could do more. So, saying things aren't possible is just short sighted, not prophetic.

http://www.iflscience.com/spac...

You make very valid points, but there is an issue that I think you are missing. All of what you say is basically true, except the part where you say voters don't have much of a say in NASA funding. they actually do, even if it is indirect. They elect the politicians that control policy, and theoretically this is a good thing. But our democracy is corrupted by special interests, so the voters don't don't always get what they voted for, while special interest groups get often get exactly what they paid for. And the fossil fuel industry definitely got what they paid for in the case of the guy voters in the 21st Congressional district elected to represent them in Congress, Lamarr Smith. Smith is an anti-science, religious nutbar from Texas, a card-carrying climate change denier firmly in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, who incidentally believes the age of the Earth is "10,000 years or so."

The Republican leadership in Congress put Smith in charge of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which has jurisdiction over programs at NASA, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This one guy basically controls the $39B US government R&D budget. So, what did the fossil fuel industry's money buy them? Check out this brilliant piece of legislation sponsored by Smith. In a bucket, he is trying to get a law that prevents the EPA from getting data from real scientists, and at the same time, forces the EPA to use "data" from oil and gas industry "experts."

I mentioned all this so that you can understand why it is going to take more than balls and a desire to explore to rescue NASA, and why even if voters did care about science policy (remember I agreed with you when you said they didn't) the damage is already done. NASA is now in Smith's sights because they had the temerity to defy Smith by providing independent confirmation of climate change when Smith accused the EPA of using "secret science" to confuse Congress during hearings on the "myth of climate change" as Smith repeatedly characterizes it. Smith is going to strangle funding to NASA if they don't stick to a fossil fuel industry approved script of research activities (read: stop doing research on climate change and stick to patriotic buck rogers stuff, or else.)

You immediately assume that they're stupid or mentally ill. Good ad hominem.

Good tone trolling. The problem is, taking an insanely idiotic position makes you an idiot - doesn't matter smart or well read you are otherwise. Ben Carson is a brilliant brain surgeon, but his being as dumb as a sack of hammers on anything else - means he's dumb as a sack of hammers.

Your attitude is what drives people further that direction.

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Literally in the case of anti-vaxxers. It's not his attitude, it's their stupidity.

After all, pharma companies are about making money.

The problem with that canard is that doctors and Pharma make more money from treating serious illnesses than preventing them. If there was a money conspiracy, Pharma and the AMA would be against vaccinations, not for them.

If you immediately dismiss people as stupid because they're pro-vac, anti-vac, believe in climate change, climate change deniers, 9/11 truthers, social justice warriors, civil rights promoters, patriotic, anarchists, fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist atheists

Facts matter. And the fact is, anti-vaxxers are just as stupid as Christian Scientists who let kids die because they take serious but treatable illnesses and decide that prayer is the answer.

That they rolled out to combat Dengue Fever. http://www.iflscience.com/heal...

Wonder if that has just been ineffective against illnesses with a Mosquito vector or just not this particular virus.

Oh really?

Maybe you just don't want it to be true. But science is moving along, with or without you.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I really thought by 2015 dentistry would have moved beyond spackling up holes in teeth or pulling them out and replacing them with fake ones. This is still basically 18th-century medical science.

Let me know when they can repair teeth with real dentin and enamel, or grow new ones.

I find it interesting how different cultures react to robots. The Japanese love them and treat them with some degree of respect. There is some evidence that most of Europe and Canada is safe for robots, but not the US. I wouldn't like to be metal in the UK either.

Why is it that in certain cultures there are otherwise seemingly normal people who react with violence towards machines? Is it just machines, would they kick over a mobility scooter if the rider didn't get out of their way? If they owned a robot would they program it to be aggressive in the face of rudeness?

Being the UK I imagine it will have 360 degree CCTV and a really smug recorded voice that says "warning, robot approaching" constantly, interspersed with that horrible grating sound that reversing lorries make.

Or you could, you know, recycle the plastic bottles. It's not that hard to do. Especially if your country no longer uses landfills.

The CEO totally looks like a guy who would invest the extra revenue in R&D, not coke and hookers.
http://www.iflscience.com/heal...

Almost all known asteroids and comets are vastly bigger than what you are envisioning. For example, here's the comet Rosetta is exploring.

Serotonergic psychedlic drugs can also reset some filters in your brain.

http://www.iflscience.com/brai...
http://www.livescience.com/485...

I used to be unable to see video tearing when VSYNC was disabled on a computer.
Then I took LSD and watched a film. I suddenly could see it clearly.
This improvement was persistent.

Sunsets and clouds also gained tremendous detail, permanently.

So on one hand we have right-wing and tabloid outlets shouting "New Mini Ice Age", and on the other hand we have leftwing sites saying "No Possible Solar Changes Can Influence Climate" and referencing papers that are years old and don't even know of the new theory. How about going to the source? Interview with the scientists directly yesterday: http://www.iflscience.com/envi... Link to the paper being talked about: http://iopscience.iop.org/0004... She's an astrophysicist and seems pretty sure temps will be dropping due to noticeable solar activity drops. “During the minimum, the intensity of solar radiation will be reduced dramatically. So we will have less heat coming into the atmosphere, which will reduce the temperature.” Now we need some climate scientists to look at the new theories and new proposed solar activity levels and say how that will affect the AGW models.

its only a fantasy if you don't know what you're talking about, as evidenced by referring to "billions of turbines", or mountain ranges of batteries. More solar energy lands on the earth in 40 minutes than the entirety of humanity uses in a year. The solar array needed to power the planet is only ~130 miles on a side. ( http://www.iflscience.com/envi... links to one of several papers on it)

Several (5-8) spaced around the globe.
Added in storage method (pick one, there's dozens).
Add in smart grids (something we need anyway).
Profit.

Merely putting solar on every residential roof in the US would already provide 25% of the needed area to power the world. Adding in commercial rooftops, 50%. Add the EU, 100%. That's just the US And the EU. If you were to consider -just- powering hte US or just the EU, it'd be far in excess of requirements.

Your problem is its too big for you to conceptualize, so you insist it cannot be done. But advancements and achievements like the pyramids, the internet, flight, or any of the other of thousands of things humanity has accomplished we never done by naysayers like you. You quit before you've even started.

You think you're smarter than the world's top engineers and scientists? Ok. Prove em wrong then, with whatever qualifications you think you have to disprove people in the top of their fields. It's an actively on going project of research and thought.

Because people a lot more experienced and smarter than you are working on it now.
Today.

b>Because it IS doable in our lifetime with current technology, let alone the refinements and advancments that would occur during or as a result of the project.

For spider silk has been displaced as the worlds strongest material by limpet teeth: http://www.iflscience.com/plan...