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You can turn genes on and off with diet and lifestyle. Check out the field of epigenetics. Genes are influencers, but your fate is not written in stone because of them.

See: http://www.livescience.com/418...

The types of bacteria in your gut today may be different tomorrow, depending on what kinds of food you eat, a new study suggests.

Genes can be turned on and off depending on diet and lifestyle. Not only that, but the types of foods you eat can influence your bacteria:

The types of bacteria in your gut today may be different tomorrow, depending on what kinds of food you eat, a new study suggests.

The study also adds evidence to the idea that human diets — acting through the gut bacteria — influence the risk of certain diseases

http://www.livescience.com/418...

We bring a lot of misery on ourselves, but it's human nature to attempt to blame someone (or something) else.

If you are right that the average storm causes swells of several meters at least, then hurricane Sandy was only exceptional by a few feet. Those few feet caused over $60 billion in damage. Your suggestion that "if they can't handle that then move" may not be welcomed by New Yorkers. - http://www.livescience.com/407...

When you are looking for why a segment of the population is or isn't doing something, working out generalised patterns between members of the group should be the first thing you should do.

The problem comes when people confuse cause and effect.

The implicit assumption here is that women are less "curious" about systems than men because they are biologically predetermined to be that way, rather than they have been socially conditioned to be that way. So far there is very little evidence for the former, but good evidence for the later.

http://www.livescience.com/48352-prehistoric-ukraine-temple-discovered.html

Scrub

I mean the linking was christian science monitor -> live science. Why link the christian science monitor which was 1/3 of the info and not directly linking this :

http://www.livescience.com/483...

No seriously I want the editor tell me WHY ?

Well, they have done some testing with jet packs: http://www.livescience.com/480...
Even with an increase in weigh the jetpack increases speed.

And so we can bring this subthread back around to the main article: Octopus (octopii?) will also engage in cannibalism. http://www.livescience.com/479...

When octopuses go hunting for prey, they sometimes end up "dining" on members of their own species, and the cephalopods seem to have a taste for their victims' arm tips.

Divers have captured video of this octopus-on-octopus action in the wild for the first time on video.

In a new study, researchers described three cases of cannibalism in the common octopus — Octopus vulgaris — recorded with a camcorder by scuba divers in Ría de Vigo, Spain, located on the northeastern Atlantic coast. In two of the cases, the predators had started to eat the tips of the arms of their prey by the time the divers found them. [...] And, in one of the cases, the predator had access to more "traditional" prey in the form of mussels, but it still chose to feed on another, smaller octopus.

In experiments, male adolescent monkeys also prefer to play with wheeled vehicles while the females prefer dolls — and their societies say nothing on the matter.

> It's genetics and hormones.

No. It is culture and upbringing.

That god has been replaced by Google

This is somewhat more complicated. http://www.livescience.com/402...

Life expectancy has been roughly the same for thousands of years. The only difference is that babies today live more often than they die.

Don't worry. At 70 degrees Celsius all water from the gutter will just evaporate and your air conditioner will catch fire.
But you'll be too busy being boiled like an egg to care about the noise.

From TFA:

Exposing the SMP to heat above 60 to 70 degrees Celsius causes the material to become flexible enough to undergo geometric deformations. The material then cools into its new rigid form. Apply another round of heat, and it will return to its original memory state.

Why is anything historically significant? The Sun Temple at Teotihuacan is the third largest pyramid in the world.

knowing the threat to our vital supply of hot black ichor was in peril, scientists of all fields have clearly exhibited a remarkable drive to solve this problem. Cancer, supercomputing, and most modern breakthrough technologies would have ground to a halt without some means of ensuring a steady supply of our dark glory bean. In honor of these brave scientists, I propose a toast of the finest coffee this mornings breakroom has to offer.

Citation for what? Fewer than 10% of life long smokers will get cancer in their life time. That is not even counting those who started and stopped at some point in their life.

Their life time will be shorter and there are a list of other ailments associated with smoking but smokers and cancer is not a 100% given. On the other hand, of certain cancers, a high number of people with them are smokers, are thought to have it because of smokers, and of the deaths associated with them, smokers seem to be extremely high compared to non-smokers.

http://www.livescience.com/475...

Apparently: http://www.livescience.com/246...

Even a hurricane is a pretty local phenomen. See: http://www.livescience.com/225... only a bit of Texas is affected, center is over Luisianna, whole Florida likely will produce extra power, so does the are left from it, over Texas.

Also you underestimate at which speed wind mills get shut down. That is usually around 130km (on big mills).

No idea about Sandy, did not check the map, but when it hit New York certainly roughly 200 miles south the whole coast would have produced power quite unaffected.

Eating Plants May Change Our Cells - LiveScience

Called microRNAs, these compounds are the movers and shakers of our cells, as scientists have found they turn up and down levels of human proteins. However, until now scientists thought these chemicals were only made and used inside our bodies, but new research shows that microRNAs from plants can enter the human body.

Chen-Yu Zhang at Nanjing University in Nanjing, China, found low levels of plant microRNAs from rice in human tissues. After testing the effects of these chemicals on mice, Zhang concluded microRNAs from plants could actually impact how the human body functions.

Actually there ARE some experimental treatments and antivirals, both general and specific to Ebola, being worked on. At Emory, in particular. (It's their business.)

In fact, according to previous reports, THIS GUY was working on them. And he had ONE dose of one of them WITH him.

Unfortunately, when he and a colleague both started showing symptoms, THIS GUY gave the ONE DOSE to the OTHER GUY.

Actually, the infected doctor, Kent Brantly, gave the treatment to another missionary, Nancy Writebol, and she's also being evacuated on that plane. http://www.washingtonpost.com/... They haven't announced what the treatment is, but it might have been IgG blood serum http://www.livescience.com/471... separated from the blood of one of the other victims. Or it might have been a new untested adenovirus vaccine, which works (on monkeys) even after they're infected. Or it might have been a monoclonal antibody. Or it might have been an experimental RNA virus. http://www.nature.com/news/ebo... I can't understand why they're keeping it a secret.

These untested treatments are all desperate measures. From what I've read in the New England Journal of Medicine clinical cases, these are the kind of treatments that they use when everything else fails, the patient is dying, they don't know what else to do, and there's nothing to lose.

As I understand it, the odds are against it, but they're the best doctors in the world, and I hope it works.

I also don't understand why they're bringing them to the U.S. The only treatment is supportive care. I think they also have planes that are set up with a transportable ICU, so they should be able to treat them on site.

There is a risk of the virus getting out, no matter how careful they are. They're doing this all for the first time. One problem is that handling a case like this is so complicated, and you only have to make one mistake. An ICU is full of equipment. Since ebola can't be treated, an epidemic spreads until it kills off so many of its victims that there's nobody left to infect, and it burns itself out.

With SARS, a lot of medical workers, particularly nurses, got infected, and they were a large number of the fatalities.

> effectively useless.

That's the crux of your argument and it is outright false.

Recreational tobacco smoking has medical benefits. But even under the idea that tobacco use is a net medical negative that still ignores the mental effects. People smoke because it relaxes them, it is a mild pleasant buzz. If there were no upside to tobacco use then no one would ever start using it in the first place, kind of like the way smoking tree bark is not a thing because tree bark doesn't make you feel good.

Now, if you are of the belief that people should never deliberately choose to alter their mental state, well then we have no common ground. But you should know that deliberate use of intoxicating chemicals is not unique to humans. The more social the species, the more likely they are to enjoy getting buzzed.

Environment definitely plays a role. Genes play directly into that, mainly as an adaptation to that environment. Is already well known that if you have relatives with diabetes (of any type) you are more likely to have it, but also statisticians found that Caucasians are least likely to have it, with Asian being higher than most, and Native American (who happen to be mongoloid, just like Asians) having by far the greatest chance of developing it.

And, as recent research turns out, diabetes isn't new to Native Americans. Furthermore, the high glycemic load foods they now eat make the symptoms stick out more, but this is mainly because their evolution centered around diets that had very low glycemic load to begin with (and are foods that Caucasians would more likely starve to death on because they don't provide sufficient caloric needs as our metabolic system isn't equipped to process them the same as natives do.)

http://www.livescience.com/218...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...

At any rate, for GP's comments to be true, most diabetics would have to starve themselves to death long before they'd consume few enough sugars to not need insulin. Natives *could* be a different story, but remember that in many cases they literally did starve, and furthermore their metabolic system is more able to deal with that than ours.

Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?

No U.S. carrier has been allowed to fly over certain parts of Ukraine since the end of April, due to an FAA order.

My first thought: When did the US build a flying aircraft carrier?

"40 years, another 1/2 trillion tonns of CO2".. is a significant under estimate!

Humanity is currently dumping 36 billion tonns(2013) of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. Projecting out using 2.1% yearly growth rate, humanity will hit that 1/2 trillion tonn mark in 2025. Just 11 years from now.

I found an older article about the Higgs field instability itself; the instability arises because the field can be much stronger, leading to much higher particle masses and thus the big crunch alluded to. Although that's assuming that inertial and gravitational mass are still the same thing in such a domain...

http://www.livescience.com/273...

definitely a good post for the gullible. i look briefly at one of those and this was in the first sentence "fasting is abstaining from food, drink, sleep or sex to focus on a period of spiritual growth" - abstain from water during your fast for 3/4 days and you'd be in serious trouble http://www.livescience.com/323...

That was sufficiently weird that I had to look it up: http://www.livescience.com/386...

story

Yea, that 100 year thing has been known to be wrong for a while now. They have actual DNA from a T-Rex from 68 million years ago. Not common, but it happens on rare occasions.

There is also a guy trying to "clone" T-Rex from chickes by messing with the protiens as the chicken develops in the egg. I believe he has gotten teeth and a bigger tail from chickens doing this, just to prove its "somewhat possible".

Ice speed increases a few percent per degree Celsius increase in air temperature on normal glaciers, not exactly a dramatic change.

http://www.livescience.com/454... Sometimes a small change can have a large effect.

Southern California gets wildfires in the spring and the fall due to the prevalence of strong Santa Ana winds (hot dry winds blowing from the deserts, over the mountains, toward the sea) and, given that the region is essentially an irrigated desert there's ALWAYS material ready and willing to burn. Any time a fire starts in the brush or in a canyon for ANY reason it will naturally become a massive wildfire unless fire fighters get it out in a hurry while it's still small

Some wild fires are started by power lines knocked-down by strong Santa Ana winds. Many are caused by illegal alien migrant workers who camp-out in some of the brush-filled canyons and use small fires to cook or keep warm on cold nights (one body has been found in the remains of such a campsite in the canyon where one of the current fires began). Some are started by morons throwing cigarette butts out of cars. Occasionally some hunter causes one. Many are either directly caused by federal land management activity or made worse by federal policies. And then, of course, one should never underestimate the destructive power of a pair of stupid teenage males who clearly have no valid reason to live.

Nowhere in that list was "global warming". In fact, there were some really bad fires in the 1960s that were only matched, NOT in the 70's or 80's or 90's but in 2012. When you consider that Southern California has been getting more and more-populated and developed decade-by-decade, it should NOT surprise if the number if fires detected (with more people around, and more arsonists present) and fought (with more property at risk) goes up - indeed the trendline for value of property should also go up (because more developed property, with higher value, is threatened when more land is developed and populated). Lining-up such fire data with climate data will easily provide a correlation-causality illusion. Of course, such false relationships are the sort of propaganda no self-respectingAGW alarmist can resist: When the "weather" seems severe it's proof of global warming, but when the "weather" is cold or fails to produce the predicted hurricanes and tornadoes, these uber-intellectual titans insist that "only an idiot" would conflate "weather" with "climate" - and they think the general public is too stupid to spot the completely dishonest and hypocritical "spin"...

Note for the future: When Katrina hit and Al Gore was running around pushing his book and film, he and his friends were pointing to a rise in hurricanes and tornadoes as evidence for AGW - but we are (and have been for severl years) experiencing a record low-level of such activity (and A.G. and his friends are notably quiet about these "weather" incidents). It is inevitable that hurricaine and tornado activity will rise in the future - when it does, look for Al and his compatriots to once again start using "weather" as "proof" of their "climate" theories. Given that we continue to build more-valuable things in more desireable (and riskier) locations, we can predict that the monetary damage caused by those future weather events will go up and up too, which will no-doubt make it into some dramatic (and intentionally misleading) graphs...

Find me a single "external scientist" who investigated the literature, and found a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW. Just one.

fine

This happened once before with another corrupt scientist - Ancel Keys. His notorious "7 countries study" asserted a link between dietary fat intake and heart disease. As it turned out, his results were only caused by deleting data to "hide the decline" as it were. His ruthless pursuit of power led him to positions at the heart of government that led eventually to our dietary advice for lower-fat, and higher carbohydrate intake. He demanded that we act because the "science suggested" that there was a link between heart disease and dietary fat intake. In fact, he was wrong, and sent our country on an over 40 year path of increasing obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other chronic diseases.

Are you the one of the Taubes followers? It seems that crackpot science follows the same rules as conspiracy theories. (yes, fat was probably overblown, but the science self-corrected)

*EXACTLY THIS*. We've proven there is no such thing as "scientific consensus" on AGW (nor is science driven by consensus). So *of course* we're going to indict them when they try to form a "consistent message" when the *FACTS* contradict that message!

So 97% of climate scientists agreeing isn't consensus, though just in case someone doesn't buy that you'll say science isn't driven by consensus, presumably because that would provide a falsifiable hypothesis you would fail.

Quote a *SINGLE* one. Find me a single AGW paper that says "if we observe this, that, or the other, AGW is false, and if we *fail* to observe this, that, or the other, we must logically conclude AGW is true".

Just for fun, you'll note that I made my hypotheses falsifiable - "there is no AGW paper with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW" is falsified by a *single* observation of an AGW paper with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW. Find just *one*, and I'll admit I'm wrong :) Of course, since this is a simple hypothesis, you can logically see how if you can't even find *one*, then it's very likely that my hypothesis is true - the logical case for AGW would of course have to be more complex in order to show that the lacking observations couldn't also happen with natural climate change.

Here's a bunch. In specific "Satellite measurements of outgoing longwave radiation". CO2 trapping more heat in the atmosphere means that there will be less radiation emitted from the atmosphere in the related wavelength. That's a falsifiable hypothesis and it's a hypothesis they tested by looking at the thermal radiation.

Oh hey, lets blame this on Global Warming, um, I mean Climate Change. Oh wait, I know, lets call it Earth Changes. Yeah, that covers it.

Its all our fault that there's a volcano melting the ice sheet. We have just too many people on this earth now. Its squishing down the world's insides and making magma pop out of the bottom.

http://www.livescience.com/412...

(4) Human activity is the primary cause of temperature increase over the 20th century. [unproven]

(5) Human activity will result in temperature increases in the 21st century that are larger than those experienced in the 20th century. [unproven, speculative]

(6) Temperature increase in the 21st century will have devastating consequences for humans. [highly speculative, controversial]

(7) Government intervention now can reduce temperature increases in the 21st century significantly. [highly speculative, completely implausible]

On point #4, I would agree except for this little ditty. Additionally, science never "proves" anything; it only gathers a body of evidence to show a model is accurate to varying degrees. Not even gravity is "proven" because One might wake up the next morning and find some evidence which says, "Whoops, Newton's wrong here"; such a scenario seems unlikely but is not impossible. On points #5-7, the same statement about science "proving" anything applies. In addition, any scientific prediction about the future in a case where testable environments, like planetary climates, are few and far between is, almost by definition, "speculative" to the point such a word is of no use regardless of whether the speculation is "high" or not. What Scientists do have is a collection of models in which One inputs various data, determines what predictions those models make and then compare those predictions with observed results. Such predictions have, to a noticeable extent been quite accurate so far, given the time scales on which Scientists have been able to conduct observations either directly or indirectly. To match Your political testimonial, so to speak, I use to be a climate disruption Denier but digging into the science, the predictions, the observations, etc., has convinced Me all of points 1-7 are either completely accurate or, at the very least, a very good "first order approximation" of reality.

True, but if we're going by plate tectonics then a tunnel from China to northern Japan could be considered a tunnel to North America as well.

It depends on whose plate boundaries map you believe and which part of Japan you're talking about. Most boundary maps agree that the southern part of Japan is on a plate that also holds China. Simplistic maps (like the one you linked) put the Northern part of Japan on the North American plate while more detailed maps are putting it on the Okhotsk plate, or even on a smaller, unnamed plate.

Both sides of the Bering strait are part of the north american plate.

True, but if we're going by plate tectonics then a tunnel from China to northern Japan could be considered a tunnel to North America as well.

http://www.livescience.com/181... If parents sought out a 6 point IQ boost for their children to be more successful, a side effect could be that conservative ideology will go the way of smallpox and polio.

This graph from the article shows an exponential growth in small earthquakes in the past few years. How else do you go from under 10/year to 150/year, in the span of a decade?

Because polar vortices are not a result of AGW

Absolutely! Indeed, the kind of temperatures we saw in the US because of the polar votex used to be normal a few decades ago. So I guess that answer your questions: North America. Obligatory XKCD.

Other valid answers:
- Western Europe (here are the years in which winters were severe enough to hold an outdoor skating contest in the Netherlands; making a graph is left as an exercise to the reader)
- Australia
- The antarctic (yes, the ice is melting overall)
- Greenland, where ice sheet decline, is a boon for agriculture - Pretty much any place that has seen shifts in habitat (here come West Nile Virus and Malaria)
- Pretty much anywhere where there are glaciers

A better question would be: "can you name any area of the world that didn't have its climate disrupted as a result of global warming?"

According to the City of Portland's Website (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/Water/article/328963), the total capacity of the Portland reservoir system is about 220 million gallons, with "distribution storage reservoirs" ranging in size from 1000 to 10 million gallons. How much urine did this kid evacuate into the reservoir? According to the National Institutes of Health (cites in Livescience- http://www.livescience.com/323...), the average healthy human bladder can hold "nearly 2 cups of urine comfortably."

Let's err on the side of caution on both sides- assume that this kid both had an insanely huge bladder capable of holding 2-1/2 cups of urine *and* that he peed into a 1000 gallon distribution storage reservoir- the worst-case scenario, in other words. 2-1/2 cups of urine is 20 ounces, which is equal to 0.156 gallons (128 oz/1 gal). 0.156 gallons/1000 gallons = 0.00015625- 0.00156% pee in the reservoir. And this is *before* the processing that happens to all water *after* it exits the reservoir and before it enters the city's pipes.

The reason this is absurd is the same reason that fear of poisoning a city's water supply via open reservoirs is stupid: you'd both need so bloody much of whatever it is to have a significant amount *and* that something would have to survive various filtration, purification, etc. processes after that.

No, scratch that... draining a reservoir b/c a kid peed into it isn't absurd, it's mind-blowingly stupid and a horrid waste of taxpayer money. Any lawyer who couldn't defend against a lawsuit the way I did above deserves to not only be disbarred, but to also have his college + HS diplomas revoked.

Take the study BS a step further.Here is the hockey stick. You will note that from the time of christ, where it was around low 600s, by 1800, it was low 700's. All of that was the great nations that had large populations and GDP: Basically, China and Europe. By 1900, it was 800. And yet, that was when America was JUST taking off. China, and Europe still remained night and day above America in consumption. America's hey day really was from around 1950-2007. Since 2007, America has dropped our emissions. We are at 5 nillion tonnes in 2012.
Here is a chart of 2008 CO2 emissions. You will see that China is at a minimum 23% of the world's emission, while US is at 19%.

In 2012, you will see that the world emitted slightly more than 30 billion tonnes, with China emitting ~10B tonnes, America at ~5B tonnes, and western europe at ~4B tonnes. That means that China is at about 1/3 of the emissions in 2012, with America at about 1/6, and western Europe at about 1/8 (note that does NOT include eastern europe, which is where they offshored the dirty stuff). And this is un-normalized emissions.

And now, America has CO2/$GDP that is about the same as Europe's. OTOH, China's is at the bottom of the list. China is rapidly approaching 1/2 of the world's emissions (expected in 2-3 years). OTOH, America's will be below Europe since Europe is moving back to Coal, while America is destroying our coal plants.

Idiot. You'll have to repaint them every time they moult or breed.

Genetically engineer them to glow in the dark and they'll reproduce themselves.

This type of statistical analyses of populations is the standard approach of the social sciences.

And frankly, the social sciences are pseudo-science.

http://www.livescience.com/272...

Hydrogen bonds causes water to behave very different in micro and zero gravity. What you propose may make sense under Earth gravity, but not in orbit.

Article and video on Live Science

Fun youtube video

If you find that at all interesting you should look up how fire behaves in space.

behold, the rhetorical skills of an ignorant nutcase. and it's funny you should mention education...since mine is an engineering degree that involved various geotechnical, geological, and environmental courses, and I'm currently working on expanding my education specifically into petroleum/energy engineering.

When you have information produced by someone with more than a 6th grade education, let me know.

why you looking for a tutor? because apparently you somehow think faultlines just stop at subsequent rock layers, rather than transcending layers (which they do). here, this wikipedia entry should be helpful. It has pictures, so even you can understand it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

And I didnt even mention flowback, the injection water that returns to the surface and has to be treated and released....except they dont always treat or capture it, and is another major source of contamination as a result of fracking.

And then there's these...

4 states confirm water pollution from drilling:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

Fracking Wastewater Radioactive and Contaminated, Study Finds:
http://www.livescience.com/401...

Fracking Investigation Finds Evidence of Water Contamination:
http://mashable.com/2014/01/06...

EPA's Study of Hydraulic Fracturing and Its Potential Impact on Drinking Water Resources:
http://www2.epa.gov/hfstudy/hy...

Environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

You lose the advantage of having the environmental impact of a single pipeline that is easy to monitor and the safest relative way to transport oil. Your instead replacing it with shipping through another pipeline to a port where it will be placed on ships and sent overseas. The most likely place to ship it to is China and you can rest assured they won't be worrying about environmental impact reports.

You fundamentally misunderstand: The refined petroleum products are going to China anyways.
The only question is whether it gets shipped through the USA and put onto boats in the Gulf of Mexico,
or if Canada has to build a pipeline across their own country and ship it from their own coast.

A Senator asked the President of TransCanada (the company in charge of Keystone XL) if he would require his clients to keep all the refined products in the USA and was unequivocally told no.
http://boldnebraska.org/markey-exports

Previously, then-Representative Markey challenged TransCanada on this question at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on December 2, 2011. There he asked Alexander Pourbaix, TransCanada's President of Energy and Oil Pipelines, whether he would commit to including a requirement in TransCanada's long-term contracts with Gulf Coast refineries, as a condition of shipping, that all refined fuels produced from oil transported through the Keystone XL pipeline be sold in the United States. In response, Mr. Pourbaix stated "no, I can't do that."

Even worse for the USA, Keystone will act like a giant straw to siphon out oil from the mid-west, causing their local prices to rise.
The biggest joke is that Keystone XL creates ~35 full time jobs once it is done
Keystone XL is not a winner for the United States, unless you own a oil refinery.

Why is he marked a troll? Seriously this is not left wing radical propaganda.

He has actual sources from the energy industry who are clear that this oil is for China and they hope to add American oil to it as well. Not for us. FYI when supply is limited you can bet you get a correlation of price increases. That is economics 101 and why they want to get this passed and regulations for exporting removed prior to signing the agreement.

You lose the advantage of having the environmental impact of a single pipeline that is easy to monitor and the safest relative way to transport oil. Your instead replacing it with shipping through another pipeline to a port where it will be placed on ships and sent overseas. The most likely place to ship it to is China and you can rest assured they won't be worrying about environmental impact reports.

You fundamentally misunderstand: The refined petroleum products are going to China anyways.
The only question is whether it gets shipped through the USA and put onto boats in the Gulf of Mexico,
or if Canada has to build a pipeline across their own country and ship it from their own coast.

A Senator asked the President of TransCanada (the company in charge of Keystone XL) if he would require his clients to keep all the refined products in the USA and was unequivocally told no.
http://boldnebraska.org/markey-exports

Previously, then-Representative Markey challenged TransCanada on this question at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on December 2, 2011. There he asked Alexander Pourbaix, TransCanada's President of Energy and Oil Pipelines, whether he would commit to including a requirement in TransCanada's long-term contracts with Gulf Coast refineries, as a condition of shipping, that all refined fuels produced from oil transported through the Keystone XL pipeline be sold in the United States. In response, Mr. Pourbaix stated "no, I can't do that."

Even worse for the USA, Keystone will act like a giant straw to siphon out oil from the mid-west, causing their local prices to rise.
The biggest joke is that Keystone XL creates ~35 full time jobs once it is done
Keystone XL is not a winner for the United States, unless you own a oil refinery.

Yup. You've heard their motto, "be prepared"?

So when you say;

I won`t believe that we are in a crisis until I have enough evidence that we are, and this evidence has not been provided in my view.

I'd like to think you aren't rejecting the idea that, even if you aren't in a crisis, it's not a bad idea to prepare for possible ones, yea? Now, I get that we probably disagree as to the risk of AGW - you've made your stance perfectly clear, and I'll just say I'm an AC that thinks we have a problem here. But I think we agree on risk having to be judged.

So, when the the US Military thinks they should, and so does the insurance industry. That the Maldives needs to relocate, says the World Bank, and so on. These aren't insignificant organizations,; they could field their own studies, if they doubted the risks, or the one's already done. They don't.

IMHO, that says something.

I'd invite you to look really hard at the sources you have that make you think that AGW isn't an issue. Just to be sure, if nothing else.

Why am I reading the term 'Glass Hole' so many times on a site that calls itself 'news for nerds'?

Of course people are going to wear Google Glass in a movie theater, while driving, etc.... It's not a desktop computer that stays at home it's a wearable device. Isn't the whole point of a wearable device that it becomes like 'a part of you'? Google Glass is just a small stepping stone anyway. Our kids and/or grandchildren aren't going to be wearing these things they are going to have implants that CAN'T be taken off. Personally I can't wait! It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that this is our feature. We are human, that is how humans work! http://www.livescience.com/966... I'm sure I have seen this here, don't you people even read the articles linked to from this site? It's funny how so many people here came out in support of Kevin Warwick and yet Glass users get called GlassHoles. I guess everything is great until someone tries to take it mainstream?

What's to be afraid of anyway? The death of the movie industry? Please... how many people who would have paid for a movie ticket (a true theatre experience) or even bought a DVD/BluRay disc are going to settle for a crappy cell cam bootleg instead? If anything the bootleg is free advertising, that's about it. I thought at least on this site we were supposed to know this already!

Worried about privacy? Why? Nobody is suggesting we allow people to come into our homes and record our private lives without an invitation! So what if someone snaps your picture in a public place and puts it online? Big deal, people have always had eyes, brains and mouths. If you do something stupid people will see it, people will remember it and people will talk. Nothing has really changed and nothing ever will. Besides... there are cameras just about EVERYWHERE now! If they aren't in people's hands or on their faces they are mounted on the wall, on a pole, etc.... Get over it, it's 2014 and that's just how it is!

Don't like people talking/texting in your presence? First of all... get over yourself! Just because you have a pet peeve doesn't mean everyone else should have to alter their behavior and certainly doesn't mean rules/laws should be passed! Nothing is new here anyway. Have you never seen two people walking down the sidewalk/isle of a store/ etc... having a conversation that you are NOT a part of? That is the exact same thing as someone on a phone, it's NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS! Just go about your lives and everyone else will go about their's. This is a great thing we will be seeing with more wearable tech and what comes after. It will be less conspicuous. Busy bodies can stuff it, maybe go pay some attention to their own pathetic lives for once.

Of course there may seem to be special cases. I can understand someone taking exception to someone holding up a line because it is their turn and they won't stop talking on the phone or something like that. Again, that is no special and unique problem, it is no different than if someone held up a line because they wouldn't stop a conversation they were having with someone else in that line. Business owners should be asking people to step aside and let the line move or maybe just asking them to leave. If that doesn't happen it is a fault of our 'customer is always right', 'gotta make every customer happy' society, It's not a fault of the technology.

And I don't even have Google Glass... Anybody want to buy/give me a pair?