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This default position is easily observable, what you propose runs contrary to obvious observations.

I haven't proposed anything, you are the one claiming gender is firmly locked into only two possible positions. I argue that gender is not adequately explained by just two possibilities, and that this is obvious since even a fool like Donald Trump can see it.
I've seen hypotheses that support these observations, but I am yet to see any science that supports your viewpoint other than "it just is mmmkay"? Maybe you could post a link? That is how science generally works.

but the burden of proof is on the side making extraordinary claims.

All claims need some sort of basis. You are claiming there to be only two genders when clearly this hypothesis doesn't fit the observations.
Your position of only two genders is analogous to the geocentric model of the solar system. It is the classical position, backed up by nothing other than "most people think so".
Just because some science requires more effort than looking through a telescope, doesn't make it any less valid.
I suggest you read this: http://www.nationalgeographic....

There were several years when the most common predicted effect of carbon warming was drought - endless drought, in every possible place, and there's nothing we can do about it! (Muahahahaha!). Articles like these have been typical:

https://www.theguardian.com/en...
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...
http://news.mit.edu/2017/clima...
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/fl...
http://news.nationalgeographic...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/0...
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/0...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/0...

Let's just say that if you sell stock photos of dry lake beds, you're probably a millionaire by now.

Trump tweeting whatever crap is on his mind is not transparency when government agencies are not responding to basic FOIA requests and where all sorts of basic government reports have been taken off-line or deleted; http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/wildlife-watch-usda-animal-welfare-trump-records/ is one example.

Actually it's dogs that more commonly eat their dead owners.

So I've heard...

Actually it's dogs that more commonly eat their dead owners.

A common theory as to why is that the dog starts freaking out - first trying to get the owner to respond by licking and nudging, which eventually devolves to biting, and then there's blood in the equation... etc etc. But it's never been directly witnessed, so it's hard to say. The way that dead owners are consumed generally starts at the face, which is different from how dogs normally scavenge food (going after soft areas like the abdomen first). And it often happens very soon after death, when there's still food around.

It's not incredibly common, but it does happen.

OH? On the first Google page there is this:

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Are you SURE about your assertion still? This is National Geographic here, not exactly a right wing climate change denying organization...

The Greening Of Africa is another great example ignored. http://news.nationalgeographic...

Whereas, if the greening has continued over the decade since that article was published, that is a great thing for people of the Sahara. Redeployment of water resources around the globe is in general a bad thing. Population centers have grown where water is available. To take water from places where people rely on it and redistribute it to areas where population is sparse will result in a net negative impact for humanity.

It would be great if what was happening in the Sahara was completely separate to all the droughts and flooding that have increased worldwide .

The logic is, if it can be tied to AGW, it is and is "Climate Change". If it doesn't fit AGW, it is "weather".

And if it is something we humans haven't seen before in recorded history, it is AGW, but only if it fits the narrative. Record Snow falls, never before seen before ... not so much. And Recorded history being ... about 200 years or so.

This is why it is hard to have rational discussions on the merits of AGW, causes and effects. The Greening Of Africa is another great example ignored. http://news.nationalgeographic...

Boston is.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Naw, Boston just appears to be an actively used landfill.

Geothermal heating/cooling been around alot longer the google has lol

http://energyblog.nationalgeog...

Boston is.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

I'm sorry to scatter your illusions: http://www.nature.com/news/bot...

A simple search for "plastic in the ocean photos" gives you an overview.

Or this one: http://ocean.nationalgeographi...

I'm told it's greening up quite nicely.

"Its only drawbacks are political in nature (well-heeled environmental lobbies)." - you haven't thought this through, pollution is a huge drawback and thats just from digging it out of the ground, transporting and burning it.
and don't fall for the "clean" coal scam - its not really and its expensive to even attempt to do. http://ngm.nationalgeographic....

Here's a pro tip: look up the result in other sources using google, find a more useful source that tells you things like the name of the journal the research was published in.

In this case it was Nature Climate Change, a relatively new offshoot of the prestigious journal Nature. Nature Climate Change was established in 2011, but by last year ut gad achieved an impact factor of over 19, making it the most cited journal in its field. This doesn't mean it's infallible, but it means it doesn't have to scrape the bottom of the research barrel to fill its pages. This paper may be right or it may be wrong, but it's pretty much guaranteed not to be garbage.

Knowing the journal name makes it trivial to find the original paper, or at least the abstract.

Still it is never possible to know the significance of a paper or a study in the short term. You have to wait until it is cited in a review paper, which will summarize all the supporting and conflicting results that followed any particular piece of research. You should never make a life decision (change what you eat) or policy decision based on any single paper until it has been cited and characterized as sound in a review paper published in a high impact factor journal.

See for more details https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

The icebreaker was supposed to navigate from Quebec City, down the St Lawrence River, up the east coast of Canada, and into Hudson's Bay for the research mission. But shit happens...

> The icebreaker was soon diverted. Dense ice -- up to 8 metres (25ft) thick -- had filled the
> waters off the northern coast of Newfoundland, trapping fishing boats and ferries.
>
> "It was a really dramatic situation," said David Barber, the expedition's chief scientist.
> "We were getting search and rescue calls from fishing boats that were stranded in the
> ice and tankers that were stranded trying to get fuel into the communities. Nobody
> could manage this ice because it was far too heavy to get through."

[...snip...]

> The decision to cancel the first leg of the expedition was made after it became clear that
> continuing north would interrupt search and rescue operations and probably put lives at risk.

The first priority of the CCGS icebreaker is search and rescue, and there happened to be more work than anticipated, so the research mission was cancelled.

For those of you wondering, no, it is not a good idea to charter an "ice-reinforced ship", when you want to get up close to the ice and do first-hand measurements. You need a real icebreaker. The Akedemik Shokalskiy fiasco http://news.nationalgeographic... is still fresh in people's minds.

http://proof.nationalgeographi...

I see what you mean. Hydro-Quebec hires 0.2% of that workforce while having 2% of the world capacity which would make them ~10 times more efficient than average.

Granted, it is hydro power but nothing comes really "free" or at no environmental costs. Heck, you may very need oil to produce solar panels.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

https://www.quora.com/How-much...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.ren21.net/wp-conten...

Well, you could just Google it but I'll hold your hand:
http://www.ecowatch.com/100-re...
http://news.stanford.edu/news/...
http://energyblog.nationalgeog...
https://www.scientificamerican...
http://energyblog.nationalgeog...
http://www.greenpeace.org/inte...

Well, you could just Google it but I'll hold your hand:
http://www.ecowatch.com/100-re...
http://news.stanford.edu/news/...
http://energyblog.nationalgeog...
https://www.scientificamerican...
http://energyblog.nationalgeog...
http://www.greenpeace.org/inte...

The elites live well, mostly in the capital city of Pyongyang, but the rest of the country is in terrible shape, because the resources and money that might otherwise be used to help alleviate those terrible conditions instead goes to weapons, missiles, nukes, etc. This is why the only lights in North Korea at night are pretty much the ones in Pyongyang, as seen here: http://news.nationalgeographic...

Is light pollution desirable? You could say the same thing about Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia or any number of other poor asian countries. The big cities are lit up, and the countryside is mostly dark. All of these countries have significant inequality. Several of these countries are actively committing or allowing various forms of genocide. Singling out North Korea as "the bad one" seems a bit strange to me.

It's entirely believable that the country is impoverished, starving, short on energy and food, and at the same time is developing nukes, icbms, and has a cyber hacking unit. This is the sort of thing that's possible when you have a totalitarian dictatorship that decides the latter things are more important than the former. What do you expect the average North Korean to do about it? Protest or complain, so they can get themselves and three generations of their family thrown into a permanent prison camp?
(Citation: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/no... )

The elites live well, mostly in the capital city of Pyongyang, but the rest of the country is in terrible shape, because the resources and money that might otherwise be used to help alleviate those terrible conditions instead goes to weapons, missiles, nukes, etc. This is why the only lights in North Korea at night are pretty much the ones in Pyongyang, as seen here: http://news.nationalgeographic...

You left out the part about the US sending CIA doctors to provide the vaccinations.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Not really, HVDC is able to move huge amounts of energy at a high efficiency. Interrupting the current in the case of faults however was a limiting factor.

http://phenomena.nationalgeogr...

Okay, the number is a bit off.

*Sigh*

And where do solar panels come from? They don't fall from the sky.

to mine the minerals that go into the mass production of solar panels you must burn fuel that was pumped from the Earth and transported via some method burning fuel. The risk of oil spills is great. Once that crude has made it to the refinery it's refined and the waste gas burned. From the refinery is a number of things the mining equipment needs like Oil, hydraulic fluid, Diesel etc. These things are consumed as machinery ( More mining, manufacturing, shipping to produce these ) decimates large tracts of land destroying the environment that lay in the path of the minerals for our solar panels.

There's already full articles on this:
http://news.nationalgeographic...

But once the Panels have broken, malfunctioned or otherwise need to be disposed of they create a toxic mess for landfills to try to contain which is another problem altogether.

But lets also consider the real estate they consume to produce electricity under only ideal conditions.
http://store.sundancesolar.com...

You really need to start thinking these things through. Take a business class that covers 'true cost of operation' and apply that math to environmental gains in technology. Offsetting a little air quality in favor of decimating the environment and ecology in other nations is a dick move.

I have barely scratched the surface but my goal is more to give you a new direction to think.

No need to filter, or worry about getting the plastic out. The bits will break down by sun, waves, and bacteria.

Correct, but you forgot one thing which is more important -- consequence. When plastic broke down to plastic-derived chemicals, that is the real issue. You shouldn't just sit an way for plastic to degrade by itself if you could take it out before it becomes toxic to the ocean!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

Always look at page 2! "[Abdussamatov's] views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion," said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University.

Just google the period you are interested in.
Different atmosphere composition is the main reason.

Perhaps you find this interesting: http://news.nationalgeographic...

Because climate change in the Arctic region is occurring faster and to a greater extent than anywhere else, the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free for a short period of time as early as the summer of 2015, according to the 2009 Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment Report completed by the eight Arctic Council Nations.

Scientific Director of ArcticNet, Louis Fortier, in 2007 predicted an ice free Arctic by 2010 or 2015: https://www.pressreader.com/ca...

Because climate change in the Arctic region is occurring faster and to a greater extent than anywhere else, the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free for a short period of time as early as the summer of 2015, according to the 2009 Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment Report completed by the eight Arctic Council Nations.

Scientific Director of ArcticNet, Louis Fortier, in 2007 predicted an ice free Arctic by 2010 or 2015: https://www.pressreader.com/ca...

Did you know Chernobyl won't be clean for literally millions of years?

Apparently, w/o human intrusion for 30 years, the land around Chernobyl is thriving with life.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

An interesting quotable from this article...

Essentially, this means that human populations have a bigger negative impact than radiation.

For some reason, many Americans grew up believing that the practice was adopted for farmers, Downing said.

"That's the complete inverse of what's true," he said. "The farmers were the only organized lobby against daylight saving in the history of the country," he said, explaining that the practice left them with an hour less sunlight to get crops to market.

The rationale was mostly around saving energy by having more natural light, later in the day. Dairy farmers are apparently quite stupid:

Many farmers still don't like DST, including some dairy farmers, who find that cows' natural milking schedules don't adapt easily to a sudden shift.

Acting as if they have to milk cows at a certain clock time, instead of simply keeping to a consistent solar schedule.

Zero, except here, here and here.

But if you don't want to believe that something isn't true, dismissing it as "fake news" is so much easier than doing five minutes of research with a web browser.

Thawing is great. How are you going to freeze the tissue without damage?

Become an Alaska Wood Frog (alternate article). They survive being frozen almost completely solid for 7 months at a time.

Hiroshima equivalent = cube of rock 24 feet per side.

But how big does the rock have to be when you throw it in order to hit the ground at that size? Anyway, all this talk of rocks is at best half the story. You'd encase the rock in an iron jacket. You need that anyway to use the magnetic accelerator. There is iron on the moon — it may have an iron core and iron oxides are abundant near the surface. It would not be a surprise if significant quantities of iron could be mined there. How thick does an iron shield have to be to protect your rock? How does it affect yield? Can you make it smaller given the iron jacket?

The answer is likely in there: http://news.nationalgeographic...

The relevant bit is "At that time African elephants branched off first. Then just 440,000 years later, a blink of an eye in evolutionary time, Asian elephants and mammoths diverged into their own separate species."

There's only so much they can do. In my area they actually do this. As water drains from the Calaveras reservoir, inflatable dams on Alameda creek near my home catch the water which is then pumped into abandoned quarry pits to refill the aquifer. They've been doing this for decades and actually raised the water table quite a bit. The problem is that so much water has been pumped out that in many places the land has sunk. Pumping water back in won't make the land rise back up again so some capacity is lost forever. Before the drought local aquifer was much higher than it has been for many decades, in part because the quarrys were pumping water out. California generally does quite well with water management compared to much of the country. What about the Ogallala aquifer in the mid-west that's being drained far faster than it fills up? California has the world's largest and most productive water system that manages over 40,000,000 acre feet (49km^3) of water per year..

Every life form on the planet that reproduces sexually has two genders. Male and female.

Here you go, home-school:

http://voices.nationalgeograph...

Why are you under the impression that mid-14th century had anything to do when Greenland was warm, and the farm was built?

Why is it important for you to deny known climatic history?

Ice core and mollusk shell data suggests that from A.D. 800 to 1300, southern Greenland was much warmer than it is today. This means that when the Vikings first arrived, the Greenland name would make sense. But by the 14th century, maximum summer temperatures in Greenland had dropped.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

"ice sheets move"

Are you disputing the well known warmer arctic temperatures during the Viking era? And if so, why do you deny known historic climate?

Ice core and mollusk shell data suggests that from A.D. 800 to 1300, southern Greenland was much warmer than it is today.

(Erik did name it Greenland since it sounded attractive, but it still was green. Greener than today)

http://news.nationalgeographic...

I'm not a huge fan of renewables for large scale use but this seems kinda petulant to me.

It protects coal, and coal is a part of the future of America.

Better to have no subsidies or penalties, either way, on any energy production method. The market will work it out; just don't put a hand on the scale.

In some idealized world maybe. But we have that little problem with the owners of the politicians who run the country. They do not want the competition with renewables, period. Coal and gas and petrochemicals all have their subsidies. Which goes completely against the whole idea of subsidies in this arena, that being to promote worthy new technologies that won't just appear fully formed like Venus from the ocean, so need a bit of a boost. The problem is that other countries understand that, while we are either antagonistic or not allowed to think that way.

So some of the owners of the US are frightened of the new technology are so frightened of it that they not only do not want it subsidized, but they want it anti-subsidized? Using the force of law to punish it? Must be some powerful stuff.

Meanwhile, it appears that the US is working it's inexorable way towards surrendering it's technology lead to other countries. We'll let China develop new technology, we're too busy selling our hats to each other.

My only wish is that people who think that the free market is the solution to everything show the courage of their convictions and refuse to use anything anywhere that ever had a government subsidy of any amount. That would be exceptionally interesting. Probably would look like "The legend of Mick Dodge" http://channel.nationalgeograp...

(Dec 2007) This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

http://news.nationalgeographic...

I suppose you can argue that that since he used the word "could" rather than "shall", it make his statements null and void. But they sure sounded scary at the time.

Did you notice the qualifier "At this rate"? It was more of a comment on the substantial drop in the sea ice minimum in 2007 as it was a prediction of the future. But coincidentally 2012 does happen to be the record year for sea ice minimum.

(Dec 2007) This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

http://news.nationalgeographic...

I suppose you can argue that that since he used the word "could" rather than "shall", it make his statements null and void. But they sure sounded scary at the time.

Many who live north of 60 do hear the aurora. Not just a faint crackling as reported here. This finding does indicate something which I have always suspected, that it is also part of the wiring in some humans.

However it seems that there are also some real sounds created by the aurora which is very hard to explain considering they are created above the atmosphere. Is it also possible that very faint sounds along with light can stimulate the mind to create this effect. Could this be an important factor in individuals that have more of a leaning toward being musical in response to other stimuli? Perhaps this is the reason why people who like to sing about the things we see or feel and are usually considered nut jobs because they have a greater tendency to create sounds in response to stimuli than so called normal people.

I always did hear the Northern Lights and am a musician and a composer. I always thought that I was wired for sound differently than others, now it seems that part of what stirs some of us could very well be influenced greatly by responses to what we see.

Since you said most of NA, please list a few examples.

This isn't new news. Neither are the fines.

It's just not necessary, unless researchers need totipotent cells, since pluripotent cells are what's being discussed here.

We are at the beginning of nuclear power's impact on the human species so perhaps we need new ways to look at nuclear power in order to understand how it is affecting us, we've just started acknowledging carbon as an externality imposed on our generation, so why not radioactive effluents on future generations?

We don't consider the radioactive waste an issue for future generations for many reasons. First, the size of the problem is actually very small.

You're right, it's just small enough to fit in a freight train that wraps all the way around the equator... and a bit more, maybe a third more.

We need to find a way to put nuclear reactors in everyone's backyard, I propose we put the big nuclear reactors right in the middle of cities, every city, lets call it the IMBY movement to force people into accepting nuclear power for their own good. We need purplies to hold down hippies and fart right in their smug faces after a chilli bacon and chipoltle pizza so hippies can appreciate how dangerous wind is.

Chernobyl and Fuklukshima demonstrated that nuclear powers are perfectly safe since no one's ever died from them unless they were a super villain. We need to put big nuclear reactors right in the middle of cities like New York city, London, San Fransisco, NOW! Fart right in their smug faces until they say 'it's safe'.

You've brought up some important points about solar. The sun will be radioactive for 4 billion years and there is still no way to dispose of it. Waste shade from wind installations are a problem we just keep piling on the earth, everywhere and, there is still no solution. Today there was some shade right where I was standing. If we keep using sand for producing solar cells there will be a bit less sand in the world and if we don't dispose of waste shade there will be night everywhere so solar won't work anyway, so suck it mdsolar.

The sun and the wind are really just too toxic compared to nuclear power, anyone who has *ever* had bad case of sunburn and wind burnt lips, will tell you that the wind and the sun are just too dangerous as if there was ever a major problem there would be minor inconveniences. There should be a moritorium on using the sun until we know how to dispose of it properly and until we learn how to stop passing wind, problems onto the next generation.

Not necessarily, according to a growing body of evidence amassed by New Zealand coastal geomorphologist Paul Kench, of the University of Auckland's School of Environment, and colleagues in Australia and Fiji, who have been studying how reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans respond to rising sea levels. They found that reef islands change shape and move around in response to shifting sediments, and that many of them are growing in size, not shrinking, as sea level inches upward. The implication is that many islands—especially less developed ones with few permanent structures—may cope with rising seas well into the next century.

You see the problem here is that these nations are seeking rent, mostly from the west. "climate justice" I think it's called. They may be able to persuade enough gullible twats to give them a few billion $. I mean if you could do that you would, wouldn't you? You'd engage in mind-fumblingly stupid stunts like holding cabinet meetings under water. Sheeeesssssshhh. I'd love break from all the climate bs. It's driving me nuts.

Oh, hey, a random slashdotter dismissing healthy scepticism, hundreds of years of hard science, millions experiments and throws away one of the core physics laws for handful of wishful-thinking, dubious experiments* because of "NASA" and "Chinese".

* Look for instance at the NASA setup
Metal chamber walls in very proximity of the drive. Unless EM drive walls are superconductive (and they are not, it is just copper in room temperatures) there are "tons" of eddy currents induced in the chamber, causing significant interaction forces. Thanks to asymmetry of the drive I can assure you they wont be cancelled and those forces will be many orders of magnitude bigger than claimed thrust. An yes, I was a physicist, my PhD thesis was in the field of near-field microwave microscopy (now I am working for industry). A short while ago I've met my supervisor over a beer, and among other things we were talking about this "drive", laughing about incompetence of this particular "NASA" team of clowns (I am sure other people within NASA are competent, but nut those people). He said thai if I did something like that under his supervision, he would immediately kick me out and make calls assuring I don't finish my PhD anywhere else.

This EM drive is cold fusion all-over again, some people never learn.