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There ya go!

http://news.nationalgeographic...

While the records are not to a quarter of degree C, they are close enough IMO for knowing what is going on with our climate. And these records that go back to the 1300's, yes 1300's are pretty detailed. But hey keep denying what is going on, keep sticking your head in the sand...

Here's that sick squid I owe you

Behavior is a choice. Impulses and interest may or may not be at various levels.

Suppose it was determined that homosexuality in humans was the result of a viral infection, and that a cure was possible. Would you oppose that?

Suppose someone discovered that religion was caused in humans by a virus? And that a cure was possible. Would you support that?

Choice? Let's talk about choice. My own sexual preference is for tall women with long hair, long legs, small breasts, and relatively slender, That isn't a choice. I noticed that with some fairly obvious physical responses from a long time ago.

I don't have those responses when I see short or chubby women or women who are large chested.

And the thought of having sex with a guy leaves me cold. So then I don't have sex with guys. Not a choice in sight, My physiological reactions dictate what I like, not some conscious choice.

But there are guys who like short women, or heavy women, or other guys. Same goes for women. My wife likes hairy guys - fortunately for me. She never made a choice to like hairy guys. She just at some point in the past noticed a hairy guy and said, "hmmm, I like that."

Besides, in a country where Gay guys get dragged behind pickup trucks or tied to fenceposts and murdered - because they are gay, and when Bipartisan legislation to protect them was given a promised veto by Bush Junior, and opposition by conservative groups, and Arizona doesn't want to do any business with Gays - You're telling me that when you know that there are people out there who hate you with a passion so strong that they don't want your money, and they really want to kill you - that you will decide, "I like girls, but I've decided to be gay. Sounds like a fun lifestyle."I want to have to hide my lifestyle, I want to be hated, maybe get murdered as someone's religious command from God and as an expression of their rights in action - yeah - that's the ticket."

That would be kind of stupid, wouldn't it?

There is already lots of mitigation going on. Communities hit by storms are given extra funds to protect against problems in the future. You risk guys have this all figured out. We all know that nobody is going to do anything until the Koch brothers help us burn up all the oil and coal, at which time we will be well on the way to a Permian Extinction event, which was itself caused by a runaway greenhouse due to excess CO2 caused by volcanic activity. The army is digging deep underground bases (D.U.M.Bs) for a good reason. They need to keep Strangelove and his band alive (with the 10 to 1 beautiful woman to man ratio) during the worst of it.

Behavior is a choice. Impulses and interest may or may not be at various levels.

Suppose it was determined that homosexuality in humans was the result of a viral infection, and that a cure was possible. Would you oppose that?

If Apple sells an iWatch, I hope it has a detachable band so I can swap the watch into a belt clip like the one shown.

is it complex innate behavior that evolved or "understanding"?

what is the difference?

Look at the elaborate nests of the Bowerbird: http://ngm.nationalgeographic....

Does that bird "understand" structural physics & bird mating behavior and "choose" based on its "understanding"?

No. According to this study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

That study and many like it examine **instinct** as the mechanism for this behavior...they do not **in any way** examine bird behavior in terms of "understanding"

So until I have a definition of "understanding" that is mutually exclusive of instinct & other well understood animal behaviors...and relates that to the human concept of "understanding" this research is claiming something that is not supported by evidence.

So that only Judas comes before Jesus? I don't think you're reducing the debate there. ;)

But truly being reasonable about Judas is a lot to ask. http://news.nationalgeographic...

I'd rather see this:

http://news.nationalgeographic...

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Don't forget the Great Molasses Disaster(s) which release tons of toxic sulfur into the rivers. These are an on-going problem over the years and we have learned "Nothin".

No, the main use of alfalfa is for dairy cows; the ones raised for beef consumption use very little of it. Cows in the US used for beef are mainly feed grain and corn since it's very cheap because of heavy subsidies. Alfalfa is primarily used as a feed for high-producing dairy cows, because of its high protein content and highly digestible fiber

Alfalfa receives no subsidies at all, the only way it survives is the dairy market. http://news.nationalgeographic...

You act like most corporate-minded people. Others are expected to knuckle under or they can expect to be fired out of spite. It's not about the job. It's about fucking other people over to make a point.

I watched it in every place I worked. The people who kept their jobs spent all day campaigning to get others fired. The people who actually did the work got harassed for weeks and then got fired.

To wit, you're not bitter in the least, are you?

So basically your management style is a pissing contest. Everyone else is required to sit quietly and wait to be instructed by your Olympian highness lest they upset your perfectly balanced apple cart with their amateur japes.

Quite the contrary... everyone in my team is expected to express any opinion they want and know that they won't be insulted or harassed because of it. I can go to my boss and say that something's wrong with his design, and I know that we'll have a nice professional discussion weighing pros and cons of alternatives. I won't have to sit through him ranting about how his way is best. My team can expect the same of me. It's not so much "insecure and paranoid" as it is "secure and professional".

If you want to play in the big leagues, son, you had better be prepared for World Series egos, and you had better be prepared to manage them without wetting yourself with your bullshit insecurities.

How's Fortune 100 suit you for "big leagues"? There are certainly egos here, but unlike what I've seen of yours in this thread and your comment history, here they're kept in check. By and large, everybody here knows that they are top-notch, but they also know that everybody else is top-notch, too. There's confidence, but not very much arrogance.

I have technical skills superior to any five people you've ever worked with combined.

I'll pick the man who built a computer by hand from relays, the Emmy-winning filmmaker, the four-star general, the 25-year-career fighter pilot, and my acquaintance in this picture. What's most amusing is that I've also worked with these fine folks personally as well as professionally, and I fully expect that they'd get along as a team, if there were a project requiring them.

If you hire me, you will deal with my ego, you will pay my fee and you will do it my way. If you want to shit the bed you do it on your own time. Why? Because my team produces results. I can take three of mine and outproduce any corporate tie-wearing fuck and ten of his while eating a sammich.

And that's exactly why I won't hire you. I don't care about whether you "outproduce" anyone. Your personality exposes too much risk. There's a chance that you'd provide a wonderful project that works perfectly, but there's also a significant chance that you'll make assumptions about the requirements or lock me in to an unmaintainable nightmare. Again based solely on this thread, I have only your assertion that your technical skills are adequate for the job, but I have a very clear demonstration of your insufficient interpersonal skills.

That's how I grew my business (with three record years) straight through the worst recession in eight decades.

How much could you have grown, though, if you had curtailed your arrogance just a bit?

What amuses me is how you're so dead-set against the stereotypical corporate boss that you actually fill the role nicely. You're focused mainly on production rather than employee well-being. You're emphasizing hard certifications and years of experience over good references, and you boast about your personal triumphs rather than your team's achievements.

I've never fired anyone.

You're a liar, then. Either you're lying about being an employer, lying about not firing anyone

I gave a method of finding alternative statistics which you choose to ignore.

OK, I'll bite. You referenced the CDC and NIH and I pointed out that their numbers totally reject your numbers. Now you're not happy that I'm using the CDC and NIH and failing to use your unnamed alternative knowledge sources that are, like, totally better than the CDC and NIH that you referenced earlier. OK. Let's do it.

Should we just google 'gardasil vaccine injury' and see what we get?

First link is something pointing out that Gardasil is safe by any reasonable measure. Probably not a kosher source of alternative knowledge from your perspective, so I'll skip those. Moving on.

There's this, which has numbers but no references. Here's one with references, so that's a good start. 48 deaths! Wow! Wait, the reference is just to VAERS, which we talked about earlier. Just the VAERS root site, not even the actual document. Well, let's try again.

Lots more stuff, just going back to VAERS. Did I mention that the VAERS analysis has been done to death? Lots of web sites with personal anecdotes (probably also reported to VAERS, so thank goodness that's covered). Some (most, maybe) of those may be very true. But again, we're talking about roughly 60,000,000 doses, and we're not accumulating anything like a significant probability of serious reaction. Which is why we use statistics. Like so:

National Geographic gives the odds of being hit by lightning in any given year as 1 in 700,000. That means that we'd expect 85 of those women to be struck this year. If they all reported "hit by lightning" to VAERS, "hit by lightning" would surpass a bunch of the other things they've reported as "side effects" that people are panicking about.

Followed by more attempted ad hominem and riducule.

All to defend you being a liar...

That's a gorgeous juxtaposition. Dude, I'm attacking your data, not you. If you want to reduce the amount of damage, bring better data next time.

Fukushima is a serious nuclear disaster. It's a very situation that we should all be concerned about. But this should not lead to any pause in our appetite for nuclear energy.

What Fukushima proves are the issues with Nuclear power exist at a human level. These failure are what have led to Chernobyl and Fukushima. They also prove that the Nuclear industry is unable or unwilling to learn from their past mistakes. Any serious nuclear advocate would point to these issues as a major cause for concern.

What people often fail to appreciate is that even coal fired powerstations release quite large amounts of radioactive material in to atmosphere.

First, the material coming out of coal smokestacks are unenriched. Second, they should also be collected and have zero bearing on the nuclear industry the plethora and enormous quantity of Nuclear industry effluents.

It is, and always has been, a ridiculous comparison.

So far, there has not been a single confirmed death due to Fukushima accident. In comparison, there were 20 deaths in the US just mining for coal in 2013. This is not to mention all the deaths being caused by cancers and other health problems being caused by breathing polluted air.

You do not appear to understand how radioisotope analogues function in the metabolism. The irony of you mentioning cancer re-inforces this apparent misconception.

Any injested radioisotope will take a minimum of 6 years to gestate into cancer, meaning any rise in cancer in Japan will manifest in approximately 2017 from anyone who *immediately* injested radioisotopes. Bioaccumulation into the food chain will add a random amount of time to this date.

Additionally, fatalities will not be as common as failed pregnancies, will you count those?

If we're ever going to get on top of this climate change challenge, nuclear must be leading the charge. Nuclear is a safe, non-polluting technology.

Rubbish. The Nuclear enrichment process is the highest producer of atmospheric CFC114 effluent. There is also over 700,000 tons of u235 and many other effluents. To call it safe and non-polluting is a falacy based in ignorance of the facts.

Modern designs are fail-safe in every sense of the word. The newer designs can even cope with a loss of external power (like Fukushima experienced) yet still stay safe.

Which ones?

Really, we should be looking to retire every coal fired plant as a matter of urgency, if only to reduce the amount of radioactive contamination of the atmosphere!!

This can only acheive a reduction of unenriched effluents. You won't find disagreement with me about the coal industries impact, however, it's replacement should be driver my solar thermal and wind, which scale better.

This is the 21st century. The technology is mature, sensible and safe.

But ultimately pointless as it's the human issues that have repeatedly proven to cause ongoing serious accidents that ultimately threaten the survival of the human race in the long term. Additionally Nuclear power is the imposition of a tax on future generations to maintain our standard of living energetically. Any responsible Nuclear advocacy would acknowledge this and the risks in an honest manner.

Let me google that for you:
Sheep Are Highly Adept at Recognizing Faces, Study Shows
http://news.nationalgeographic...

A short (but interesting) read over at National Geographic about history of road salt. From the article, it takes about 10-14 days for a reorder of salt.

Ask them to find anything on a map for that matter. http://news.nationalgeographic...

WildLeaks is the first, secure, online whistleblower platform dedicated to Wildlife and Forest Crime.

https://wildleaks.org/

@

New WildLeaks Website Invites Whistle-Blowers on Wildlife Crime

WildLeaks gives whistle-blowers a way to anonymously finger wildlife criminals.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Also, hippies don't compromise.

I thought Reagan died in 2004...?
Thats ok though, you can keep up your "good fight" as long as you can, and look like the tool you are, because the renewable energy juggernaut has nothing to do with hippies or environmentalists. It has everything to do with being self reliant and putting less carbon into the atmosphere.

The actual problem is that the weather forecast is unreliable. In comparison to much of the EU, the weather forecast in the USA (not just Atlanta) is rather poor.
The National Weather Service (that's the US weather prediction) has no funds, and old computers. Their predictions just don't have sufficient resolution. That's not just a problem with snow, or other weather-related disasters... It is a problem every day.

Source:
http://news.nationalgeographic...

"The health problems the Chinese are going to have from this stuff is unimaginable"

That ship may have sailed.

A report from 2007 estimated 600,000 deaths annually - http://news.nationalgeographic....
A recent one, that looks at 100 cities puts the tally at 350,000 - 500,000 annually but another that claims to take the entire population into account is claiming over 1 million.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china...

That may not mean much in a country over well over a billion people but it's unimaginable to me that so many die from just breathing bad air.

It's possible the dolphins will evolve into the species that escapes such a mass extinction event; considering they will have about 2.8 billion years to work with... http://news.nationalgeographic... We evolved from water and went to land; the dolphin did the opposite... the jury is still out, stay tuned. http://www.dolphin-way.com/dol...

In fact, Everest has been climbed by a helicopter (and it was unbelievably difficult and dangerous) and some really impressive music has been composed by what is far from a strong AI (even if it is relatively formulaic).

But neither of these two things have anything to do with my actual point.

Even in a hypothetical world where excellence itself is obviated by technology, or some race of superior beings, or even by mere changing tastes, the challenge itself still exists. Every time someone faces an obstacle it is a reflection on their own upbringing and personal history, and that is equally if not more important than the actual magnitude of (artistic) accomplishment. Even if—no, when—all you say about human standards of beauty fades, and there is nothing left remotely humanlike to judge subjective aesthetics, the achievements of those who lived and worked and created will not be diminished. Neither the sands of time nor the mountainous shoulders of giants yet unborn having any bearing upon this.

Didn't say you made it up. I'm well aware of the theory - it shows up on Slashdot and elsewhere every now and then. But I don't think it's a better theory than some other random one.

Just because a few tribes do persistent hunting doesn't make it so plausible that persistence hunting is why we evolved to run. A few tribes do some other random stuff too. There could be other reasons. My theory makes about as much sense if not more so.

Warfare seems a lot more prevalent in hominids, especially humans than persistence hunting. And I'd claim the selection/evolutionary pressures are a lot higher.

Chimpanzees conduct warfare and genocide quite regularly: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/science/22chimp.html?_r=0
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2011/05/17/ugandan-chimpanzees-may-be-hunting-red-colobus-monkeys-into-extinction/
Babboons go to war: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8400000/8400019.stm
Even monkeys: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/videos/monkey-gang-turf-war/

Maybe running started with a few persistence hunters, but once a bunch of hominids started going to war running around with spears the survivors were mostly those who could run whether with spears or not. That's a far stronger evolutionary pressure than failing to chase down some meat - could survive for a fair bit by eating some grass bulbs, insects or worms which don't run that fast.

No doubt Hydro changes ecosystems, but unless you are damming very large rivers and endangering fish runs, the ecosystem changes are not significantly different than what was there, (larger lakes where smaller ones were).

The single most significant impact seems to be on certain species of ocean going fish.
As often as not fish and bird populations are improved by lakes forming upstream of dams.

The alleged damage is merely change, and not irreversible change, but some people won't accept any change.
They bitch long and loud about it while sitting in their houses built on huge tracts covering vast regions of prime farmland, prairies and forest.

In many regions, we are tearing out no longer needed dams:

Cool Video Condit Dam: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/environment-news/us-condit-dam-breach-vin/
Time lapse Elwa Dam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUZE7kgXKJc
NYT Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/us/30dam.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Maine: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/us/maine-dam-removal-a-start-to-restoring-spawning-grounds.html

I was just as underwhelmed as you when I heard "coldest temperatures since... 1995!"

That said, last summer was particularly hot:

* Historical Heat Wave Expanding Across the West (June 2013)
* Death Valley Heat Breaks All-Time US June Record
* Heat Wave July 2013
* What’s Behind the Heat Wave

And in December, we did see dramatic weather extremes:

* The temperature in New York's Central Park topped out at 71 degrees on Sunday, breaking a 1998 record of 63 degrees
* The temperature had reached 65 degrees in Central Park on Saturday, breaking a 2011 record of 62 degrees.
* Temperatures in Philadelphia reached a record 68 degrees on Sunday.
* In Washington D.C., the temperature was hovering "about 40 degrees warmer than normal,"
* New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine were pummeled by an ice storm
* In Nelson County, Kentucky, three drowning victims were pulled from a submerged vehicle
* A tornado touched down in the city of Redfield, Arkansas
* Widespread damage from the storm system was also reported near Dermott, Arkansas ... "We are thinking it was a tornado,"

Tornadoes in December?

Peak tornado season in the southern states is March through May; in the northern states, it is late spring through early summer.

Just two weeks later, it's a cold snap: Chicago already broke it's record low -- more to follow.

Unfortunately the Yellowstone caldera has been swelling for a decade.

Minsky (or even Kurzweil) can disagree all he wants, but I've yet to hear of the celebration of truly autonomous first step. One might point at the software that won at jeopardy or the one that beat the Turing test, but did they really 'pick' their own fights, or 'choose' their strategies all by 'themselves'? jeopardy winner: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/pictures/110217-watson-win-jeopardy-ibm-computer-humans-science-tech-artificial-intelligence-ai/ turing test beater: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/01/botprize-2012-programmers_n_1928349.html

the first category error in this whole imbroglio is presuming that the word "natural" has any clear meaning.

Here's a car analogy from National Geographic

"What is an icebreaker?

It's a complicated question. There's a whole spectrum of ice capability for ships. There are ships with some extra hull protection and some extra protection for propellers and rudders that can go through very light ice, and it goes all the way up to strong and powerful ships that can go through just about anything. And there's not a real good terminology. It's like saying something is a "truck." Well, that can mean anything from a pickup to a huge semi. People ask, "What's an icebreaker like?" There are all kinds of them, and you've got to dig a lot deeper to know what it's capable of doing."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140103-antarctica-ship-icebreakers-science-ice-trapped

NatGeo's article on this particular topic answers a lot of questions you won't find on general news sites: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140103-antarctica-ship-icebreakers-science-ice-trapped/

Their answer to your particular question, according to NatGeo, is this:

"The U.S. has two of the most powerful non-nuclear icebreakers in the world, the Polar Sea and the Polar Star. They can break over 6 feet [1.8 meters] of ice continuously at [a speed of] three knots. [One of Russia's largest nuclear-powered icebreakers, considered the strongest in the world, could break] probably upwards of ten feet [three meters]. [A ship that is merely "ice-capable"] would break 3 feet [0.9 meter] of ice or less at that speed."

And if you really get bored, here's an article about how sea ice is very different in the Antarctic compared to the Arctic: http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/characteristics/difference.html

Relevant from that article: "Because sea ice does not stay in the Antarctic as long as it does in the Arctic, it does not have the opportunity to grow as thick as sea ice in the Arctic. While thickness varies significantly within both regions, Antarctic ice is typically 1 to 2 meters (3 to 6 feet) thick, while most of the Arctic is covered by sea ice 2 to 3 meters (6 to 9 feet) thick. Some Arctic regions are covered with ice that is 4 to 5 meters (12 to 15 feet) thick."

I could have sworn Netflix had a documentary series that covered icebreakers in one episode, but I can't find it now - it may be one of those things that comes and goes in their catalog.

I'd still like to see a citation.

I can't find his actual quote offhand, reported in original context. I can find, however, that he was apparently citing Zwally, as also cited by National Geographic. Ggiven that it is going down by steps and not in a continuous flow, however, I think the real year that the arctic will be free of ice in the summer will happen sometime between next year and 2040 (one of the more realistic original estimates), but we can't really be sure which year it'll be. It'll also be interesting to see what the impact of the new solar cycle will be.

That sure is something actual climate scientists have said

Not so fast there. You have to admit that the AGW camp is comprised on many different people. And many of those people are in positions that are influential...media, entertainment, etc. These non-scientists regularly equate weather events with AGW. They do so forcefully and very publicly with widespread exposure. All I've ever heard from the scientists are tepid and hard to find statements that, "no, you really can't say that".

Highly prominent scientists in AGW research have moved from science into advocacy of specific public policy. In doing that they have taken the debate out of the scientific realm and placed it into the public realm, where everyone has the right to express an opinion and where the science is merely one component of the debate.

And even then, some very visible AGW scientists are saying that weather events can be related to climate change

So you cannot dismiss accusations that the AGW camp is equating weather and climate when convenient and beneficial to the cause and then hide behind the scientists that are sticking as closely as possible to the scientific method when someone calls you on it.

I'm not surprised. It's science, you keep looking and you keep finding new and interesting things. It's not possible to know everything instantly and Greenland is a remote and expensive place to study.

This water is in the firn which occurs down to a depth of around 50 meters before the weight of snow above compresses it to glacial ice which can't hold water like firn. The top of the water table is generally less than 25 meters under the surface (see Figure 2) and can't be deeper than about 50. These aquifers were found in the far south of Greenland near the coast, one of the warmer areas of Greenland. It's unknown as yet if they exist elsewhere but now they know to look for them. I imagine the further north you get the more difficult it would be for them to form.

So you wouldn't likely see this except possibly at the very top of a 2,000 meter+ ice core. Most of those ice cores are drilled from far higher elevations and further north where it doesn't melt much even in summer so there is little water to begin with and in any case the colder temperatures probably cause water that forms to refreeze near the surface. In order for this water/firn mixture to coexist the temperature has to be just right and it wouldn't take much to tip the balance one way or another. If it tipped to warmer I imagine it could lead to rapid collapse of the snow field but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Not entirely mutually beneficial... Toxoplasma gondii parasites, anyone?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/01/220113-sneaky-cat-parasite-takes-over-human-brains-science/

And once infected, you are twice as likely to get in a car accident, among other negative effects.

Better article (with sort of a picture of the phenomenon)

That paper talks about the possility that one might observe plumes, as one of several possible explanations for the terrain features seen on Europa. Actually observing such plumes is something else entirely.

Isn't that

This is just direct confirmation of what we already knew about.

What I said?

How is that clear? On what do you base the claim that the odds are so good that "it's just a matter of confirming it"? I don't think you would find anybody working in that field willing to make that bold claims.

Google is your friend:

"I'd be shocked if no life existed on Europa," said Shank, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091116-jupiter-moon-life-europa-fish.html

You don't seem to understand the difference between evidence and proof. We've plenty of evidence, just not the proof.

I've even go so far as to say I'm relatively sure we'll find life on every planetary body in our solar system. Even the moon. It may only be a few microbes in a lot of cases, but I seriously doubt life is nearly as unique as some believe.

Inherently safe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA
"The TRIGA reactor uses uranium zirconium hydride (UZrH) fuel, which has a large, prompt negative fuel temperature coefficient of reactivity, meaning that as the temperature of the core increases, the reactivity rapidly decreases. It is thus highly unlikely, though not impossible for a nuclear meltdown to occur."

Yeah, so many good ideas have been shelved as you point out because they did not fit with the political or social or economic priorities of the time.

CANDU is somewhat safer than usual:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor#Safety_features

More on why reactors capitalism built were expensive:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html

How they could be better by being smaller (like TRIGA):
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter10.html
"Natural circulation can also be used to protect the containment from breaking open due to excess pressure. In present-day power plants, active cooling using water pumps is necessary to control the pressure. But with the smaller reactor, there is less energy to dissipate, making natural circulation a viable alternative."

One intriguing possibility is a central factory that makes small nuclear power units meant to run without significant maintenance for 30 years and which then go back to the factory for reprocessing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_nuclear_reactor

I have a lot of respect for the people who maintain what we have though:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/episodes/nuclear-turbine/
"Sean Riley puts on his hazmat suit and heads into the radiation zone for his next tough fix, replacing a steam turbine in a nuclear power plant to boost its energy-producing capacity. Dismantling an enormous turbine and putting it back together again is tough work at the best of times, but when there's risk of radioactive particles inside, tough is an understatement."

That said, I'm not really a fan of big centralized power plants for social reasons, so I lean towards solar, superinsulated homes, and energy efficiency. Also, while in theory nuclear energy could be run well, in practice, given corporate secrecy and other social dysfunctions, like with TEPCO, I have little confidence current profit-oriented corporations could run big nuclear reactors safely. "Silkwood" is another example, although one can see that with corporations that handle anything dangerous, including chemicals used to make ICs -- at least nuclear releases are easier to monitor than most chemical or biochemical releases.

An example is in the USA with dozens of nuclear plants similar to Fukushima requiring active systems to shut down (and power) that are all at the end of their lives and which should have never been built. They should be shut down as unsafe and replaced with something safer (nuclear, fusion, solar, or otherwise), but likely will just be run longer until the next disaster.

With solar reaching grid parity (cheaper than grid electricity from coal,natural gas, and nuclear), it is hard to argue for nuclear without some huge design breakthroughs. It was hard even ten or twenty years ago when one could point to the solar pricing trends (but people scoffed). Hot or cold fusion maybe would be the next step for "nuclear" though, and one could argue fusion plants would have less environmental impact than covering 1% of the landscape with solar panels. Although "solar roads" is a neat idea.
http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml
"When multiple Solar Road Panels are interconnected, the in

The grandkids had enhanced receptors for that particular smell. They specifically did not test for, and point out in the paper that they do not claim that the AVERSION was passed on, only that F1 and F2 had structures in the brain that are enlarged compared to control, and that are associated with the sense of smell for the chemical that was used to prime the F0 generation.

Much better science-savvy writeup by my cousin on the Nat Geo blog:

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/01/mice-inherit-specific-memories-because-epigenetics/

I dunno.

I'm finding it hard to get scared by fuzzy dinosaurs. I mean, look at that picture. So soft and cuddly. You want to pet it.

I don't think even Randall would be impressed.

Sigh. Start using multi-antibiotic cocktails, especially with drugs that operate on different methods such that a single mutation to cover all of them is highly unlikely.

This is not entirely nonsense, but it is way too simplistic. Microbes are capable of bizarre behaviors like horizontal gene transfer to gain multiple resistance quickly. Resistance genes in the wild predate the use of antibiotics by humans - by millions of years - so any use of antibiotics will eventually create resistant strains. This makes perfect sense, as antibiotics are largely fungal anti-bacterial chemical warfare agents. They've been fighting it out for a billion years or so all over the planet. More responsible use of antibiotics is certainly warranted, but levels of resistance will certainly always be increasing, no matter what the antibacterial agents are.

Random fact, Khan has 16 million descendants.

Great rapist...

(there are stories that Mongol warriors gang-raping a woman, when they ran out of orifices to rape would take their knives and make improvised orifices to rape)

Random fact, Khan has 16 million descendants.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131116-oldest-clam-dead-ming-science-ocean-507/

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map

And some think that the NatGeo's prediction may be too low...

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/11/map-sea-level-rise-probably-wrong-its-too-optimistic/71246/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html

Yeah...still won't be that bad. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/08/130807-fukushima-radioactive-water-leak/

Lowest pollution? I guess little things like Windscale, Tchernobyl, and Fuckushima are removed from that calculation...

Nope. Go ahead and include them. You'll get to about .1% of the emissions of coal power plants with every nuclear disaster. Ever. Including all of the nuclear bomb tests, the two bombs we dropped on Japan, three mile island, and more.

You have completely and utterly mis-represented the entire S.A article. The comparison was between a functioning NPP and CFG of the same capacity. The figures come from the NRC standards for release of radionuclides from an operational reactor. Nuclear power plants release noble gasses roughly every two weeks, which whilst benign when released, decay into deadlier elements, and thats NRC standard operating procedure for all nuclear plants *before* we start talking about unintentional or unauthorised radioactive effluent emmissions, especially disasters.

Fun fact: Coal plants collectively emit more radiation in a year than all those disasters combined have, and that's when you include into the figures the yearly radiation the nuclear plants emit into the environment as well.

Did you actually read the article you linked to? It mentioned nothing about those disasters at all. Here is the clarification printed at the end of the article;

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

Nuclear waste, it's storage and releases into the environment are a problem so staggering that National Geographic describes as "a mythical train that would reach around the Equator and then some" (it's in the first page of ten). Check it out it will give you some idea of the actual size of this problem.

Coal: Because glowing green is fun.

However, Cherenkov radiation is blue.

I'm not so sure about that. From TFA:

So could the planet have formed in a wider orbit and migrated inward? This is another improbability, say the researchers. âoeIt couldnâ(TM)t have formed further out and migrated inward, because it would have migrated all the way into the star. This planet is an enigma,â Sasselov added.

That is in opposition to this:

âoeWhat Iâ(TM)m going to say is really absolutely crazy,â he said at the start of a recent seminar. âoeIf we publish this, my career might be over.â He could have made the same remark back in 2004 about what is now called the Nice modelâ"the hypothesis that he and his colleagues, including Alessandro Morbidelli of the CÃte dâ(TM)Azur Observatory in Nice, developed on the basis of dozens of computer simulations.

In essence Levisonâ(TM)s team proposed that our solar systemâ(TM)s four giant planetsâ"Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptuneâ"had started out much more closely packed together, on nearly circular orbits, with the latter three closer to the sun than they are now. Early on they were embedded in the disk-shaped solar nebula, which was still full of icy and rocky debris. As the planets absorbed those planetesimals or flung them away after close encounters, they cleared gaps in the disk.

Because the planets were also tugging on one another, the whole system was fragileâ"âoealmost infinitely chaotic,â Levison says. Instead of each planet being linked only to the sun by a brass arm, itâ(TM)s as if they were all linked by gravitational springs as well. The most powerful one linked the two biggest bodies, Jupiter and Saturn. A yank on that spring would jolt the whole system.

And that, the team believes, is what happened when the solar system was about 500 million to 700 million years old. As the planets interacted with planetesimals, their own orbits shifted. Jupiter moved slightly inward; Saturn moved slightly outward, as did Uranus and Neptune. Everything happened slowlyâ"until at a certain point Saturn was completing exactly one orbit for every two of Jupiterâ(TM)s.

Because the planets were also tugging on one another, the whole system was fragileâ"âoealmost infinitely chaotic,â Levison says. Instead of each planet being linked only to the sun by a brass arm, itâ(TM)s as if they were all linked by gravitational springs as well. The most powerful one linked the two biggest bodies, Jupiter and Saturn. A yank on that spring would jolt the whole system.

TFA is framing the question in a sensational way. What the scientists are saying is "this is an exciting puzzle, it shouldn't happen according to what we know.