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Means nothing to global crop production

Except that the bad Russian harvest did impact global crop production. We're not talking about one drought in one year. As the average temperature goes up, these droughts are expected to increase in frequency.

There are also expected to be less exception "cold snaps"

Maybe. There are some theories that the melting arctic ice could be responsible for changing weather patterns that cause more cold winter weather in the US. In any case, the idea that higher temperatures and more CO2 are generally good for plants is not supported. In most areas of the world, the limiting factor to plant growth is the availability of water. Higher temperatures result in increased evaporation rates, so water becomes an even bigger factor.

Note that the US is experiencing a pretty bad drought too:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=midwest-turns-dry-as-drought

I agree that it is very unlikely there is any significant link between cell phone microwave radiation and cancer.

But what i hate even more than the ignorant seeking out answers they do not understand for a conclusion they have already drawn out of fear... is people at the other end of the spectrum who while sharing the most probable answer also use bad science to argue their point. They make science look bad, if they aren't knowledgable enough in the field then they should state their opinion with some damn humility.

Also It isn't as black and white as you draw it, em radiation can interact in many ways, and classifying all non-ionising radiation as the same is quite wrong - of course - there is a reason we use the microwave frequencies for coms through walls and not visible light.

Now i'm not suggesting that a cell phone emits ionising radiation, and i'm not suggesting that it can cause dipole rotation and heat your brain. However as more is discovered about the workings of the brain, different studies could to be done that monitor possible non-cancerous affects... For instance considering how it has been found communication between neurons also takes place through electric fields: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-electric-field it's also known that much stronger focused fields have a definitive and immediate impact on neurons (not necessarily negative) it has actually been used for treating very specific phycological problems that can be physically targeted. However knowing that more subtle fields are also a part of the neural mechanism does raise questions as to how such close proximity to a weak microwave transmitter could interact with those fields... who knows it could have positive effects ! but keep an open mind.

20, 50, and 100 years ago, Scientific American would have been the obvious choice. Now, unfortunately, SciAm is the "no-brainer" choice :P

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

This is the best website for science news for reasonably educated but not specialized people: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Science News has a website - http://www.sciencenews.org/ and a weekly magazine which are always good, if overly sober, though the magazine doesn't have near enough content to cover everything that happened that week.

New Scientist is a weekly mag that has drifted towards Omni or PopSci lately ('IS SENSATIONAL THING TRUE? (...no)'), but will still keep you up to date on most happenings including things you might miss online. http://www.newscientist.com/

Scientific American is a monthly mag that's a bit too political but has some good articles: http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Then there's Discover Magazine, which is a step down from either but has some good blogs: http://discovermagazine.com/

Live Science is a further step down, a good site for training wheel science: http://www.livescience.com/

I won't recommend the mag Science, because even though it's The Magazine, it's not suited for the dabbler.

My balanced suggestion is add the news feeds for all of these to your RSS reader (like Google Reader), click on what looks interesting, and subscribe to New Scientist in print or on Zinio and read it every week.

Bigger eyes for lower light at northern latitudes? OK. But bigger brains because of lower light during winter? I don't buy it. However there's a theory that we lost our body hair because it allowed us to keep shed excess heat more easily, which allowed us to grow larger brains than our hirsute ape cousins because big brains generate a lot of heat. So it's more likely that humans at northern latitude had bigger brains because, just as with the evolution of naked skin, the cooler weather made it easier to keep bigger brains cool, and therefore made them an evolutionary advantage (due to more analytical/processing power and memory) instead of an evolutionary disadvantage (by requiring less activity to stay within a safe body temperature range).

China and Southeast Asia, mostly. Because no one ever breaks the law.

You may be interested in this:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=phosphorus-a-looming-crisis

The full article is behind a paywall, but one conclusion is we need to recycle sewage.

Thank you for doing your part.

Scientists Discover That Antimicrobial Wipes and Soaps May Be Making You (and Society) Sick

Strange but True: Antibacterial Products May Do More Harm Than Good

Scientists Discover That Antimicrobial Wipes and Soaps May Be Making You (and Society) Sick

Strange but True: Antibacterial Products May Do More Harm Than Good

Humans put out less CO2 than one volcano.

Please quantify that claim. Other sources differ from your assertion.

From the linked article:

There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.

I'll grant that the article is not numerically specific, but it is more credible than an Anonymous Coward. I'm willing to consider better supported alternatives, but this will be my working hypothesis for the moment.

Take a look at this graph, from this article about solar price trends.

That graph is misleading, as it looks like the pace of improvement is actually slowing (which is what confused the AC who replied to you). It would be better plotted as Watts per Dollar, which shows the trend clearly. Here's that same data presented that way.

Take a look at this graph, from this article about solar price trends.

That graph is misleading, as it looks like the pace of improvement is actually slowing (which is what confused the AC who replied to you). It would be better plotted as Watts per Dollar, which shows the trend clearly. Here's that same data presented that way.

I swear, I've read between 2-3 stories per month for the last 5 years on how someone has revolutionized the process of producing solar cells, at a fraction of the cost it was last week... By this point, I should be able to pick up a 2 by 4 ft. panel from the side of the street by the peaches stands.

Take a look at this graph, from this article about solar price trends. From 1980 to 2009, the cost of photovoltaics decreased by about 85%, from $22/W to below $3/W. As of approximately now, solar is cheaper than nuclear per kWh, and the price decline shows no sign of stopping.

Maybe you should quantify your expectations, then you can check them against future price decreases.

I swear, I've read between 2-3 stories per month for the last 5 years on how someone has revolutionized the process of producing solar cells, at a fraction of the cost it was last week... By this point, I should be able to pick up a 2 by 4 ft. panel from the side of the street by the peaches stands.

Take a look at this graph, from this article about solar price trends. From 1980 to 2009, the cost of photovoltaics decreased by about 85%, from $22/W to below $3/W. As of approximately now, solar is cheaper than nuclear per kWh, and the price decline shows no sign of stopping.

Maybe you should quantify your expectations, then you can check them against future price decreases.

Where on earth do you get the idea that we's need a grid with 500 times the capacity of the current one?

According to this each car would be the equivalent of about a third of a house. Since most of them would presumably be recharged overnight when normal usage is low I can't see that being an unsurmountable problem.

You got any figures to back up your claim?

Except maybe for some earthquakes....
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geothermal-drilling-earthquakes

My pet hypothesis is that Mars was contaminated by Earth millions of years ago. Thinking about it, we have this planet that's down-solar-wind of our planet, catching the microbes whisked away from our upper atmosphere and into outer orbits... like when Earth passes through the remnants of a comet's path, creating meteor showers for hundreds of years afterwards every time we pass through that region of space. There was a story about Russia planning a space probe to Mars' orbit and back, loaded with microbes, to see if any could survive the journey. If any could, then Mars was populated with microbes from our planet a long long time ago.

Here's a thought: why not use a plant with a higher ethanol output than corn and which grows on land we can't use for corn and other food, like switchgrass. Personally, I'd rather see the fossil fuel subsidies abolished so we can get some actual competition in the energy market.

But even if you do pull it off, and really can build all that renewable energy capacity that fast. It's still totally irresponsible to shut down nuclear power plants and keep their coal plants running. Those actually kill people... like, many, every year!

Scientific American backs you up: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-organic-milk-lasts-longer

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

The URL says it all. Burning stuff makes radioactive waste.

Well managed nuclear is easily better than coal. The problems around nuclear are political and economic, not technical; i.e. the politicians and the beancounters need to step aside and throw money at designing safe reactors.

The difference between coal and nuclear is that coal is designed to vent its waste into the atmosphere every day whereas with nuclear when that occurs, it's global news.

Nice try in making it seem like over reacting, but it isn't that simple even if you want it to be. First off, Nuclear power is dangerous but doesn't leak out onto coal/gas/propane/ect... power. GMO's genetic sequences have leaked out onto other non-GMO genetic sequences. Also, it might have been a test crop, but that doesn't mean it couldn't spread into the wild on its own (like GM Canola. And if goes wild, its wild and odds are can't be contained. This has already happened with things like Kudzu in the southern US as it grows wild and chokes the local, native plant life. (It natively comes from Japan and southern China, not the US.)

The biggest issue is that GMO's have caused many health issues, just not the ones people wanted to see splashed across the newspaper. Thing is, when you take Object A and splice it with Object B you get Object A/B which means that anyone that is allergic to either A or B runs a risk of allergic to Object A/B. Now companies not only don't like telling people that the product already has GMO's in it, but they refuse to tell you what each GMO was crossed with (they claim its a trade secret). That means you have companies that are selling you a product that can have the risks of having an common allergen inside it and can cause a reaction, possibly even death from the reaction, and the companies all sit there and go "Wasn't our fault, we labeled what we put in there." while hiding what had been placed within the GMO (which caused the reaction) and effectively sweeping it under the carpet. You can read more about GMO (GM Soy to be exact) and how GM Soy causes allergic reactions in people due to how it's amino acids resemble common allergens not found in non-GM Soy here.

Ironically coal plants emit much more radiation than nuclear plants.

You seem to have thought this out a lot though your point 4 I'd challenge.
Professors can be wrong sometimes or simply misleading.

16% of the worlds energy already comes from nuclear.

There is apparently a 230-year estimate supply extractable at today's consumption rate with current technologyat current market prices at current rates of use.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last

36.8 years if tomorrow every single plant was replaced with nuclear if you don't use breeder reactors.

With breeder reactors you could multiply that by something like 50-100
Long enough that it's not a significant worry.

Current market prices is also important: if you increase the price, say double it, then that dramatically increases while not significantly increasing the price of running a nuclear plant as the fuel is very cheap compared to building the reactor.

Now there's claims that it is possible to extract uranium from seawater for about 5 or 6 times the current market price which effectively sets an upper limit on the price of uranium and would supply it forever but I'll wait till I see any kind of large scale operation.

point 2 is valid though it's also true of most industry, hazardous waste can be a serious long term issue even if it's not radioactive, it just doesn't get the same media attention.

point 3 is the most significant one for much of the human race and extremely valid.

• 1 - Shipping and mining of feedstock - I presume you mean fuel... I really don't see how this is a problem at all, it creates a lot of industry and drives new technologies. It's a good thing all around. There's no way a sane person can see this as a drawback.
• 2 - Long term cost with storage of waste - You've clearly never heard of breeder reactors, or the negative radioactive waste drawbacks of things like coal. Combine the already-lower radioactive waste of nuclear with breeders, and you've got an extremely planet and people-friendly power source.
• 3 - Proliferation - Ya, we're clearly stopping openly-hostile, fundamentalist Iran from building nuclear power plants. That's totally happening. If you call Stuxnet on this, you're crazier than Ahmadinejad.
• 4 - Worldwide fuel limits - I also went to college. In fact, I went to college for power engineering, and that number is utter nonsense. It's more like 3,000 years with current consumption, assuming we don't use breeders. With new technologies like Indian thorium breeders we have more like 250,000 years, assuming we only use uranium and thorium, and assuming we're still stuck on this rock. That gives us only 20 years more to hold out until we solve the fusion break-even problem.
• 5 - Solar and wind production in the US - At the APPA conference in Nashville this spring, one of the foremost investors in "renewable" energy in the country outright stated that they would have put absolutely nothing into solar/wind/geothermal if they didn't receive federal grants for it. It'd've simply've been a waste of time and money. Federal support is the only reason we have anything like this project.
• 6 - If you're not an idiot, you should stop trying so hard to look like one.

No, it actually isn't a useless argument in this case.

When there's some indication that the smallpox vaccine actually does increase resistance to HIV infection, the argument is a fairly interesting one to bring up.

Did you miss the dozen or so 10 foot high underwater robots working on the spill?

A few times more, a hundred times more, to-MAY-toe, to-MAH-toe. Fly ash is probably easier controllable, being solid, but the sheer amount makes it a problem.

See my other comment about how great current reprocessing is.

Wow. You still haven't even ready the original article I posted.

Also, if coal is really as radioactive as you trying to fear monger, then nuclear power plants should actually use coal instead of uranium since it is far cheaper and much easier to mine.

I'm not sure what you're rambling about here, but once again I'll bring in some facts to the conversation. You'll probably just ignore these too.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

And given the fact, that there has been a serious nuclear accident on average every 20 years, and that when nuclear power plants produce just tiny 2% of our current power needs. If there were so many nuclear power plants as there are coal power plants at the moment, we would have a meltdown every single year.

2% of who? the US? France produces 75% of their power from nuclear (from the first article that you have ignored twice).

They emit more radiation than nuclear power plants, too.

Can't wait to see the article where they update that study with the new data from Fukushima.

coal is actually WORSE than nuclear in both radiation output and toxic byproducts that need disposal

For a properly functioning power plant Coal puts out about 100 times the radiation of Nuclear. However even if you live near a coal plant it will only up your anual background radiation does by about 0.5%.

The coal industry will put out about 101 PBq of radiation for the years 1937-2040. By comparision Fukushima has spit out about 130-150 PBq of iodine-131 and Chernobyl was about 1760 PBq.

Having said all that I think neither are great solutions and we should really be investing more money in alternatives.

Um, to add more fire to your argument, coal is also responsible for releasing more radioactive substances into the environment that nuclear power.

Some of the pollutants that burning coal dumps into the air? Radioactive uranium.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

But coal power is also handled by an organization with a profit motive.

They emit more radiation than nuclear power plants, too.

Easy. You compare it to the 100% chance of large radiation releases from coal plants every year, the 100% chance that massive amounts of CO2, mercury, and fine particulate matter will be released, etc.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

I live about 11 miles from a nuke plant. I would not even consider living that close to a coal plant.

Alternative answer-- it means crappily maintained facilities will perform crappily in event of a disaster.

next up-- wind turbines on a rusty crappily maintained wind farm could come loose in high winds and cause secondary damage. Poorly maintained hydro- plants could cause massive loss of life if dam fails. Poorly installed geothermal plants can cause earthquake.

This isnt an argument against nuclear, its an argument about fining the hell out of people who poorly maintain their facilities (be it coal mines, nuclear facilities, oil rigs, hydroplants, etc).

Who needs the backdoors supposedly made by Symantec when they already installed the ones supposedly made by Microsoft? Or a BIOS or hardware itself?

And coal also contains radioactive materials:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Yup, and coal plants also release radioactivity:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Tons can also mean a lot. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

some facts: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

hint: the problem is in ingesting it, not in making concrete blocks

Really Now would you kindly shut the fuck up with your nuclear power propeganda. Real scientists are trying to work here.

but there is no radiological concern.

Not completely true.

This is but one example. Its fairly well documented it is because the radioactivity from these plants are far more likely to be ingested; as clearly indicated. The fact the results from this story alone indicate radioactivity is up to 200x higher than living next to a nuclear plant. No, that doesn't mean its killing people in groves, but chances are it has to some degree. And we know for a fact the ash does contribute to respiratory illness and associated deaths. Furthermore, there are many stories of farm land being destroyed by coal ash. Once such story in Texas recently made its rounds. So clearly, its not an issue which should be completely dismissed as you seem to be conveying. The point remains, noteworthy waste is produces, even from "clean" plants and it doesn't simply disappear seconds after leaving the stack.

The reality is, there is no such thing as "clean coal."

I read somewhere, around the 1980s, probably by Amory Lovins, that if we spent a year or so of the cost of maintaining the US Persian Gulf deployment force on insulating US homes and other energy efficiency improvements, that we would not need any imported oil. Related:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
    http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3_table_of_contents
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
    http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en

All this robotic warfare is just ironic, as are, ultimately, all arms races that lead to the destruction of all parties (except maybe the robots). See also:
    http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Minosian
"The Minosians were a thriving, technologically-advanced humanoid civilization from the planet Minos. The Minosians gained notoriety as arms merchants during the Erselrope Wars, providing advanced weaponry such as the Echo Papa 607 which were sold under the banner "Peace through superior firepower." It was discovered in 2364 that the Minosians were subsequently eradicated by their own weapon system when it went out of control. One of the few Minosian artifacts surviving, the Echo Papa 607 system was responsible for the destruction of the USS Drake and attempted to destroy the USS Enterprise-D. (TNG: "The Arsenal of Freedom") "

Thus:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

And isn't choice a GOOD thing?

Not to pick on you in particular but I am sooooooo tired of hearing the claim that "choice is a good thing". It's not. In fact, a good way to frustrate people is to give them too many choices. Moreover, the wide choice of windows managers is an example of Linux market failure. People don't use computers to run various windows managers, they use computers to run applications that perform tasks. The fragmentation of low-level libraries for sound, graphics, UI, packaging, etc., means that developers don't have a clear target for Linux apps. For open source efforts, this means wasted efforts on ports, plugins, and duplicate projects. For commercial ventures, it means that additional money must be invested to reach a more restricted market segment.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

...which emits plenty of radiation as well as killing people through mining incidents, respiratory problems, and climate change... (see http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Or perhaps is just another one of your truthiness facts?