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Yeh... anyone who still uses the argument "the sun don't shine 24/7" is woefully behind the times. I suggest you try reading something, and try catch up on the last decade or so. CanadianManFan below this post has some other good points.

https://www.scientificamerican...

The problem with science in the US is that it has been overrun by MBAs and liberal self-centered asswipes that think they should get money just because they deserve it.

MBA's may be a problem, but you're just shaking your personal marotte when complaining about liberals. Problems for science in the US are mostly on the other side of the aisle. Some of the most powerful Republican politicians can come up with absolute howlers and go on to create legislation related to areas they're so blatantly ignorant about, but the party and their voters have no problem with that. The Republican president is proudly scientifically illiterate, but can and does name leaders of science (or related) agencies - and again, neither the party nor the voters feel there is a problem. The rank and file Republicans are themselves against science funding, while the Democrats are in majority in favor of increased science spending.

So, you're wrong. But then, since you're apparently a Republican, it was probably never about being right, was it?

Colony collapse disorder is likely due to mites on the bees more than pesticides https://ipm.missouri.edu/MPG/2013/7/Colony-Collapse-Disorder-the-Varroa-Mite-and-Resources-for-Beekeepers/, and bee hives are generally recovering from colony collapse disorder https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-01/good-news-for-bees-as-numbers-recover-while-mystery-malady-wanes. It is true that pesticide use can be a problem, but that's probably not the primary cause of most of the bee population problems, even as neonicotinoids are separately creating problems for bees. It is also in this context, important to focus on specific pesticides like neonicotinoids rather than "pesticides" as a general category, many of which are harmless to bees. And for this reason, reducing or eliminating neonicotinoid use makes sense.

That's not to say that all other pesticides are perfect. While they are a major aspect of what has allowed humans to drastically reduce food costs and effectively escape the Malthusian trap, many neurotoxic pesticides are harmful to humans, and there's a strong correlation between general pesticide exposure and developing certain neurological diseases later in life such as Parkinson's https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/parkinsons-disease-and-pesticides-whats-the-connection/. There's good reason to reduce our use of pesticides when possible, but fearmongering about bee collapse is not on them.

In the last few years of Roger Ebert's life, CereProc, a Scottish company, assembled a synthetic version of Ebert's voice from his DVD commentaries. Although Ebert did all those TV shows, they couldn't use the voice tracks from those because there was always too much (unmatchable) background noise. CereProc said at the time they were hoping to be able to provide an inexpensive web service that could create a good-enough synthesizer for others who had lost their voices.

From Scientific American, in 2011: https://www.scientificamerican...

wg

This article begs to differ https://www.scientificamerican...

It's the difference between low amounts of radiation spread "all over", minuscule compared to the background radiation, versus the concentrated radiation (that is, nuclear waste) that you get with nuclear: https://www.scientificamerican...

Dealing with this nuclear waste is why it's "dirty". Please stop the bullshit arguments. Slinging propaganda around is no way to arrive at good solutions.

Really? I should respect your ignorance?

The first link on Google when I searched for
"turbines net energy manufacture"

https://www.scientificamerican...

""Within a few months, a wind turbine generates enough electricity to pay back all of the energy it took to build it,"

The *very* *first* link.

China is also very well known for lying about things and faking stats to appear better than everyone else. It goes all the way from the local level with fake recycling bins that go straight to trash pickup to faking national statistics.

It's easier to focus on that reassurance rather than the decline in U.S. healthy life expectancy since 2014.

https://www.scientificamerican...

"These experiments show that when people's beliefs are threatened, they often take flight to a land where facts do not matter."

Sadly, this may be a case of just having to accept some unpalatable news.

What would be interesting is the "why?" which sadly the article is a little thin on. Perhaps there will be more analysis to follow.

https://www.scientificamerican...

Island countries like the Philippines and Indonesia also tend to have issues with a lot of waste getting into the ocean quickly. In a landlocked country the odds of your properly disposed of plastic waste reaching the ocean are pretty slim.

The real answer for plastic disposal is "Waste to Energy". Plastic burns very well, you just need to burn it hot enough that it doesn't emit dioxins. What we need is a technological solution that can be mass produced and distributed across the developing world so people can collect and incinerate their plastic safely.

That is a last resort and to take that from responsible gun owners is crazy. If I wasn't home, I would want my wife to have access to a gun because while she waits for the cops, she would be otherwise defenseless.

Get a dog. It will make you safer than owning a gun will, and won't make you more likely to commit suicide or kill a family member.

If you have a dog, that home intruder won't even try to come into your house. Bad guys avoid dogs, but they look to steal guns

A gun in the house increases the risk to your family.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/a...

https://www.scientificamerican...

https://www.vox.com/cards/gun-...

They can leave full fossils, it's just uncommon. example: https://www.scientificamerican...

"Americans are effectively subsidizing health systems elsewhere." - (Scientific American, How the U.S. Pays 3 Times More for Drugs)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-u-s-pays-3-times-more-for-drugs/

but IIRC volcanic events are responsible for a lot of CO2.
No they don't, and that is easy to google: https://www.scientificamerican...

First Google result:

> According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world's volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide.
https://www.scientificamerican...

That puts volcanoes' total annual contribution at less than 1% of the CO2 produced just by cars - which are themselves only 15% of man-made fossil CO2 emissions. So only 0.125% of human production.

Forest fires are a somewhat separate issue - globally they're estimated to release fully half as much CO2 as human fossil fuel consumption, but it's CO2 that was already in the ecological carbon cycle, which is immense but more-or-less stable (at least until temperatures tilt far enough that thawing permafrost, etc. starts releasing long-term eco-sequestered carbon). Fire's are primarily a problem when the land is then developed (construction or farming) rather than allowed to return to a similarly carbon-rich ecology so that the CO2 can be reabsorbed. Think of it as floating a water-pump fountain in a swimming pool - it circulates a lot of water, but it's all water that was already there' so the pool doesn't get any fuller. Fossil carbon is like turning on a much smaller garden hose - it's not much in comparison, but it's adding water that wasn't there before, so the water level begins to climb slowly but steadily.

You realize your repeating Russian propaganda?

*You're

Fracking is a 100 year old technology,

It's good because it's old? Fallacy.

it's just been demonized by hydrocarbon producers who's profit margin is threatened.

Uh no. They're the ones doing the fracking. They inject their refinery wastes into the wells, too, so it's a win-win for them.

I hope they do better than they did with the Human/Blue Brain projects. Seriously, that whole thing went off the rails big time.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-human-brain-project-went-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/

No, this isn't some anti-European, anti-Big Science screed. Just saying that learning from your mistakes is good and repeating them is bad. Kind of like the Scientific Method. Learn from those mistakes and do it better next time!

CERN was a project done right. Human Brain Project was a project done wrong. What were the differences and crucially, which differences were at play in the relative success or failure of each one?

Show me ANY physics theory or equations that relies on a time quantum smaller then the Planck second (5.39 x 10^-44s) -- that isn't "magically instantaneous" and that isn't behind a fucking paywall.

Furthermore, if space was quantized and time not, or vice versa, how would _exactly_ would that work?

Logically, either both space and time are discrete (as Planck posited), OR both space and time and continuous.

This is one of the million dollar questions in Physics:

Q. Does time exist at a smaller quantum then the Planck Second?
A. Modern Science: We don't know.

Considering the smallest time we can measure is 10^-25s we have a LONG ways to go to reach 10^-44s.

Events as short as about 10^-25 second have been indirectly inferred in extremely energetic collisions in the largest particle accelerators.

See Neutron pulse rate

It was also gerrymandered up the wazoo when Democrats were in power.

Yes. Reynolds v. Sims and Baker v. Carr. Of course, those Democrats were often entirely different in politics. Such is history.

Gerrymandering simply strengthens whoever is currently more popular.

Wrong. In some cases, actually weakens those who are more popular, as shown in Wisconsin and North Carolina.

If congressional districts were assigned rationally, Democrats wouldn't do very well anyway

Yes, but that's because your definition of rational which is 100% Republican Agenda. You do realize your biases, however, are not supported in actual math that is independent of your partisan bias.

The only way Democrats could do well if the US went to strict national popular majorities, but that is utterly unacceptable and incompatible with federalism.

Or you know, actually voting. Of course, that is utterly unacceptable to the Republican agenda which relies on voter suppression.

In actual fact [people-press.org], liberals only make up about 17% of the US political spectrum and California is thoroughly unrepresentative of the country.

Actually, California is highly representative of the country, and it's only because of zealots like you that it gets demonized as some outside nemesis.

The reason Republicans are so strong is because Democrats have fallen out of favor with the political center: moderates and independents.

Also untrue, the truth is quite contrary.

It is actually the Republicans who have become more extremist, but they rely on moving the perceptual concept to turn the tables instead of embrace reality.

I'm a good example of that: I used to be a registered Democrat but loathe what the Democratic party has become over the last decade. I won't vote for Democrats again until they clearly disavow people like Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Corey Booker, and Elizabeth Warren.

You're actually a good example of the lying fraud of the GOP, as you vacuously and repetitively pretend to claim to be a Democrat and a moderate, yet entirely espouse the hard-core right-wing agenda, and blame Obama for creating conflict.

Tell you what, maybe people will believe you when you disavow individuals like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thoma

Texas is primarily powered by natural gas and coal, with a bit of highly subsidized wind. However, while gas+wind may reduce emissions some, it is incapable of scaling to replace fossil, and will forever be dependent on it.

Howdy from Texas!

Pardner, you might wanna take a look at this here. It ain't just "a bit" [snort]....we git almost a fifth of our 'lectricity from those big 'ol whirly-gigs and the solars!

YEEE HAW! [gunshots]

Goodness, you're right. Let's also ease up on organised crime for the same reasons, eh?

Best post of the thread. I often say this to myself every time some talking head on TV goes on about protecting jobs (usually at the expense of people's health). As an example coal power is responsible for millions of deaths, but somehow jobs for coal miners are more important than that. How is that different from say drug dealers? Drug dealing is a job that props up entire communities. Job security seems to get too much weight in political debates and no-one ever pulls them up on the flawed logic.

The criminals also know that they face lower odds of resistance in areas with stricter gun control laws. Crime is always lower in areas with high gun ownership rates.

Credible citations please.

You are purposefully ignorant.

Honest question. Why is it that everyone wanting to make the world a better place is so unpleasant to anyone that disagrees with them or is even willing to entertain a devil's advocate position? Is is just that once you decide you are in it for the greater good any behavior is justifiable toward that end even when it is unnecessary?

It's a very good question. Human society largely evolved in situations where cooperation was crucial and where defectors - those who didn't take their fair share of societal burden - would be a threat to the survival of the entire society. Societies who just allowed the defectors to continue unchallenged would gradually die out, whilst those which challenged them strongly and disallowed their defection would survive. You can see this effect in the way that chimpanzee justice very much matches human.

Of course, people who silently avoid the obligations society expects of them are bad, however, people who actively encourage other members of the group to defect are a much greater threat to the wellbeing of the society. It's natural that strongest inherrent reactions should be reserved for htem.

Night owls don't stay up late and wake up late because they like to party and are lazy to wake up in the morning. Researchers have found that not everyone's biological clock runs at exactly 24 hours. Those whose clock runs slower (say 25 hours) are night owls - they tend to still be alert after the earth's rotation says they should've gone to sleep, and likewise tend to wake up later because their biological clock put them to sleep later. Those whose clock runs faster (say 23 hours) are morning larks - they tend to wake up earlier because their biological clock put them to sleep more quickly, and likewise they tend to fall asleep earlier in the night.

BTW, studies have shown people's average biological clock (when deprived of reference to day/night cycles) is 24.2 hours to 25 hours. So it's actually the night owls who are normal, and the morning larks who are abnormal.

By the way, when human dieoff's hit 50-90% then decarbonization can occur as nations collapse and return to pre-industrial carbon usage. Could that actually happen. A growing body of research suggests that, with a healthy dose of scienctific controvery, that the century of the little ice age was caused by deaths in the highly populated americas.

https://www.scientificamerican...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

https://phys.org/news/2011-10-...

This is mummification from ancient Egypt all over again, just at a slightly more detailed level.

All this can do is preserve the connections between neurons. But that's not all there is to consciousness. Beyond the connectome, there may be 'software' differences within neurons that contribute to consciousness and learning. This technology does not preserve this -- instead, brain DNA degrades and any complexity present there is lost.

Last year, scientists found a surprising amount of genetic diversity in each individual brain neuron. This year, scientists observed neurons passing genetic material, packaged in a virus-like shell, to neighbouring neurons.

• 2017: Scientists Surprised to Find No Two Neurons Are Genetically Alike
• 2018: Learning Gene Passes between Neurons via Retrovirus-Like Mechanism

Forget what the murderer deserves (and we don't know that they're all murderers) - Torture doesn't work. But it does ruin any chance we have to prosecute the person in question, and give ammunition to terrorist recruiting, and damage our standing with allies and rivals alike. You might be comfortable having no soul, but most Americans are not.

In addition, the AP clip was debunked:

Cell phone recordings of the alleged sonic attack were provided to an Associated Press reporter by an anonymous source in the State Department. But the sounds were identified by Yamile González Sánchez, an official at the Ministry of Public Health, and physicist Carlos Barceló Pérez, a professor at the National Institute of Hygiene, as those made by local insects, which they recorded on the scene. Moreover, the sounds, all in the audible range (about 7 kilohertz), would have overdriven the microphone—preventing it from recording—if they were loud enough to damage hearing.

So Wu was analyzing the sound made by cuban crickets.

[crimeresearch.org]

The "Crime Prevention Research Center" is John Lott's organization and their data has been shown to be complete bunk. For those of you who are not familiar with the name, John Lott is the guy who writes books about how "More Guns = Less Crime". But it turns out that the only statistics that support his thesis are the ones that he generates with his own fabricated data.

https://www.scientificamerican...

See, the problem is you only accept data that you BELIEVE is correct, and ignore all other.

Mirror, mirror, Is LynnwoodRooster talking about himself again? Why, yes, ironically he is.

You're the one who produced a report that you accepted with blind faith and devotion since it suited your agenda.

When has that happened before?

A real scientist, a true skeptic (which is the foundation of science) would look at conflicting data and say "more research needed, we cannot draw conclusions". FAITH would demand you adhere to your position. That is religion...

Yes, you are preaching your religion, but if you were a true believer, you'd follow its tenets, however being a disingenuous fraud and con-artist, you simply use them as a club to attack others, as you consistently have.

For you, it is not a teaching, it is a weapon used for assault. You fling it against any who disagree with you, but never apply the learning to yourself.

Hence, I preach unto you, and say "Physician, heal thyself!" as I call upon you, and your multitude of sins to be cured of what clearly ails you, and thus make right thine own entry into Heaven.

Really, you know your history, you should know you are tainted yourself. You should reflect on your errors and come clean. It'd be less of a farce if you did.

What I don't understand is why so few of these AI systems seem to be aimed at not blinding oncoming drivers with your headlights. You'd think that this would have been a great pilot application for these systems, before trying to make AI do anything fancier or more potentially dangerous.

Yes, there are school shootings and deaths throughout europe just like america.

Oh, hang on!

https://www.theonion.com/no-wa...

"Ever notice the other things people who favour gun rights tend to believe?"

Actually, yes, they tend to be left leaning and OPPOSE all that horeshit you mentioned. But hey, don't let FACTS get in the way of your nonsense.

https://www.scientificamerican...

Gun rights people don't have a greater belief in freedom, they just live in denial of the evidence around them.

So you claim. All I see is an article citing studies to the contrary.

That's because you're willfully ignorant.

The FDA says precisely the same thing about cannabis.

No they do not.

Yes, yes they do. A Schedule I drug is one which is considered to have no medical benefit. You don't even know what the claims are! What makes you think you can make a contribution to the discussion? The FDA backs up the DEA here, and vice versa, so there is no conflict there either.

Even if they did your statement is irrelevant, since this is a scientific article about Kratom not Cannabis.

My statement is relevant because it establishes poor faith on the part of the federal government when it comes to the characterization of chemical compounds, including the FDA. The FDA is an ideal expression of greed and arrogance. Any study which wasn't done precisely by their guidelines is considered to be completely invalid, even if it is superior to a typical FDA-approved study overall. If it was Not Invented Here, then it's "no evidence". That's bunkum.

Keeping dangerous drugs off the street is positive. Keeping bad medical devices out of doctors offices and hospitals is positive. Complaining that congress didn't give the FDA authority or money to invent new drugs is a lame criticism.

Preventing bad things isn't positive, it's just avoiding bad things. The FDA can only smite, it cannot reward nor can it further science, only retard it. I think that's dumb. Since the FDA is being wielded as a weapon by Big Pharma, it's not just stupid but actively harmful.

The federal government does this kind of thing all the time. There always was evidence that milk from cows treated with BGH/rBST is inferior to milk from other cows, for example; it increases udder infections which is known to increase the pus content of milk by a significant percentage. But milk producers who labeled their milk as non-BGH were forced by the USDA to also carry a disclaimer stating that there was no difference between the two, which is an outright lie that they knew was a lie. Essentially the same force is at work here. They know that there is evidence that Kratom has medical benefits, but they are stating otherwise. This is a fraud perpetuated against The People, and you are making yourself a party to it by claiming otherwise.

The accuracy of human's ability to detect fake news can be correllated with cognitive ability. Typically we look at the quality of the writing, formality of the language, citations, past knowledge of author or outlet, past knowledge of named sources and other qualities old fashioned real journalists and editors are well aware of.

So instead of google rank purely by citation, create a Bayesian lie detector. Set the output to True and throw a math or physics textbook at a ML training network. Give it some weather and other verifiable predictions from the past which are verifiable.

Then set it to False and send it excepts from the Enquirer, Star, Onion.

Finally, send it text from trumptwitterarchive and whitehouse.gov and stand out of the way!

Captain Kirk: Everything Harry tells you is a lie. Remember that. Everything Harry tells you is a lie.
Harry Mudd: Listen to this carefully, Norman. I am lying.
Norman the android: You say you are lying, but if everything you say is a lie then you are telling the truth, but you cannot tell the truth because everything you say is a lie. You lie. You tell the truth. But you cannot for. Illogical! Illogical! Please explain. (Smoke comes out of Norman's head.)

There's actually detectable changes in the brain of cabbies who've trained for The Knowledge.

Whatever. I'll listen to the people that ran the numbers.

https://blogs.scientificameric...

http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

Where did you get your numbers from?

If the experience in Egypt is instructive -- and I believe it is -- look for massive looting to begin shortly.

If one wants to help directly with helping reducing CO2 production then donating to solar and wind charities is the best bet. For solar, the best two seem to be Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ (which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters), and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://self.org/ which gets solar panels for people in developing countries. Right now, I haven't seen a specific wind charity that seems to be absolutely ideal, but of those in the US, the best one seems to be the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund.

Most Americans care about and are concerned about climate change https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-americans-want-climate-change-policies/, but right now, the federal government isn't doing much. In the long-run, actually solving this is, as with the ozone hole problem and as with acid rain going to take a combination of government, market forces, charity, and new research. Until the current US administration is removed, the best most of us can do is focus on the charity aspect.

The idea of "clean coal" was either a Bush or an Obama idea depending on how you butter your bread; Definitely Obama was a huge advocate there for a while.

A good pair of links about Obama's schema, one at the start of his administration and a retrospective a couple of years ago:

https://www.scientificamerican...
https://grist.org/climate-ener...

Ferret

Metronomes.

Back when Reefer Madness was put together, common metronomes were mechanical.

So it was difficult to provide a reasonable jazz time signature. Consequently, they had to jail all the non-white people.

Otherwise your daughters might not have marched up to the altar in 4/4 time, y'see?

LOL.
First off, the discission is about Solar Panels, not wind. BUT, since you brought it up. Germany has contributed very little R&D to SOlar OR Wind Turbines.
US and Denmark are the 2 main developers of wind turbines all the way up until 2000
And here we see that America developed not only first solar cell, but also into the production of it starting in 1953 forward.
And even more we see that Germany contributed little to nothing in this realm
Now, I realize that eveybody wants to be proud of their nation, but to claim that Germany had much to do with either wind turbines or solar cells is a joke.
And as an American with real relatives still in Scotland AND Germany, I am happy to see Europe do good things.
BUT, facts are facts. Unlike an idiot over here, I do not believe in Alternative facts.
In terms of money, America has WAY outspent Germany and even Europe on R&D dealing with AE.
Your pointing to wind turbines that have gone up has NOTHING to do with R&D, which is EXACTLY what I spoke of.

And the reason why America lost our manufacturing was due to the SA link that I produced. Basically, China targeted BOTH Germany and America, since they are still in a cold war with the west.

The one good news is that Musk is making America strong again in all of these things.
America is now the #1 developer of EVs, and shortly the #1 manufacturer of EVs.
Likewise, with this tariff, I think that Solar City/Tesla will jump way ahead of Chinese manufacturing, though in Germany, you appear to be giving up the ghost.
And as to an earlier statement about Tesla sending solar panels to China, just because they show a china pix, does not mean that it will happen. China continues to block any and all foreign makers of solar from entering into THEIR nation, though they dump on all others, including Germany and America.

BTW, this is what you SHOULD be reading, not such other BS from 20 years ago
It explains how CHina grabbed manufacturing FROM THE WEST, and how to get it back

Einstein dis which led him to derive E=mc2 which no one else ever did and that was a fundamental difference in how humans viewed the Universe.

I'm sorry you don't understand that Einstein wasn't first to derive E=mc2. The fundamental contribution of Einstein in this area was the full rejection of a preferred frame of reference, not E=mc2 which was previously derived and well known (by Hasenöhrl and Poincare). This is why I mentioned that it is hard to appreciate Einstein's version of E=mc2 without ideas about inertia and radiation.

General Relativity is icing on the cake, the math may be harder but the concept of bent "space-time" is far easy to think about and demonstrate to little children. Again fundamentally changing human understanding of the Universe.

Although you might think you are "demo-ing" bent space-time to children, nearly all demonstrations made to children are mere analogies, which do not effectively demo the principles at all https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.389... http://www.fourmilab.ch/gravit... (IMO no better than a scientific-like "demo" that applies constant force to an object to maintain a constant velocity and thus confusing the student about F=ma because of friction).

So arguably Einstein helped fundamentally change our view of the Universe than any single human before or since. This is why the world knows Einstein and o my a handful know who Lorentz and Hilbert were.

Certainly Einstein helped to change our view of the universe, but the reason *why* Poincare, Lorenz and Hilbert are less known to the masses is that they weren't as good at PR as Einstein.

At one point, virtually all scientists believed you could create gold from iron, too. So, since almost all scientists believed such was the case, I guess it's true, isn't it?

You can create gold from iron in a particle accelerator.

That being said, I agree that consensus-based non-falsifiable "science" isn't science.

Sugarcane, see Brazil

Sugarcane is more efficient than corn, but the US doesn't have much land suitable for growing sugarcane that can't be more profitable with another use. I'm talking as someone who grew up in Hawaii.

Switchgrass is more efficient than corn. The problem is that the corn industry, including the seed companies, has too much lobbying power to make the change to another crop.

https://www.scientificamerican...

https://www.scientificamerican...

There is research being done on that front as well. For instance, they've discovered that adding a portion of red seaweed to a cow's diet will reduce it's methane production. https://foodtank.com/news/2017...
There's are also the attempts to replace large scale animal raising entirely by using grown meat instead of raising animals for slaughter. https://blogs.scientificameric...

Another common source of methane iirc is leaks from fracking for natural gas. But, if we eliminate our need for natural gas then that source of methane will become a non-issue as well.

Another tech in the works extracts CO2 from the air and compresses it into stone. https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

Sadly, these advances won't halt the release of methane trapped in the polar ice and permafrost as it melts. The only way to counter that is to halt any further melting, which probably isn't possible at this point. But if we push to move away from burning fossil fuels as quickly as we can, we'll be worse off in the long term. Renewable energy sources wouldn't have gotten to the point they are at today as quickly if there wasn't as much of a push to develop and advance them.

If it's -13F, it is very unlikely to be snowing. Source

So well researched and reasoned that the authors of the two papers he relies on the most have publicly stated that he didn't understand them, and that his conclusions are wrong.

The basic mistake he makes repeatedly is to assume that the variations the papers discuss have vastly more effect and influence than they actually do.

He didn't assume the magnitude and influence of the effect. The difference has been measured for decades in observed data over thousands of studies. If those opposed to Damore could only find two paper authors on the topic who disagreed with him, then that sounds like a pretty strong validation of his claims, not a rebuttal. Heck, I could throw a rock blindfolded and hit two climate change denying studies.

Why is stating that women have a higher rate of neurosis a fireable offense. But stating that men have a higher rate of schizophrenia is not?

The problem Damore's case shows us is that too many people are judging the merits of these statements based on which group they portray in a negative light. Not upon the objective validity of the statement. If you wanted to counter Damore's statements on neurosis and gender, the logical (quickest and easiest) way to do it would be as I've done above - showing that there are other psychological gender differences which work against men biologically dominating an occupation. Then you can claim that perhaps these effects cancel out so a 50/50 gender distribution really should be expected.

But that's not what Damore's opponents do. They instead try to debunk measurable, objective data that's well-established science. They cannot stand to hear anything negative said about a group they care for (i.e. non-white, non-male, non-conservative, non-religious). So their gut instinct is that the statement that neurosis is more common among women "must be" wrong, and they conclude disproving it will be the quickest route to disproving him.