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It's the Scientific American so it's sciency rather than pure science but https://blogs.scientificameric... maybe what you're looking for

I've read about this role for the appendix for at least 5 years? At LEAST.

Here's an early article I found on the subject https://blogs.scientificameric... - and if SciAm had it in 2012, it had to be relatively established information, they're not anywhere near cutting-edge reportage.

And here's a Discover magazine thing saying the same thing in 2008: http://discovermagazine.com/20...

Ever wonder why people are skeptical of claims like this?

Because the fossil fuel industry funds media campaigns to discredit sound, reliable climate science? (Please see: http://www.merchantsofdoubt.or...)

Even their own climate science that they were doing in the 1970s? (Please see: https://www.scientificamerican...)

Coal IS a renewable fuel...given a couple million years or so. :)

Actually, it is NOT renewable. About 360 million years ago, plants figured out how to make lignin. But it wasn't until about 300 million years ago that fungi figured out how to digest it. The intervening 60 million years was when most coal formed, as undigested plant matter piled up. Unless we wipe out all the fungi, large scale coal formation is unlikely to recur. It was a one-time thing.

Well then, we just need to genetically engineer a plant to produce lignin2.

Coal IS a renewable fuel...given a couple million years or so. :)

Actually, it is NOT renewable. About 360 million years ago, plants figured out how to make lignin. But it wasn't until about 300 million years ago that fungi figured out how to digest it. The intervening 60 million years was when most coal formed, as undigested plant matter piled up. Unless we wipe out all the fungi, large scale coal formation is unlikely to recur. It was a one-time thing.

"you are a member of the race of which the community and culture accepts you as a member"

And that is the real definition of race. Lots of people think race is genetic, but the one group that has near unanimous agreement that race is not genetic are actual geneticists. For example, Dr Craig Venter (founder of the Human Genome Project) says, "Race is a social concept, not a scientific one. We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world."

Turns out there is more genetic diversity within commonly defined racial groups than there is between them. An illustration of this fact:

In one example that demonstrated genetic differences were not fixed along racial lines, the full genomes of James Watson and Craig Venter, two famous American scientists of European ancestry, were compared to that of a Korean scientist, Seong-Jin Kim. It turned out that Watson (who, ironically, became ostracized in the scientific community after making racist remarks) and Venter shared fewer variations in their genetic sequences than they each shared with Kim.
Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue

Another example is that it was only within the last 130 years or so that italians, germans, french, irish and even swedes were considered "white." Here's Ben Franklin expressing the commonly held beliefs of his time:

the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.
Benjamin Franklin, "Observations Concerning the Increasing of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c." (Boston: Printed by S. Kneeland, 1755)

Oh, I looked at your "damning" links - and not one of them cited a relevant or useful study. What I saw instead was a lot of "here's a graph, here's another graph - they're different in a way I don't like - therefore, it must be deliberately faked". No attempt was made to find out why the data was adjusted, no evidence that the adjustments made readings less accurate instead of more, and no challenge to the peer-reviewed methodology of the corrections. Instead they leaped immediately to the conclusion that it was a hoax and a conspiracy - just as you are. No contrary evidence of your own, no studies, no science, just "I don't like the results so that science must have been faked". That's the very soul of denial.

Why just the 1970s? If they go further back, it disproves what they're trying to indoctrinate you with. They'd have you believe that bad storms never happened before. Hogg wash. In fact HOGG Island, NYC.

If you bothered to read the paper you'd see the data they present goes back to 1930, and only the recent increase in intensity starts in the 70s. And maybe you'd care to explain how a single storm from 1893 somehow disproves a peer-reviewed statistical analysis about storms getting stronger a hundred years later?

Likewise, please explain where the original "cold snap" study claims that Greenland before 1300 was "MUCH warmer" than today. Please explain how ice cores from two lakes in Greenland somehow mean that the average temperatures for the entire globe were warmer at that time, when no reconstruction places them anywhere close to modern levels. You think the Medieval Warm and Little Ice Age periods are unknown to climatologists? But you're already convinced it's all a scam, despite the evidence directly contradicting your claims.

As for the fuel companies, do you really think that? You think that they won't adapt?

You really think they'll happily wave goodbye to trillions of dollars without a care in the world? You're quite wrong. They'll adapt if they're forced to, but you can be certain they'll do whatever they can to exploit the reserves they have first - there's plenty of evidence of them spending hundreds of millions to confuse and delay the issue as long as they can - just like the tobacco companies did.

Instead, you're harping on about Al Gore - who's not even a scientist. Nobody cares what he says - we care what the climatologists say. They saw the problem long before Gore made a movie, and why would they care if he made money from it? Is Gore paying climatologists to falsify evidence? The ones doing that are the oil companies. Frankly, your efforts to claim that Gore somehow orchestrated the whole thing to make a buck are laughable in the face of the evidence - all the more so when you're so keen to ignore the FAR bigger amounts being made by those who benefit from ignoring it.

Oh, I looked at your "damning" links - and not one of them cited a relevant or useful study. What I saw instead was a lot of "here's a graph, here's another graph - they're different in a way I don't like - therefore, it must be deliberately faked". No attempt was made to find out why the data was adjusted, no evidence that the adjustments made readings less accurate instead of more, and no challenge to the peer-reviewed methodology of the corrections. Instead they leaped immediately to the conclusion that it was a hoax and a conspiracy - just as you are. No contrary evidence of your own, no studies, no science, just "I don't like the results so that science must have been faked". That's the very soul of denial.

Why just the 1970s? If they go further back, it disproves what they're trying to indoctrinate you with. They'd have you believe that bad storms never happened before. Hogg wash. In fact HOGG Island, NYC.

If you bothered to read the paper you'd see the data they present goes back to 1930, and only the recent increase in intensity starts in the 70s. And maybe you'd care to explain how a single storm from 1893 somehow disproves a peer-reviewed statistical analysis about storms getting stronger a hundred years later?

Likewise, please explain where the original "cold snap" study claims that Greenland before 1300 was "MUCH warmer" than today. Please explain how ice cores from two lakes in Greenland somehow mean that the average temperatures for the entire globe were warmer at that time, when no reconstruction places them anywhere close to modern levels. You think the Medieval Warm and Little Ice Age periods are unknown to climatologists? But you're already convinced it's all a scam, despite the evidence directly contradicting your claims.

As for the fuel companies, do you really think that? You think that they won't adapt?

You really think they'll happily wave goodbye to trillions of dollars without a care in the world? You're quite wrong. They'll adapt if they're forced to, but you can be certain they'll do whatever they can to exploit the reserves they have first - there's plenty of evidence of them spending hundreds of millions to confuse and delay the issue as long as they can - just like the tobacco companies did.

Instead, you're harping on about Al Gore - who's not even a scientist. Nobody cares what he says - we care what the climatologists say. They saw the problem long before Gore made a movie, and why would they care if he made money from it? Is Gore paying climatologists to falsify evidence? The ones doing that are the oil companies. Frankly, your efforts to claim that Gore somehow orchestrated the whole thing to make a buck are laughable in the face of the evidence - all the more so when you're so keen to ignore the FAR bigger amounts being made by those who benefit from ignoring it.

China knows about real costs, and they are building new coal plants at about 1 a week. Coal trumps solar. Simples.

That's mostly to replace older coal plants that are being retired. China's overall coal use has been dropping for the last few years. It went down 2.9% in 2014, and then 3.7% in 2015. Meanwhile, they've come the world's largest producer of solar energy, and the fraction of their electricity coming from renewables is going up fast.

I don't find it valuable enough to be able to watch Netflix anywhere on any device to pay a premium price.

As TFA says, these are fixed wireless installs. This technology is not actually relevant to Netflix "anywhere" unless you define "anywhere" as in or near your house or automobile; as TFA also points out, both Verizon and AT&T's projects are going to use millimeter-wave. These frequencies do not penetrate walls well, so they are really useful only for two purposes: fixed installs, and vehicle installs. Even vehicle installs with 5G will be of questionable value in cities as you drive in and out of radio shadows, but it's possible that with enough microcells, you could provide adequate coverage there as well.

Lke Trump?

Look for the president-elect to pick a new FCC chairman, limit online privacy protections and stem the flow of tech talent from other countries.

Story 1

This article says nothing about the Gulf coast being hit by 3, 4, maybe over half a dozen hurricanes per year. Just that as there is a observable and measurable correlation between oceans warming and hurricanes growing more frequent and severe.

Story 2

This article mostly talks about the fact that hurricanes may become more intense and that a category 6 will eventually have to be created if that happens because hurricanes with windspeed ranging from 257.5 kph to 407 kph are being lumped together into category 5. It goes on to speculate that dumping the category system might be a better idea than creating a category 6. Towards the end it even says: This oscillation means the Atlantic is expected to cool in the future, obscuring links among hurricane activity and global warming. Perhaps counterintuitively, recent computer modeling studies predict fewer tropical cyclones if the ocean heats up further as a result of global warming. But they also predict intensification of the ones that do form, albeit with limited confidence. Frequency drops by 6 to 34 percent this century, according to 2010 review article in Nature Geoscience, whereas intensity rises 2 to 11 percent. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) , i.e. fewer hurricanes but the ones we'll get will be more severe. Nothing about the Gulf coast being hit by 3, 4, maybe over half a dozen hurricanes per year.

Story 3

The independent isn't really a scientific source but all this piece says is that somebody found evidence that warmer oceans seem to be linked to an increase in hurricane frequency and that in a warm year hurricanes are twice as likely as in a cold year. The real news here is that somebody found a way to extract data about hurricanes from old measurements made before the satellite age. They say nothing about the Gulf coast being hit by 3, 4, maybe over half a dozen hurricanes per year.

Story 4

Still nothing about the Gulf coast being hit by 3, 4, maybe over half a dozen hurricanes per year. It does talk about more hurricanes but the frequency is nothing like you claim: ”If this trend continues, it is realistic to expect a ten-fold increase in hurricanes like Katrina. That amounts to once every two years,”

Story 5

And yet again nothing about the Gulf coast being hit by 3, 4, maybe over half a dozen hurricanes per year. This guy talks about improvements in computer modelling since 2005 and seems to be making the case that global hurricane frequency will not increase but that the severity of the hurricanes we do get will increase. I.e. about the same number of hurricanes but they'll be more destructive.

Yea, you did a search.

Found all these in less than 1 minute, and everyone voted you up because they want you to be right, but obviously you are not. I like the one claiming Category 6 hurricanes will be hitting any day now.

Bonus speech by Al Gore saying the same thing.

Read that long winded piece and it is mostly a regurgitation of d

Story 1
Story 2
Story 3
Story 4
Story 5

Yea, you did a search. Found all these in less than 1 minute, and everyone voted you up because they want you to be right, but obviously you are not. I like the one claiming Category 6 hurricanes will be hitting any day now.

Bonus speech by Al Gore saying the same thing.

To get a picture of what I'm talking about, you can look at some extreme examples of radically different mental ability.

Blind people, through necessity, can develop mental abilities that seem superhuman like echolocation and rapid aural comprehension, being born blind doesn't seem to be a factor but losing your sight whilst still young is, which is in line with Neuroplasticity. Naturally this is in response to some kind of trauma that renders part of the brain useless without anything to do, and so it rewires itself.

So if the brain can drastically rewire itself in response to trauma, how does it follow that 'general intelligence' is somehow hardwired? So what makes some people 'smarter' than others anyway? You can handwave that away with genetics all you like but it seems likely that our education systems are doing a poor job.

Through standardised testing its fairly common knowledge that the Chinese score much higher on PISA maths tests than Americans do, is that because the Chinese are genetically superior to americans? or do they have a better way of teaching maths so it makes sense to a broader spectrum of the population? A little closer to home, the Canadians score higher as well.

FWIW, I'm a linguist (more in computational linguistics these days, but reasonably well based in several theories of linguistics). So I read his two articles about Chomsky. I can't speak to the other articles, but his articles on Chomsky make a lot of sense, and seem accurate enough.

I'm not qualified to pass judgment on most of his other articles (and I've only read a handful), but his article about the consciousness problem seems reasonable: https://blogs.scientificameric...

So I'm not sure it's justifiable to call him a kook.

This piece is written by a kook who frequently writes on various "spiritual" and pseudoscientific topics. Among his recent posts:

Seeing the Miracle of Existence in the Darkest of Times
Does Evolution Have a "Higher Purpose"?
Astrophysicist Says Experiments Might Soon Reveal Dark Matter's "True Nature"
What Would a Machine as Smart as God Want?
My Doubts about Deepak Chopra and the Monetization of Meditation
World's Smartest Physicist Thinks Science Can't Crack Consciousness
The Mind–Body Problem, Scientific Regress and "Woo"
Dear "Skeptics," Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More

True to form, this article's point is a passive-agressive claim based on absence of evidence:
"Like most psychiatrists, Higgins does not consider the possibility that medications might be contributing to the decline of mental health."

Actually, I'm sure most psychiatrists HAVE considered this possibility, and they follow the peer-reviewed evidence which concludes the opposite.

If anyone wants to argue with this scientific consensus, they are welcome to do their own peer-reviewed studies. But this article and its sources haven't.

Ain't gonna happen unless you drug the water supply.

The water supply is already drugged, as most waste treatment plants don't remove dissolved drugs from the water supply.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-half-of-drugs-removed-by-sewage-treatment/

By and large, waste treatment effluent does not go into the potable water supply.

Ain't gonna happen unless you drug the water supply.

The water supply is already drugged, as most waste treatment plants don't remove dissolved drugs from the water supply.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-half-of-drugs-removed-by-sewage-treatment/

This.

Recall the discovery of the Higgs boson?

Cern is THE gathering place for a major scientific population and supporting roles for related workers.

That could have been the USA.

Trump is déjà vu all over again.

In all, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010.

Is it any wonder there are so many AC trolls and shills that are AGW deniers?

Oh, and I think at this juncture useful to remind this AC that those aforementioned oil companies knew about AGW forty years ago.

Yes and I remember US Pres. Carter trying to bring the issue to the forefront, he even installed solar panels on the White House which Regan ripped down as soon as he took office. Pres. Carter stated we need to start to address it now before it gets too expensive.

Maybe something will be done when most of Florida is under water. Some very young people here may even see that start to happen and people will still be voting for deniers. Well, when Florida 1/3 it's size maybe that will solve the issue of electing the people we do in this nation.

Ah yes, some oil company-funded think tanks and a couple of climatologists who have never published any of their AGW-crushing research must be speaking the truth, whereas the overwhelming majority of experts in the field are faking it.

Oh, and I think at this juncture useful to remind this AC that those aforementioned oil companies knew about AGW forty years ago.

As opposed to the current way research dollars are handed out?

Given two studies, one that says "OMG!!! We might be headed for a disaster!" and "Nah, it's no big deal.", which researcher gets the follow-on money?

If you're going to reflexively attack one side of the funding coin, you'd be an utter hypocrite to ignore the other side.

Ah yes, some oil company-funded think tanks and a couple of climatologists who have never published any of their AGW-crushing research must be speaking the truth, whereas the overwhelming majority of experts in the field are faking it.

Oh, and I think at this juncture useful to remind this AC that those aforementioned oil companies knew about AGW forty years ago.

Yes, drinking too much water can kill.

https://www.scientificamerican...

You are quite right Most people who have drowned will agree with that.

The problem is that too little water can also kill and I am sure many people who have died of thirst can attest to that also.

Of course drinking unclean water can also have a disastrous effect on your health as well and if that didn't kill you, you would most likely wish you were dead anyway.

Yes, drinking too much water can kill.

https://www.scientificamerican...

Another conclusion is that we shouldn't make all that much out of small functional MRI studies done by random researchers since they're hard to do correctly.

Of course, we could also use a dead fish as a control.

Just to add a bit more in-depth analysis and information. I'm not a chemist, but I was trying to find once if the "Crystalline entity" was at all feasible in nature, and I found an absolutely fascinating article from Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican... Basically, the answer is no, silicon would have a very very hard time being the basis for life. For one thing, carbon (which is used for storing energy in carbohydrate chains) oxidizes to CO2 and water, and silicon oxidizes to a solid, which clogs up the system. For two, something about handedness that I didn't really understand. Maybe you'll make more sense of it than I could.

The biggest use of corn in the US isn't for livestock feed, instead it's used to make ethanol for the tree huggers. Maybe that will stop when all the trees are dead.

The Earth may be warming, but we should take any claimed models or predicted outcomes with a HUGE block of salt, especially since climate scientists claimed that higher temperatures lead to more tornadoes and other extreme weather events. The facts show that the trend for tornadoes and hurricanes are both falling...

So you're claiming that something so easy to understand can only be understood by those who study it which means that everything you've said is complete an utter horse shit.

No, that's not what I'm claiming you idiot. The greenhouse effect simply means that certain gases such as Co2 and methane bounce back k heat and thus warm the atmosphere, which can and has been easily proved in a laboratory setting. This effect is not in dispute among scientists.

Oh, so do these lab test also account for CMEs and cosmic radiation both of which are well known for quake activity and cloud seeding rates?

Yes.

Many climate scientists agree that sunspots and solar wind could be playing a role in climate change, but the vast majority view it as very minimal and attribute Earthâ(TM)s warming primarily to emissions from industrial activityâ"and they have thousands of peer-reviewed studies available to back up that claim.

Peter Foukal of the Massachusetts-based firm Heliophysics, Inc., who has tracked sunspot intensities from different spots around the globe dating back four centuries, also concludes that such solar disturbances have little or no impact on global warming. Nevertheless, he adds, most up-to-date climate modelsâ"including those used by the United Nationsâ(TM) prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)â"incorporate the effects of the sunâ(TM)s variable degree of brightness in their overall calculations.

Ironically, the only way to really find out if phenomena like sunspots and solar wind are playing a larger role in climate change than most scientists now believe would be to significantly reduce our carbon emissions. Only in the absence of that potential driver will researchers be able to tell for sure how much impact natural influences have on the Earthâ(TM)s climate.

Based on what?

Based on the simple fact that it's the most prevalent greenhouse has in the atmosphere and thus has the most effect in the heat retaining capability of the atmosphere.

So you're saying if the Sun vanished tomorrow that the CAGW hypothisis would be unaffected?

No you idiot, I never said that the original source of the heat is not the sun and neither did the scientists. The greenhouse effect works by binding/bouncing back heat from the sun thus warming the Earth. No-one's disputing that the heat itself is coming from the sun, the whole point of global warming is that dumping more greenhouse gases such as CO2 into the atmosphere means it will retain more of the heat provided by the sun thus affecting the climate.

So the sun warms the Earth, and increasing the amount of greenhouse gases increases the rate of warming. There's nothing controversial or disputable about this, it's quite simple science.

Where has rain fall or droughts increased?

More heat --> more energy in the atmosphere --> more rains and storms. This logic is not disputed among climatologists.

Oh like what?

Increased foliage in places like deserts and arctic tundras?

No, like such increased rainfall that crops will not grow where they now do. Too much rain will prevent normal food crops from growing, while places close to the equator will get so warm that nothing will grow there,

However, increased warming has ALWAYS 'triggered' the mass emergence of life.

Yes, but that warming has usually occurred over several centuries and millenia. The problem is that the warming being caused by man is happening at a much faster rate t6han any natural cycles that plant/animal life does not have the time to a

The Preamble of the Constitution clearly specifies the purpose of the document. How can anyone who works at some cross-purpose be considered a defender of the Constitution?
Regarding evidence, Follow The Money. See who has been supporting the deniers of AGW --and note that the magnitude of the donations absolutely indicates rich donors, not poor donors.
Finally, I did not specify any "high cost mitigation approach" in my prior post. While it is supposedly widely known that while the first step to solving a problem is to recognize the problem exists, my other post only talked about denial and ignorance, regarding AGW. But here's how I would choose to deal with it: I'd promote nuclear fusion research. Knowledge is power, and the sooner we have that knowledge, the sooner we will have the associated power!

Yep https://www.scientificamerican...

This is reminding me of how marijuana was outlawed.

"I am an economist."

Not trying to be insulting, but... the odds of you being right are about the same as a coin flip...

https://www.scientificamerican...
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/21...
http://www.governing.com/topic...

Also a meaningless term for a photon, as a photon's life span is instantaneous or infinite, never anything in-between. Any "while" only affects the surroundings, not the photon itself.

I am trying to understand, but could use some help. I understand that a single photon can contain a 2D image after passing though a very small stencil. link But that would imply a time when the photon was not shaped by the stencil, and a later time when it was. Are you saying the photon was initially shaped like the stencil when it was generated, even though it hasn't passed through the stencil yet?

Think big! These countries have much less people than the others

But if my entire development team speaks only English, how are users in countries where English is not a common first or even second language expected to be able to understand text in the application? And even if I exclude all Five Eyes countries and instead sell to users in those countries, I'm still liable because I live on the soil of a software patent country and hold no other country's work visa.

an acquaintance of mine went to Ireland to work for MS

Unlike a micro-ISV, Microsoft is large enough to negotiate the bureaucracy of sponsoring a work visa.

alternate between editing and previewing (preferably easily like with Alt+Tab or clicking on a single icon).

In the past, alternating between a maximized editor window and a maximized output window has proven very distracting for me, in part because of the digital analog of the doorway amnesia phenomenon. I thought PC users left the "all maximized all the time" paradigm behind back when they switched from MS-DOS to Windows or from Linux with text console to Linux with XFree86.

Also, just saw a link about multiwindow support in the upcoming Android 7:

I addressed that.

A more serious problem is how to interact with such small images -- even in tablets: you cannot just select with your finger, you'll have to get some sort of BT mouse.

A 7" tablet is big enough for two phone-sized apps, a 10" for four, without any change in the size of touch targets. The problem is the assumption baked into Android 3 through 6 that an application's window size will not change after installation, other than through interchange of horizontal and vertical dimension.

Well, if you want multiwindow for your line of work, such hurdles can be overcome -- by simply buying one modern smart phone

Is there anything that supports it other than a Pixel phone on a Verizon post-paid contract? (The Pixel is premium-priced and exclusive to Verizon in the United States, and I hold no work visa for any other country.)

And to develop for Android, the go-to platform is Linux which I already use

Again, the discontinuation of 10" laptops.

http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/

From the article: "Nexus 10" These are also discontinued.

From the article: "JuiceSSH SSH client to access my remote Linux server". But because buses in my home town do not provide Wi-Fi, JuiceSSH won't work while on the bus unless I buy a data plan with a tethering rider.

From the article: "For offline development I have an installation of Terminal IDE that allows me to run Linux utilities like vim and git locally." But from the Google Play Store page:

** INCOMPATIBLE WITH ANDROID 5.0 LOLLIPOP AND VERSIONS PAST THAT **

** ONLY USE WiTH ANDROID 4.4 OR BELOW.. **

** ( Sorry - but new PIE restrictions break everything in later versions ) **

Thanks for reminding us of the heavy financial motivations for pro-AGW climate research! I agree, it is indeed sinful.

Um, facepalm. Just facepalm.

Climate-change scientists are not living large. But the well-heeled supporters of the denialist movement certainly are.

Did you add in the price for Apple's touch screen and digitizer? No? Oh, right - they don't have one.

Do you really think that Apple, as one of the leaders in touchscreen technology, hasn't experimented extensively with a touchscreen iMac?

There are fundamental problems with the concept when it comes to desktop and laptop use. Believe me, we wish it wasn't true, but our repeated and lengthy testing has clearly shown that it is.

That's why Apple makes both purpose-built Touch-Driven Tablets and Smartphones, with a purpose-built Touch-based OS, and mouse and trackpad-driven Desktop and Laptop computers, with a more conventional, non-touch-based OS.

But if you really want to add touch to an iMac, you can easily do so for only $200.

Israel has been doing an excellent job of it. And India has more landmass directly adjacent to the ocean.

https://www.scientificamerican...

We've pretty much already dammed every river that's capable of generating reasonable amounts of hydro power, and coal produces more radioactive waste than nuclear reactors: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/.

...imagine if we could have covered that land with solar cells instead of a lake

Yeah, imagine a huge swath of land with no purpose other than being covered with solar cells that have to be kept clean and maintained. A chunk of land nobody can be allowed to enter, no trees or animals can be allowed to inhabit.. just imagine it all.

The reservoir is the key side benefit of hydro, in that it creates recreation areas, fish habitat and flood control. None of which solar would provide.

https://www.scientificamerican...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
http://naturalsociety.com/huma...

My first thought was revulsion: people don't want to be treated like children. They will start bringing decoy phones or even box cutters.

Then I saw that they're also being marketed toward schools. Treating children like children makes more sense.

Also, it's better that we have technology like this instead of denial features getting baked into the phones (as has been proposed in the past) by law or by corporate collusion.

Nutrient levels in vegetables are down sharply since the 1930s and even down since the 1980s.

https://www.scientificamerican...

A landmark study on the topic by Donald Davis and his team of researchers from the University of Texas (UT) at Austinâ(TM)s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was published in December 2004 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. They studied U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional data from both 1950 and 1999 for 43 different vegetables and fruits, finding âoereliable declinesâ in the amount of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C over the past half century. Davis and his colleagues chalk up this declining nutritional content to the preponderance of agricultural practices designed to improve traits (size, growth rate, pest resistance) other than nutrition.

âoeEfforts to breed new varieties of crops that provide greater yield, pest resistance and climate adaptability have allowed crops to grow bigger and more rapidly,â reported Davis, âoebut their ability to manufacture or uptake nutrients has not kept pace with their rapid growth.â There have likely been declines in other nutrients, too, he said, such as magnesium, zinc and vitamins B-6 and E, but they were not studied in 1950 and more research is needed to find out how much less we are getting of these key vitamins and minerals.

The big problem is that every calorie of food requires the input of 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy, mainly from oil and gas, which will be running out within your lifetime.

Well, people have been producing calories far longer than they have been using fossil fuels to do it. But a return to those methods may not be very compatible with the modern Agribusiness/GMO complex.

At least all those overweight people will finally be able to use up the reserves...

The big problem is that every calorie of food requires the input of 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy, mainly from oil and gas, which will be running out within your lifetime.

The Humongous Fungus is the largest organism on Earth

So does high fructose corn syrup, but there is no call to make it a Schedule I substance, nor an entire heavily-armed industry built around it's eradication..

just wish there were some way to genetically modify a plant that could suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into oxygen or something else harmless.

That could work, except you'd have to convince the energy industry not to kill the motherfucking plant so it can drill and frack.

https://www.scientificamerican...

You don't have to believe, you just have to draw eyes on the wall...

Wired
New Scientist
Scientific American

Where do you get fear-mongering about ruining all arable land?

All over the place...

"severe crop failures and livestock shortages worldwide."
- http://www.livescience.com/370...

"average yields are predicted to decrease by 30â"46% before the end of the century under the slowest (B1) warming scenario and decrease by 63â"82% under the most rapid warming scenario"
- http://www.pnas.org/content/10...

"most of the Western Hemisphere (along with large parts of Eurasia, Africa, and Australia) may be at threat of extreme drought this century."
- http://www.skepticalscience.co...

"25 million more children will be malnourished in 2050 due to the impact of climate change on global agriculture."
"irrigated wheat yields, for example, will fall at least 20 percent by 2050 as a result of global warming"
"business as usual will guarantee disastrous consequences for the human race."
- http://www.scientificamerican....

"Decreased arability. Prime growing temperatures may shift to higher latitudes, where soil and nutrients may not be as suitable for producing crops, leaving lower-latitude areas less productive."
- http://www.climatehotmap.org/g...

It isn't from the scientists.

That sounds an awful lot like "No True Scotsman" to me...

Nothing says you have to dump that CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 has various uses in industry, or can give a slight growth boost to greenhouses.

In fact, you could use the CO2 from making cement to make cement.