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Amazon has been in bed with the devil for a couple of years now. Nearly everything I order comes by USPS - the slowest, least reliable delivery service on Earth.

This is in direct opposition to my experience.

The Post Office doesn't seem to understand that this is their last best chance to stay relevant and possibly get out of the red. Nope, they're sticking to their old ways - yesterday's technology delivering your packages tomorrow (or next week).

Huh? Oh I see - your experience of their service is essentially filtered by your dogma (that the post office as part of the "government" is not hip enough). Keep in mind, that the USPS as a private entity that's highly controlled by Congressional edicts and orders (like this one mandating that they essentially have to run in debt to pay retirements for employees not even hired yet [1]. If you have an issue with USPS maybe you should take it up with your representative.

Another thing you have to keep in mind, is that the USPS actually fulfills a lot of orders for UPS/FedEx - UPS/Fedex simply can't compete with the USPS for hard-to-reach areas, whereas the USPS has mandates to do so, and so has found a way to do it. [2]

[1] http://thinkprogress.org/econo...
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...

Now what the attacks on Paris has to do with this, I'm at a complete loss to understand.

This whole subthread started, when it was implied, that the West in general — and the US in particular — aren't any better than ISIS and is equally outrage-worthy. This incident was offered as proof of that.

My point is, it proves the opposite. We are better, because the "collateral murder" incident is clearly an outrage to most of us — with Pentagon trying to hide it — while the Paris murders are something, the enemy is proud of and publicizes it as much as they can.

You broke the country, you bought it. Get your lazy arses back in there and finish the job.

The cooler heads here didn't want to leave Iraq so early, but we are saddled with a President — whom you awarded with a Nobel Peace Prize (a stupid act, which progressives still would not acknowledge as a mistake) — who does not think, there is true evil in the world... Or, if there is, it is his own country. You can blame us for electing him, but his victory was not without your help. Twice.

Well, first of all, you would have us believe the same about the scientists funded by ExxonMobil. Koch brothers, et cætera. Why is suspicion more believable about the corporation-funded folks, than about the government-funded ones?

The corporation-hired folks are paid to write a paper (called a deliverable) with arguments supporting the theory of their sponsors, while government scientists are paid to do research regardless of the result, much to the annoyance of various politicians.

But the way the system is set up, the would-be "rebels" get screened-out long before making a name for themselves — if you argue in your papers, that AGW is insignificant and a misplaced concern, what are the chances of making it into a grad-school today?

As good as any one else's, unless their denying AGW is an indicator of their prowess in science.

Most people would go into sincere denial.

So you think thousands of scientists can produce bogus results without ever having an inkling that their results are wrong. So they all read their instruments incorrectly, get their math wrong, and still they all get the same results, and still none of them notices anyone else's errors despite the reviews. You call that believable?

But the way the system is set up, the would-be "rebels" get screened-out long before making a name for themselves

So on one side we have plenty of proof that a few dozens of scientists are being paid to deny or minimize AGW; and on the other we have thousands of scientists producing lies supporting AGW but we have not a single shred of evidence that anyone is pushing them to lie. And according to you that's because the selection and formatting process is so efficient that out of thousands of scientists none of them got depressed to the point where he would publicize their frustration with the system. And none of them rebelled either? And the exact same phenomenon worked across 120 countries with different cultures and opposing interests. And you really claim with a straight face that your conspiracy theory is the more plausible one? Just, wow!

A seasoned and established tenure-professor might be able to get away with it, but not scratch-free.

So Lindzen is your best example of a scientist being unfairly persecuted by the AGW crowd? The Lindzen who, from your own article, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC. And you were the one who talking about conflicts of interests was asking people to recuse themselves! And instead of asking for Lindzen to recuse himself you try to pass him off as a martyr?

Not doing so would be failing to take into account the existence of all the groups funded by ExxonMobil, the Koch foundations and others

See? I think, you got the idea... Great!

So you would have us believe that the thousands of scientists [...] are all corrupt and not one of them spilled the beans

Well, first of all, you would have us believe the same about the scientists funded by ExxonMobil. Koch brothers, et cætera. Why is suspicion more believable about the corporation-funded folks, than about the government-funded ones?

No, I don't think, they are all lying through their teeth. But flat-out stating: "we are wasting time and money," is very difficult even for a reasonably honest person, for it would mean admitting picking a wrong career and wasting years of one's youth. Most people would go into sincere denial. But the way the system is set up, the would-be "rebels" get screened-out long before making a name for themselves — if you argue in your papers, that AGW is insignificant and a misplaced concern, what are the chances of making it into a grad-school today? A seasoned and established tenure-professor might be able to get away with it, but not scratch-free.

I do not doubt, that you share the concerns over the fabled "Military-Industrial Complex"

What will you accuse me of next?

"Accuse"? Not being concerned over Military-Industrial Complex is a folly — that concern is real and existed since WWI! That was not an accusation... What was an accusation is that you deny the similar conflict of interest inherent in the AGW research — but you do deny it, this whole sub-thread is about that.

Yeah, I mean, Ben Carson, who is not only a medical doctor but has conducted extensive scientific medical research, is being lynched for not acting the way that liberal white people on CNN have decided a black man should act.

Oh, wait, you don't think he counts because there's an "R" next to his name, which makes racism OK.

Ben Carson is an amazingly intelligent and successful man. Yet he has come up with the most spectacularly bone-headed statements since he entered political life.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

http://thinkprogress.org/polit...

The step that you and many others who share a similar opinion miss is that in general, the police don't waste their time pulling someone over without some form of probable cause.

I guess that's why we have so many non-violating stop and search court cases?

For drunk driving accusations, this falls into one of two dominant scenarios: 1) it's about 3AM and all the bars closed down for the morning; 2) the driver was driving recklessly. Even if it is 3AM, if you do not show any signs of impairment when the officer comes to talk to you, they probably won't waste their time with a field sobriety test.

Note that at 3am, hopped up cops are more than happy to pull over anyone, for any reason. They are bored, and arresting anyone, even under false pretenses, means they get to do something other than just being bored.

they've either gotten stuck with a cop who's had a bad day and will look for any slight excuse to fine or arrest someone

Yep, and that means arresting you whether you're guilty or not, just because you were out, oh, and they have an "unofficial" quota to meet.

First of all, autonomous cars, lets just call them "automobiles" (harhar) needn't drive perfect to be fully autonomous.
They only need to drive better than humans.
And - Newsflash! - they already do that!

And even just right now I'd trust a google car way more than I'd trust at least 20% of human dimwits at the wheel today.
Testing phase or not.
And that's in Germany, where driving training is a very big deal, takes long and is very expensive and elaborate.
And behaviour in traffic is compareatively civil.

Second of all, TFA says: "Yet as Mindell also observes, there are many challenges to the Google model: Its cars must identify all nearby objects correctly, need perfectly updated mapping systems, and must avoid all software glitches."

Well, no shit, dude.

"Avoid all software glitches" is called "testing" and/or "test driven development" and/or "design by contract" and/or "correct error handling". Like, for instance, warning the driver ... errrm, passenger, when there's a severe problem and they need to stop and he/she needs to get out... It's basically non-douchebag software guys doing the sort of thing any regular respectable engineer would do when designing a bridge. And, trust me, those folks at Google aren't your Type-A hobbyist/wannabe WordPress Plugin Scriptoid - they actually know what they're doing.

And now thats aside, yeah, an autonomous car needs to recognise all those many things. Well, guess what? That's exactly what an autonomous car today is by order of mangitudes *better* at than any human will ever be. For enlightenment I strongly recommend this talk by the head of Googles Autonous Car division, Chirs Urmson, "How a driverless car sees the road". Yes, it's a TED talk - you're gonna live.

Now could someone send this guy the memo?
Thanks.

Except that Bush explicitly stated the catching Osama bin Laden was not a priority. Obama made it a priority again and the CIA along with Seal team 6 delivered. Obama's leadership is a major reason for it though.

What F-22? The ones that had their production lines closed?

Hey, the Obama administration made the call. You think you are smarter than Robert Gates?

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2009/04/06/37349/gates-ends-f22-production/

Will those just be magically kept in working condition if replacement parts don't exist?

Look, I think it was stupid to shut down the F-22 production line, but I'm pretty sure that somebody already thought about spare parts and the parts will be available.

Wreck an airframe and scratch one F-22, but parts they will have.

You can't just "do" something with surplus power on the grid...

Actually, you can and in Virginia we do. The Bath County Pumped Storage Station uses surplus power (from a nuclear plant) to pump water up into a reservoir to later be used to generate hydro power during high demand.

Also see: The Inside Story Of The World’s Biggest ‘Battery’ And The Future Of Renewable Energy

That's an experiment, not a reasonable solution that exists for widespread use today. Also, good luck finding hydroelectric facilities that can be used that way in Texas...or, for that matter, in most places. The fact that a handful of facilities, scattered around the world, that have experimented with various forms of bulk energy storage does not mean that bulk energy storage is suddenly a widespread option for an area the size of ERCOT's BES region. These are laudable projects that aim to address the two biggest problems with the grid today: that renewable energy is uncontrollably variable and that the peaks and valleys of load are getting larger. And someday, I hope that at least one of them results in something that will make a big impact. But today, they're essentially lab experiments. You may as well hope for clothing made of graphene to show up at Walmart tomorrow.

You can't just "do" something with surplus power on the grid...

Actually, you can and in Virginia we do. The Bath County Pumped Storage Station uses surplus power (from a nuclear plant) to pump water up into a reservoir to later be used to generate hydro power during high demand.

Also see: The Inside Story Of The World’s Biggest ‘Battery’ And The Future Of Renewable Energy

Saying we should have zero emissions is shorthand for saying we should not be adding CO2 to the atmosphere+oceans+biosphere. [Ken Caldeira, 2015-08-12]

That's the same definition used by every other mainstream scientist who discusses the "'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming." [Dumb Scientist, 2015-08-23]

Proof of moving the goalposts. Because MY comment wasn't about "allowable budgets". It was about emissions... the commonly understood, technically correct, and dictionary definition of "emission". It wasn't about "budgets", nor were the words Lonny was originally replying to on Twitter. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-26]

Nonsense. Again, that's the "technically correct" definition of "emission" written by the scientist who wrote the words Lonny was originally replying to on Twitter. Anyone who cares to look can see that Lonny was originally replying to this tweet about the "'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming.":

2C target old idea, phys unsafe,see @KenCaldeira thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/0... "There is some noise around the idea that it useful to think about some amount of 'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming. ..." [Peter Shepherd, 2015-08-11]

Then @KenCaldeira should commit suicide immediately. He emits 40,000 ppm CO2. Talk about unacceptable levels! @tan123 [Lonny Eachus, 2015-08-11]

Lonny was originally replying to Ken Caldera's words about "allowable CO2 emissions budget"! Jane/Lonny's apparent ignorance of the words Lonny was replying to might be a good defense, unless Jane keeps digging...

... Your argument that exhaling cannot increase overall CO2 may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-26]

Understanding that exhaling cannot increase overall CO2 is an important prerequisite to understanding what scientists talking about anthropogenic warming mean when they say "emissions". Please Jane, can we agree that exhaling cannot increase overall CO2? If not, that's the fundamental cause of our miscommunication. And yeah, that's extremely relevant.

It's important to remember that breathing can't increase overall CO2 because it's like a circulation pump in a pool. Therefore mainstream scientists don't include breathing in an "'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming." In exactly the same way, plumbers don't include a circulation pump's flow in an "'allowable water budget' that keeps the pool from overflowing."

... your ridiculous argument that exhaling was not an "emission". You are a complete nutcase. An exhalation is an emission in exactly the same way that CO2 from an exhaust pipe is an emission. Organic compounds are "burned" via your metabolism in an analogous way to how ethanol is burned in your automobile. Both are relatively simple organic "cycles"... the CO2 could be from corn in either case. Your argument that exhaling cannot increase overall CO2 may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant to whether an exhalation is an "emission"

... You should GET A LIFE rather than stalking and harassing people for years on end, for personal (and apparently nefarious) reasons of your own. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-22]

This person has been harassing me for over 5 years. So far, Slashdot has refused to do anything about it. I have recorded instances of libel, attempted character assassination, deliberate misquotes, and I suspect him of deeds even more foul. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-22]

How mysterious! Tell us more about these "deeds even more foul" than repeatedly asking you to stop your ~7 year campaign of harassing/libelling/attempted-character-assasinating/misquoting mainstream scientists and those who agree with them. I'll "get a life" when you stop.

No sane person would take that comment IN CONTEXT, and think it was genuinely a recommendation that anyone commit suicide. And he is fully aware of that. And yet he continues to present it as truth. I don't know of a better definition of libel. Do you? [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-22]

Don't be ridiculous, Jane. I've repeatedly shown that comment IN CONTEXT. The most charitable explanation is that you didn't read those comments (just like I hope Lonny didn't read the comments he was responding to), so here's that CONTEXT again...

2C target old idea, phys unsafe,see @KenCaldeira thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/0... "There is some noise around the idea that it useful to think about some amount of 'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming. ..." [Peter Shepherd, 2015-08-11]

Then @KenCaldeira should commit suicide immediately. He emits 40,000 ppm CO2. Talk about unacceptable levels! @tan123 [Lonny Eachus, 2015-08-11]

No, Lonny. Your despicable statement was morally and scientifically wrong. He doesn't emit "a rather large amount all by himself" because breathing simply can't raise CO2 levels. [Dumb Scientist]

This is a CLASSIC straw-man argument. There was no claim that he raised CO2 levels. Only that he emits CO2. He does. ... this comment was clearly taken out of context and subsequently misrepresented. Anyone who cares to look can see that for themselves. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

Anyone who cares to look can see that Lonny's disgusting statement was a "response" to a statement about anthropogenic global warming, which is primarily caused by raising CO2 levels. That's what scientists mean by "CO2 emissions": adding CO2 to the atmosphere+oceans+biosphere.

Once again, breathing can't do that because it's like a circulation pump in a pool. Therefore mainstream scientists don't include breathing in an "'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming." In exactly the same way, plumbers don't include a circulation pump's flow in an "'allowable water budget' that keeps the pool from overflowing."

... You should GET A LIFE rather than stalking and harassing people for years on end, for personal (and apparently nefarious) reasons of your own. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-22]

This person has been harassing me for over 5 years. So far, Slashdot has refused to do anything about it. I have recorded instances of libel, attempted character assassination, deliberate misquotes, and I suspect him of deeds even more foul. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-22]

How mysterious! Tell us more about these "deeds even more foul" than repeatedly asking you to stop your ~7 year campaign of harassing/libelling/attempted-character-assasinating/misquoting mainstream scientists and those who agree with them. I'll "get a life" when you stop.

No sane person would take that comment IN CONTEXT, and think it was genuinely a recommendation that anyone commit suicide. And he is fully aware of that. And yet he continues to present it as truth. I don't know of a better definition of libel. Do you? [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-22]

Don't be ridiculous, Jane. I've repeatedly shown that comment IN CONTEXT. The most charitable explanation is that you didn't read those comments (just like I hope Lonny didn't read the comments he was responding to), so here's that CONTEXT again...

2C target old idea, phys unsafe,see @KenCaldeira thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/0... "There is some noise around the idea that it useful to think about some amount of 'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming. ..." [Peter Shepherd, 2015-08-11]

Then @KenCaldeira should commit suicide immediately. He emits 40,000 ppm CO2. Talk about unacceptable levels! @tan123 [Lonny Eachus, 2015-08-11]

No, Lonny. Your despicable statement was morally and scientifically wrong. He doesn't emit "a rather large amount all by himself" because breathing simply can't raise CO2 levels. [Dumb Scientist]

This is a CLASSIC straw-man argument. There was no claim that he raised CO2 levels. Only that he emits CO2. He does. ... this comment was clearly taken out of context and subsequently misrepresented. Anyone who cares to look can see that for themselves. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

Anyone who cares to look can see that Lonny's disgusting statement was a "response" to a statement about anthropogenic global warming, which is primarily caused by raising CO2 levels. That's what scientists mean by "CO2 emissions": adding CO2 to the atmosphere+oceans+biosphere.

Once again, breathing can't do that because it's like a circulation pump in a pool. Therefore mainstream scientists don't include breathing in an "'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming." In exactly the same way, plumbers don't include a circulation pump's flow in an "'allowable water budget' that keeps the pool from overflowing."

2C target old idea, phys unsafe,see @KenCaldeira thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/0... "There is some noise around the idea that it useful to think about some amount of 'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming. ..." [Peter Shepherd, 2015-08-11]

Then @KenCaldeira should commit suicide immediately. He emits 40,000 ppm CO2. Talk about unacceptable levels! @tan123 [Lonny Eachus, 2015-08-11]

No, Lonny. Your despicable statement was morally and scientifically wrong. He doesn't emit "a rather large amount all by himself" because breathing simply can't raise CO2 levels. [Dumb Scientist]

This is a CLASSIC straw-man argument. There was no claim that he raised CO2 levels. Only that he emits CO2. He does. ... this comment was clearly taken out of context and subsequently misrepresented. Anyone who cares to look can see that for themselves. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

Anyone who cares to look can see that Lonny's disgusting statement was a "response" to a statement about anthropogenic global warming, which is primarily caused by raising CO2 levels. That's what scientists mean by "CO2 emissions": adding CO2 to the atmosphere+oceans+biosphere.

Once again, breathing can't do that because it's like a circulation pump in a pool. Therefore mainstream scientists don't include breathing in an "'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming." In exactly the same way, plumbers don't include a circulation pump's flow in an "'allowable water budget' that keeps the pool from overflowing."

Are you now saying that you already knew that breathing can't raise CO2 levels, but you made your despicable statement anyway? Hopefully not. Think, Lonny! Think! [Dumb Scientist]

Since the subject of breathing raising overall CO2 levels was not mentioned or even implied by anyone except you, I have no reason to respond to this. Once again, your out-of-context straw-manning gets you nowhere. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

Lonny, your disgusting statement was a "response" to a statement about anthropogenic global warming, which is primarily caused by raising CO2 levels. So your original disgusting statement was either accidentally or deliberately "out of context" of the statements you were replying to. Which is it, Lonny Eachus? Are you honestly confused, or are you deliberately trying to confuse others?

emit v. to send forth (liquid, light, heat, sound, particles, etc.); discharge.

There is nothing there about "increasing levels" or averages. Everbody knows what "emit" means, regardless of your attempts to narrow the definition to your liking. He does emit a rather large amount by himself, according to every common definition of the word "emit". ... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

As usual, Jane/Lonny completely ignores context and quotes a dictionary to support his disgusting statement. Ironically, Jane has previously said: "Di

2C target old idea, phys unsafe,see @KenCaldeira thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/0... "There is some noise around the idea that it useful to think about some amount of 'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming. ..." [Peter Shepherd, 2015-08-11]

Then @KenCaldeira should commit suicide immediately. He emits 40,000 ppm CO2. Talk about unacceptable levels! @tan123 [Lonny Eachus, 2015-08-11]

No, Lonny. Your despicable statement was morally and scientifically wrong. He doesn't emit "a rather large amount all by himself" because breathing simply can't raise CO2 levels. [Dumb Scientist]

This is a CLASSIC straw-man argument. There was no claim that he raised CO2 levels. Only that he emits CO2. He does. ... this comment was clearly taken out of context and subsequently misrepresented. Anyone who cares to look can see that for themselves. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

Anyone who cares to look can see that Lonny's disgusting statement was a "response" to a statement about anthropogenic global warming, which is primarily caused by raising CO2 levels. That's what scientists mean by "CO2 emissions": adding CO2 to the atmosphere+oceans+biosphere.

Once again, breathing can't do that because it's like a circulation pump in a pool. Therefore mainstream scientists don't include breathing in an "'allowable CO2 emissions budget' that would keep the world under 2 C of global warming." In exactly the same way, plumbers don't include a circulation pump's flow in an "'allowable water budget' that keeps the pool from overflowing."

Are you now saying that you already knew that breathing can't raise CO2 levels, but you made your despicable statement anyway? Hopefully not. Think, Lonny! Think! [Dumb Scientist]

Since the subject of breathing raising overall CO2 levels was not mentioned or even implied by anyone except you, I have no reason to respond to this. Once again, your out-of-context straw-manning gets you nowhere. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

Lonny, your disgusting statement was a "response" to a statement about anthropogenic global warming, which is primarily caused by raising CO2 levels. So your original disgusting statement was either accidentally or deliberately "out of context" of the statements you were replying to. Which is it, Lonny Eachus? Are you honestly confused, or are you deliberately trying to confuse others?

emit v. to send forth (liquid, light, heat, sound, particles, etc.); discharge.

There is nothing there about "increasing levels" or averages. Everbody knows what "emit" means, regardless of your attempts to narrow the definition to your liking. He does emit a rather large amount by himself, according to every common definition of the word "emit". ... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

As usual, Jane/Lonny completely ignores context and quotes a dictionary to support his disgusting statement. Ironically, Jane has previously said: "Di

This narrative is getting old FFS. There is no excuse not to improve the US emissions, the people have spoken and it will happen. Whiners STFU.

"The U.S. and China announced an historic agreement to combat climate change, a major step forward from the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters. Not only does the agreement hold the two nations to taking additional steps to bring down the carbon emissions that drive climate change, but China just pledged to deploy a tremendous amount of clean energy.
“The non-fossil target may be the most important part of the package,” said Melanie Hart, Director of China Policy at the Center for American Progress. “Renewable and nuclear energy accounted for 9.8 percent of China’s energy mix in 2013. They have just promised to double that percentage by 2030. That target will light a fire under China’s already-aggressive renewable deployments and put even stronger limits on coal and other fossil fuels.”"

China is the country to watch. Its burgeoning economy and voracious appetite for coal-fired power make it the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases, generating over one quarter of man-made carbon emissions. But it’s also leading the drive for clean energy by embracing low-carbon generating technology at an unprecedented scale. That makes China a unique laboratory for studying the costs and logistics of competing power sources— and for comparing the merits of nuclear power and renewables.

"China’s prodigious nuclear program currently has 17 commercial reactors operating and 28 more under construction—almost half the global total of reactors being built. The government expects to have 40 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power on line by 2015 and at least 58 GW by 2020.

But those figures pale next to the gargantuan wind and solar programme. At the end of 2012 China had the world’s largest wind turbine capacity, 75.6 gigawatts, and it’s aiming for 100 GW by 2015 and 200 or more by 2020. Solar photovoltaic capacity is also skyrocketing: the previous 2015 target of 21 GW has been raised to 35 GW, and the 2020 target of 50 GW will likely rise as well. According to these figures, wind and solar will eclipse nuclear power in China."

This narrative is getting old FFS. There is no excuse not to improve the US emissions, the people have spoken and it will happen. Whiners STFU.

"The U.S. and China announced an historic agreement to combat climate change, a major step forward from the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters. Not only does the agreement hold the two nations to taking additional steps to bring down the carbon emissions that drive climate change, but China just pledged to deploy a tremendous amount of clean energy.
“The non-fossil target may be the most important part of the package,” said Melanie Hart, Director of China Policy at the Center for American Progress. “Renewable and nuclear energy accounted for 9.8 percent of China’s energy mix in 2013. They have just promised to double that percentage by 2030. That target will light a fire under China’s already-aggressive renewable deployments and put even stronger limits on coal and other fossil fuels.”"

China is the country to watch. Its burgeoning economy and voracious appetite for coal-fired power make it the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases, generating over one quarter of man-made carbon emissions. But it’s also leading the drive for clean energy by embracing low-carbon generating technology at an unprecedented scale. That makes China a unique laboratory for studying the costs and logistics of competing power sources— and for comparing the merits of nuclear power and renewables.

"China’s prodigious nuclear program currently has 17 commercial reactors operating and 28 more under construction—almost half the global total of reactors being built. The government expects to have 40 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power on line by 2015 and at least 58 GW by 2020.

But those figures pale next to the gargantuan wind and solar programme. At the end of 2012 China had the world’s largest wind turbine capacity, 75.6 gigawatts, and it’s aiming for 100 GW by 2015 and 200 or more by 2020. Solar photovoltaic capacity is also skyrocketing: the previous 2015 target of 21 GW has been raised to 35 GW, and the 2020 target of 50 GW will likely rise as well. According to these figures, wind and solar will eclipse nuclear power in China."

This is marked funny, but the US Supreme Court recently affirmed that the joke is true.

http://thinkprogress.org/justi...

coal and fossils will remain a predominant power source for the near future. however, this http://thinkprogress.org/clima... might help you understand more about the unreliability of EIA predictions.

I'm a bit troubled by your obsession with "the black community" I live in a pretty mixed community, and I've seen all colors on welfare. I used to do work in several schools in my area and there were not less issues in the predominately white lower income schools, compared to the black. There was definitely one I remember, I was told there were alot of white supremacists in the area.

Your also correct that most kids in drug addicted households don't succeed. I fail to see how that is related to welfare, since most welfare recipients can't afford recreational drugs. They usually can't afford needed drugs.

And, your kids who "didn't get shit for help from the government welfare systems, they were helped by kind people who saw a bad situation and helped out kids who wanted and appreciated it."

Those kids probably would have been far past any help without the government help you deride. They are like Craig T. Nelson, except they were on foodstamps and welfare AND someone helped them.

I read more than enough reports at the time, but your references aren't. They're opinion pieces, written by people saddened by the tragedy. They don't reflect the criminal realities of Aaron's case. The prosecuting attorneys were aggressive and listed every reasonable charge separately, with maximum sentences. No judge would inflict all that, and the prosecuting attorneys clearly expected him to plea bargain. But as best I can tell from the _news_ articles at the time, Aaron refused to accept _any_ felony conviction at all. He'd gotten away without conviction with the PACER abuse, seemed to think he could escape unscathed again.

In order for the articles:

                    http://thinkprogress.org/justi... [thinkprogress.org] - op end piece, compares Aaron's charges, unmodified by a judge or plea bargaining, to the convicted sentences of murderers. Ignores that prosecutors routinely start with maximum possible charges and sentences, just as patent applications list all possible uses of an idea. They do this to see what remains after a judge, jury, or plea bargaining reduce the claims, and to avoid missing anything.

                  http://reason.com/archives/201... [reason.com] - invents a strawman argument that Aaron's numerous felonies were equivalent to a simple trespass. Shows complete ignorance of the law and of Aaron's abuse. Aaron was _crashing JSTOR servers_ and getting all of MIT cut off from JSTOR, repeatedly.

                http://www.newyorker.com/news/... [newyorker.com] - lies absurdly about the difficulty of public access to JSTOR. JSTOR _makes the data available in a usable format_, organized, and for the minimum they can charge. They're very generous with free subscriptions for education and research, their fees are quite modest, and Aaron didn't "try to check too many books out of a library". He was effectively copying the whole library and planning to set up his own in direct competition, but without any way to pay the librarians to keep the books in order.

Let's be quite clear. Aaron was trying to put JSTOR out of business by republishing not only the articles, but the invaluable JSTOR indexes, and publish them "free as in beer". I've tried to think of an equivalent. The best I can manage is trying to solve the drought in California by opening up all the fire hydrants. It was ridiculous and, yes, criminal behavior.

Except that neither case received brutal punishment. Aaron was never convicted.

i stopped reading there. yeah, he was never convicted because he committed suicide you dumb fuck

and to assert that aaron swartz didn't face brutal punishment makes you either an asshole, a moron, or both

http://thinkprogress.org/justi...

http://reason.com/archives/201...

http://www.newyorker.com/news/...

read the above. educate yourself. then open your ignorant mouth

What punishment? He killed himself before he was punished, so we'll never know.

why are you commenting when you don't even understand the fucking topic?

http://thinkprogress.org/justi...

http://reason.com/archives/201...

http://www.newyorker.com/news/...

it helps to understand the bare basic facts of a topic before you open your ignorant mouth

please educate yourself first next time, then talk

Because "justice" involves handing people over to be tortured. You trolls DGAF about justice anymore than Republicans care about perjury or affairs.

Before even seeking asylum, Assange offered to return to Sweden if they promised not to hand him over to the U.S. Sweden has refused to do so.

Because "justice" involves handing people over to be tortured. You trolls DGAF about justice anymore than Republicans care about perjury or affairs.

Before even seeking asylum, Assange offered to return to Sweden if they promised not to hand him over to the U.S. Sweden has refused to do so.

As for question 1, yes. I'm reasonably sure that 42% is a minority

This is 42% that admits to being a Young Earth Creationist, which is the extreme far end of "people with faith-based beliefs that override reasoned thought". This doesn't include people who don't believe in evolution but otherwise accept old Earth, and we didn't even get started on other issues such as climate change, where the picture is even more bleak. But to me, the fact that 42% (or even 30%) believe that Earth is 10,000 years old is already a major a catastrophe from an educational perspective, given that we're talking about a First World nation with mandatory education.

As for question 2, there's a reason that we aren't seeing legislators bring forth new laws regarding religion

Oh, they're bringing them all the time - just look at the regular bills related to abortion, for example. They don't get passed, yes, because there's presently a legislative deadlock in the Congress on anything even remotely touchy. If you look at state level, things are much worse in red states where such bills do regularly become laws. Again, abortion is the biggest item that is targeted there right now, but also climate change research, secular education, and anti-discrimination laws (under the guise of "religious freedom" laws).

That is because in many of the states, the majority does in fact stand for such laws (and even more extreme ones - right now it's largely the judiciary that keeps the excesses of state legislatures in check to some extent, by shooting them down as unconstitutional; and not the people through voting). And given that US is a federal republic with a strong degree of decentralization, what happens on state level is equally if not more important than federal level - to remind, the states are largely responsible for education, for example.

With respect to the majority of voters actually being able to affect policy, I will also remind you that given a district-based FPTP electoral system, the representation in Congress (or state equivalent) does not actually directly correspond to popular vote (e.g. given the current House, GOP has 57% of the seats while only securing 52% of popular vote). In fact, it is entirely possible to have the seat distribution be the opposite of popular vote, where the minority becomes the majority - the House elections in 2012 saw GOP take 48% of popular vote, but the majority of the seats.

And then there's gerrymandering. If you live in, say, Austin, and you're a liberal, how many congressmen are actually representing you and several hundred thousand people like you?

What makes you think that when we as a people vote for the government to do something, it's "without the understanding that what we are giving has a price attached to it". Laws that are passed have costs calculated by the CBO, and funding mechanisms attached, as a part of the law. It's only a few right-wing loons that think that some things (e.g. wars, tax breaks to corporations) don't have to be paid for.

You appear to have a lot of misconceptions about TANF (Welfare). Go read http://thinkprogress.org/econo... .

Parent was exaggerating slightly. The reality is still true, you could close the vast majority of prisons if you did as proposed. This would save us billions of dollars just on based on prisons. Nevermind the billions we spend on drug enforcement in the first place.

The war on drugs is a much bigger boondoggle than the War in Iraq ever was. It has probably effected many more lives even.

The upper crust of society needs to keep the populace in check or they won't feel superior and won't feel obligated to help the less fortunate. Right now they can point and say, why should I help that person buy lobster on food stamps?!

Of course if the poorer among us were actually given more opportunity more of them would elevate themselves much like I did. It takes much more than just skill to get ahead in this country. You also have to have opportunity.

Ultimately they remain not difficult to get otherwise the poorest wouldn't get them in such high numbers.

All this misleading and conclusory claim (on what basis do you deem any particular number "high," by the way?) demonstrates is your own lack of attention to this issue. How easy it may or may not be to get an abortion depends not just on how much money you have, but also on which state you live in. Your own link even points out how stark this issue is: 89% of counties in the U.S. don't have a single abortion provider. 89 percent!

Oh but clearly it's women who don't want politicians having the right to trump medical decisions they make in consultation with their physicians who are the ones with an "agenda." Seriously, what is this tripe? Find me a single pro-choice activist (an actual person who is an actual activist, not a fake personality you create a blog for) who doesn't also advocate for better sex ed, better access to contraceptives and reproductive health care, and better resources for low-income parents. The things you're implicitly tut-tutting about aren't things the left has been standing in the way of. I mean, you do realize, I hope, that Guttmacher is a pro-choice organization (I mean, it's even named after a former president of Planned Parenthood)? It isn't presenting these facts because it views them as an indictment of pro-choice politics. Pro-choicers have never made this an either-or debate as you're implying.

And save your moralizing about diverse perspectives (omg some women want to give birth and others don't? WHAAAT?!) for your weekly anti-choice circlejerk. That "women," just like regular people(!), are not some kind of emotional monolith surprises no actual grown-ups.

If I'm running a business, and my payroll increases 30% while sales remain flat, I have two options: 1) slow or stop hiring, cut staff, or even go out of business; 2) raise prices to reflect the increase in wage expenses;

I don't see how either of those outcomes is very good for poor people struggling to get by on $15 an hour, even though we can console ourselves that we've "done something" to help them. Now, I am, admittedly, not an economist - perhaps it will work, or at least, it will help. But I really have sincere doubts that this is going to do much to really change the dynamic at the low end of the economic spectrum. I think it will largely end up being a feel-good measure that well-off, well-meaning people can use to congratulate themselves about, while doing nothing to change the fundamental reality of low wages and poverty.

The example you give only applies to a subset of businesses. Most will not have to go out of business because they have to pay people at least $15 an hour. A few little mom and pop's maybe. But Walmart is not making that calculation, nor is Target or Costco. They can easily absorb the increase in labor costs, and their profit will go from ridiculous to merely astounding. Besides, people's wages are companies revenue. Studies have shown that increasing the minimum wage can stimulate the economy by enabling people to spend more. This is most effective at the bottom of the income range because those people will spend the increase rather than saving it. So increasing labor costs is not the only dynamic at play.

I agree that this will not solve poverty or income inequality. But it's a step in the right direction. Our economy is supposedly 70% consumer-driven. It makes sense then that increasing the buying power among those most likely to use it would have an overall positive effect.

Meh.

This guy is obviously a massive douche and murderer, and there's no doubt as to his guilt, but I think killing him doesn't reflect well on us as a society. To me, killing killers always had the same logic as suspending people who ditch school. It's like-- wait, what's the message here exactly?

Given the history of "humane" non-cruel, non-unusual tools for execution ("hanging! no wait, firing squad! no, we mean electrocution! Umm... lethal injection? Gassing?"), it strikes me as just one of the many feel-good but fucked up practices we haven't dropped yet.

> Bullshit. I'm the IT guy for a chain of independent pharmacies and know this is a categorically false statement.

Someone with your job should be better informed.
Here is a start: A Huge Company That Tracks And Sells Your Prescription History Now Wants To Go Public

http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
http://archives.politicususa.c...

Why do these people act so shock that the agency that is largely responsible for space holds most of the assets in space, even if theose assets ultimately complement other agencies? I thought cooperation between agencies is a good thing? (Or should scientific research have the sort of systemic walls between agencies that let to the intelligence failure known as 9/11 ??)

NASA has the bulk of space based sensors monitoring the Earth.
This is of course, completely logical.
Even for assets actually owned by other agencies, they still interact and support them, particularly in the launching and maintaining aspects.

But NASA has the bulk. So the gameplan here lays itself out. First they reduce NASA's earth monitoring capability. Note they dont kill it outright...they rarely do. First you reduce its capability and effectiveness to justify further cuts in the future. And then you just never replace that capability in the agencies they argued should have it.

Such as:
http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

We know this is the game plan, because the GOP has -already tried- to interfere with NOAA's earth monitoring and climate research capabilities, and defund it's climate research. Whereas with NASA They claim that work is best left to NOAA, when talking about NOAA they instead claim that NOAA's true mission is "weather forecasting", not "climate research", as if understanding the bigger picture better and monitoring the planet wouldn't improve the ability to predict weather to as a byproduct.

Actually, the IPCC models have been very good at predicting the changes.

• IPCC model global warming projections have done much better than you think
• Contrary To Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
• Models successfully reproduce global temperature since 1900.
• Validation and forecasting accuracy in models of climate change
• New Paper “Validation And Forecasting Accuracy In Models Of Climate Change” By Fildes and Kourentzes

http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

It dipped 2.9%, I wouldn't say that is "less coal for the past few years.

We shall see if that is a trend (a single datapoint doesn't made one) or a blip.

http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Of course, all that misses the point. China is aiming to cap their coal production by 2020. They might hit it, they might even be early, but that is a far cry from doing much to reduce it.

"As more photovoltaic panels are installed on rooftops around the nation, an antiquated power grid is being overburdened by a bidirectional load its was never engineered to handle. The Hawaiian Electric Company, for example, said it's struggling with electricity "backflow" that could destabilize its system"

This doesn't make sense, the grid copes with bidirectional loads all the time. Where a generator is producing excessive power, it's redistributed into the surrounding grid. Where a local generator is maxed out, then more power is drawn into from the surrounding grid. I think what's really bugging the electric companies is that with more people generating their own electricity, the power companies are generating less revenue.

Yet Another State Threatens to Penalize Solar Power Users

Oklahoma Will Charge Customers Who Install Their Own Solar Panels

I had to scrabble around for a link and I wanted one you'd accept. I found one on ThinkProgress which is a leftwingy bloggy place.

http://thinkprogress.org/econo...

And they cite some re-visitation of the 1977 study here:
https://courseworks.columbia.e...

In it they're of course upset that women that have children are paid less than women that don't have children. That is their big complaint. As if it is the company's fault that someone took a few years off work or decided to take an easier career track because they wanted to spend more time with their children.

But the fun thing is that these people are so biased that they don't realize they're doing all the work for me here. By their citation the pay discrepancy falls to 7 percent if you exclude mothers and that has been true by their citation since 1977. I remembered the numbers differently... I remembered about 2 percent and 1972. But I could have gotten that wrong.

Now, lets revisit the wage gap discussion with the understanding that the actual wage gap is closer to 7 percent or women are paid 93% as much as women. Not 77 percent... 93 percent. That is a huge difference.

Now, that remaining 7 percent... who knows what the fuck that is... there could even be some honest to god discrimination in there. But are you going to start a holy gender crusade on 7 percent? No you're not. It isn't big enough to get anyone freaking out about it. It isn't politically useful. So you don't hear 7 percent. You hear 35 percent or something because that is big enough to get people angry. Only its bullshit. Which means the people angry about it are like those morons in the congress of Idiocracy that are too stupid to actually process a complicated or audit a falsified argument.

Now, if you want to talk about the remaining 7 percent, we can do that... I think that is an interesting topic but even then you can't just say the 7 percent is discrimination. Some of it might be... who knows. But you have a lot of variables to process in that. All told you know that under analysis you're going to lose a few percentage points at least. Which means if there is discrimination that is even statistically significant... you're going to be looking at something like a couple percent. A couple pennies on the dollar. And even one percent is unfair and wrong... but life isn't fair. I'm not getting excited or going to hold a grand inquisition over a couple percent. Which is at most the sort of discrimination that is actually real. And that assumes that the discrimination doesn't actually go in the opposite direction. As we saw in a couple other studies there are situations where women are favored for no apparent reason.

So it could be that the men that are getting paid more are actually getting UNDER paid because they're significantly overworking beyond what the women are doing. You don't know.

The point is that indifferent to any of that, if the number falls to 7 percent when you remove motherhood... it is generally speaking a bullshit issue. You have to admit that. Am I wrong? Is 7 percent enough for you to go on a rampage over it? Or like me, do you feel that they would need to show more discrimination than that to justify significant political and cultural effort? And keep in mind again, that 7 percent is still bullshit in and of itself because we haven't filtered out a half dozen other things that are going to push that number lower. I have no idea what would be left after that. It could be negative 10 for all either of us know.

http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

“Where the sea ice is reduced, heat transfer from the ocean warms the atmosphere, resulting in a rising column of relatively warm air,” Sewall said. “The shift in storm tracks over North America was linked to the formation of these columns of warmer air over areas of reduced sea ice.”

It would be interesting and clever to follow the alternative energies path, this plant in Australia gives desalination and energy power from ocean waves http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

You assume AGW is the cause for the current drought.

Previous to the California "dry spell", climatologists were saying that AGW would make Calif WETTER, not dryer.

Your claim is based on erroneous assumption.

GIGO.

Do you have citations for that? I did a search for agw predictions california rainfall and the first hit I got (and the only relevant one I saw) was an article about a 2005 paper predicting a very similar drought.

It's only one paper and I have no idea whether it was widely accepted, but if you asked me a few years ago what AGW meant for California rainfall my very limited understanding would have lead me to say less rainfall.

The "real science" is emerging? Where? Is it the Cock-funded Smithsonian exhibit where you get to choose what humans will evolve into due to climate change? "Will you have a tall narrow body, like a giraffe?" Or "Will you have more sweat glands?"
 

The good news is that the economy IS creating that many jobs in solar. 2014 saw 31,000 jobs added in one year, and this initiative is to train 75,000 over 5 years.

The demand is there, as long as the growth continues, which this poll from 2013 and this Zogby poll from last week that shows even 2 out of 3 Republicans agree that the Federal Investment Tax Credit for solar should be renewed.

I have no idea why Slashdot, allegedly a bastion of personal freedom and libertarianism, can't get with expanding personal rooftop solar. Is it the whole solution? Absolutely not. But it's definitely helping far more than it's hurting.

No kidding. BTW it's not just President Obama who has stopped war with Iran. During the Bush administration the US military prevented the Bush administration from doing it.

http://thinkprogress.org/secur...

"Admiral William Fallon, then President George W. Bush’s nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM.
Fallon’s resistance to the proposed deployment of a third aircraft carrier was followed by a shift in the Bush administration’s Iran policy in February and March away from increased military threats and toward diplomatic engagement with Iran. That shift, for which no credible explanation has been offered by administration officials, suggests that Fallon’s resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor in the intra-administration struggle over policy toward Iran."

Every form of energy has an environmental cost, the cost of making windmills and solar panels are mostly hidden in China, so Al Gore and his buddies can pretend that the cost doesn't exist.

That would be a great argument except the majority of wind turbines used in the US are also made in the the US these days and the plenty are exported as well.

I bet there are other toxic lakes just outside the processing plants that make solar panels too, since China currently doesn't care much about pollution.

I've been to China. They care about the pollution plenty. They also care about trying raise hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. You think doing that while protecting the environment is an easy thing to do? It's easy to sit in the cheap seats and decry what they are doing but claiming they don't care is simply not fair or true.

Good Luck on that. The supreme court ruling on actual innocence was split down the middle and absolutely blasted by Scalia as a "shiny new right". Yes you heard that right, being actually innocent of the crime isn't the courts job according to him.

http://thinkprogress.org/polit...

Gees dude you can even count, here is a list of the income of the largest oil companies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L..., and no, I will not add it up for you (that is the money being generated by your drill baby drill, burn baby burn, side of the argument, not tens of millions but trillions of dollars). Lobbying in just one election in one country http://thinkprogress.org/clima.... Dude science is not "rhetoric" talk about subconsciously exposing yourself.

Most of humanity does not agree with you, and most of humanity doesn't constantly have it on their mind because it's not constantly brought up or they can't constantly do something about it personally.

Well, let's look then. According to that linked poll, 46% of 39 sampled country's respondents didn't think that or doesn't know if climate change is a major threat. This includes 60% of the US and China's population. Note that the poll doesn't even ask if climate change is a "top problem", just whether it is a major problem or not.

Another poll indicates that India, the big country missing from the first poll, has very similar attitudes to the US and China on climate change. At this point, we have roughly 60% of 2.9 billion people, roughly 1.7 billion people, who don't think climate change is a major problem.

You can say that a "majority" of humanity disagree with me. Even if that were true, so what? Reality isn't a popularity contest.

Please don't speak to me about this again in the future. I'm sure there's a kindergarten playground somewhere that you can use to soapbox on. While you're at it, preach about horoscopes and whatever other superstitions and nonsense fits with your "denier" mindset these days.

Notice, once again that not even a scrap of justification for your beliefs found its way into your post. I can't be bothered to honor your ridiculous demand for two reasons. First, you have no cause for making the demand. I merely disagree with you on valid grounds, such as lack of evidence and terrible reasoning on your part. Step up your game.

And seriously, what's all this drama about anyway? So what if I disagree with you? It's not the end of the world.

Second, how am I supposed to remember all the Slashdotters who don't want to be questioned on their religious or ideological beliefs? It's an unreasonable burden which I can work around by merely ignoring the request in the first place. Besides, if you make unsubstantiated claims on Slashdot, you should get challenged. That's how it should work.

Kudos for an incredibly stupid question. Did it occur to you to actually check what the weather in the Arctic was like during these polar vortexes?

I grew up in Valdez, Alaska. I wasn't there for the avalanche mentioned in the article, but it's pretty epic, no? The whole town was cut off from the world by a snowslide/ice dam for a couple of weeks. Fun times. But the glacial melting is just unreal. Ten thousand year old ice is vanishing, there are glacier overlooks built where you can't actually see the glacier any more. The Columbia Glacier retreated like twenty miles. The low altitude, smaller glaciers are the ones melting fastest, and they're the most visible/accessible.

It's cool though. You haven't seen any of that, so it must all be made up. Wishful thinking beats reality any day, I'm sure.