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Four way stops are the safest intersection. And much cheaper than traffic lights. They are only 'retarded' if you don't care about pedestrian safety.

The state of Washington, and the Mythbusters would tell you that roundabouts are safer (for cars and pedestrians), cheaper to build, and more economical for drivers than either a 4-way stop, or light controlled intersection. There seem to be multiple other studies with similar results, a search for "safety of roundabouts vs. 4-way stop" brings up pages full.

And here is more.
Basically, more coal plants will continue to close, and at a faster rate than EIA plans.

It's not proven that any particular pesticide or agro-chemical is to blame. The fact that urban bees are thiving in cities such as Paris and London, despite all the pollution in those environments, is inteesting. One mooted possibile reason is that cities have lots of different species of plants in their gardens and parks, blooming at differing times, so that there is always nectar available from some of them. In the countryside by contrast, with modern, vast, single-crop farms, it may be that there is only one species of plant in the bees environment, and once that crop finishes blooming, in sometimes a pretty small window of time, there is no more nectar. So it could be farming practices and lack of rural biodiversity that are to blame, at least in significant part.

Actually, cutting down trees is a great way to optimize carbon storage, as long as new trees are planted to replace the ones cut down. It clears space for new trees, which grow faster and eat more carbon when they are young.

What? I say, what did you say, son? A quick google search would have proven you wrong, but you didn't even do that. Or, you know, having paid attention to any of these discussions here on slashdot in ages, since I bring this point up every time we have one. I haven't been bothering with links and citations until now, but nobody has asked so I didn't feel it was important since I'm not the only person who knows how to use google, am I? I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking I'm smarter than everyone, but I have this sneaking suspicion that I've been giving the average slashdotter way too much credit — and it wasn't that much, in my estimation.

Strangely enough, at least in North America, we've planted more trees than we've cut down

What we care about is not forested area, although it's relevant to weather patterns, but forest mass. Older trees put on mass faster than young trees, and most of a plant's non-water mass is carbon from the air. Strangely enough, this simple fact seems to go mostly ignored in discussions about global climate and carbon, and I have to bring it up in literally every discussion on this subject here on Slashdot. I can use the karma, but I'd prefer that more of you land-rape apologists would wake up and smell the burning.

I woulder if it could have been due to the "Ticket Avoidance Mode" in the upcoming software update? Video here.

This isn't a "vote!" There's no such thing as picking some kind of silver-bullet absolute winner and ignoring everything else; the choices are not mutually exclusive. The correct solution is to use whatever technology is most appropriate for a given situation. Solar and nuclear (etc.) can coexist perfectly well.

There sure seem to be a lot people thinking that solar and wind can fix everything...

They will help and I have nothing against them, but I also live in reality and understand that they will not provide a replacement for coal anytime soon...

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The issue is, why are we trying to replace coal? Is it because of CO2 emissions? If so, then we need to do that sooner rather than later. Solar and wind can't do that.

Only nuclear can, but we have so many people who gasp, "oh my god, the nuclears!" and run in fear.

So we have coal...

http://www.treehugger.com/clim...

That is from a site called TREEHUGGER! Clearly a biased source and even they talk about the growth in coal power. (complain more accurately, but same thing)

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Now coal is having a hard time in the US, partly due to the EPA and partly due to the price of natural gas.

But at the end of the day, what is going to keep the lights on at night?

Coal, natural gas, or nuclear will...

I live in Georgia; I'm well aware of the fact that desert architecture doesn't work in hot-humid climates like (eastern) Texas.

However, the fact that your house was built stupidly doesn't mean that we should throw up our hands and ignore the problem. There are new houses being built every day, and those should be designed smarter (and in the our case I don't mean with qanats; I mean things like verandas, lots of attic ventilation, and choosing not to cut down the surrounding trees). In the South you may not actually be able to eliminate AC entirely, but you can get pretty close.

By the way: clay soil is not why houses in your area don't have basements. I'm guessing you're on the coastal plain, with a high water table and without hills, and that's why. In the Piedmont, where I live, we have clay soil and basements.

A smart move is to position solar panels (for a northern-hemisphere use) facing West, not South. This gives less output overall, but it's peak is much more closely-aligned with peak demand.

If every home and business had a battery system capable of delivering 24 hours of average load, we could switch to 100% renewable energy sources virtually overnight. (It would still take several years, even under ideal conditions, I know.) I'd venture to say that enabling such a transition is Elon's primary impetus for bringing the "home battery" to market.

I'm just spitballin' here, but I bet they'll figure some way to integrate the battery pack with a solar installation in such a way as to satisfy the grid-tie requirements that some states have recently imposed, while still delivering "off-grid" functionality. If, for example, they only start feeding power back into the grid after the battery pack is fully charged, then they could still satisfy some of these local statutes while delivering "effectively" off-grid capability in times of need.

Most of the links I was able to find stated that event the NHTSA felt that their were major weaknesses in their study. First, it was done in only 12 states. Second, it is only since 2000 so that sample set is drastically reduced compared to other accident studies which can typically go back much farther. Though you can start to use this sort of data to think ahead, you can't use it to make broad statements and force change in the automotive industry. It also doesn't use the more tried and true method of accident studies which is based on distances traveled. It's more of a "wow, something to think about and consider" versus a "hey, this is a fact, shut up and get used to it" kind of study.

On a side note, for pedestrian accidents the increased rate is primarily due to backing up, something you can easily attribute more to noise but I thought we were going to solve with backup camera mandates?

But overall, those looking at the study and performing it agree that the data set is too small to make large scale conclusions. And unless we want to just be alarmist, it's probably not a good idea to take this and run with it. Instead, use it to commission some larger and more detailed studies. Who knows, maybe the people who drive hybrids tend to not pay as close attention to what they are doing? I could make a latte sipping, enjoying the smell of their own farts joke here, but I'll refrain. Oops, I guess I already did. ;-)

http://www.greencarreports.com...
http://www.treehugger.com/cars...

The 747 is based on a design from fifty years ago.
Planes are getting better.

This plane gets 45 mpg at 207 mph, but was modified akin to a hypermiling car.
This little guy gets about 38 mpg at 124 mph, but is unmodified off-the-shelf.

It's still a helluva lot cheaper to buy a ticket instead of a plane.

Sigh ... can't be so hard to google if you know not much.
Pretty dumb to bring random links and make wild claims.
http://www.technologyreview.co...
http://www.technologyreview.co...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
http://www.treehugger.com/rene...

Read a bit if you like ... will you?

Vestas is the largest manufacturer in the world Are they? Of what? Wind turbines? Or by what metric?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... Here they are number 2 in market share 2012, no idea how relevant that is.

You know: bringing one manufactor and then claiming because he is the biggest one ... that is not an argument. That is simply stupid. Sounds like the iOS versus Android war and claiming (rightly) that there are more Android sales than iOS sales when in fact Apple is the biggest smart phone vendor, or aren't theyÃY No idea, not important.

They were supposed to be able to supply power to a small house or apartment.

Uh. You do realize that you can use more than ONE panel? You know? Generate as much power as you need, limited only by the area you can spare?
Initial installation is the only major cost. With no fuel being consumed and near negligible operations/maintenance cost, you can easily break even in 8-12 years.

For all your arguments, the model seems to have worked exceptionally well for Germany etc. where they are actually producing more than they can consume. Perhaps you might want to investigate how that "miracle" works, despite your "mathematics".

http://www.treehugger.com/sola...
http://inhabitat.com/germany-q...

For the record, Germany gets very limited amount of sunlight. And they still produce enough to start considering selling excess power to other nations.

The reflected light is for the grass / plants under the panels; the panels will track the sun. There are a considerable number of edible plants that prefer shade and there have been attempts at making this work in Japan & America

http://www.treehugger.com/sust...

http://www.renewableenergyworl...

Renewables are not yet ready or cost effective

I'm sorry but the use by date has expired for that argument.

Wind generation PPAs are currently as low as 2.5c per kWh, the subsidy only amounts to about 1.25c per kWh
How Low Can Wind Energy Go? 2.5c Per Kilowatt-Hour Is Just The Beginning

Solar is getting cheaper every year and reached grid parity for most of the worlds population 2 years ago. In UK and Germany we are installing residential Solar PV for a small fraction of the US installation costs and even in rainy cloudy England Solar could pay for itself without subsidy and then go on to provide extremely cheap electricity.

Wind and Solar can be complemented with Hydro, pumped hydro, geothermal, biogas, battery storage, compressed air storage, wave and tidal power etc.

Windmills are a bit better, but are still not cost effective, use water in dry areas

Windmills use water!!!! No, they don't! lol.

Not much geothermal potential!!! Wrong.
http://www.treehugger.com/rene...

If we stop buying their stuff, the price just goes down and folks like China and poor countries in Africa will just burn what we don't, and the terrorists get rich off of them.

No, it doesn't work like that, if 10% of world demand disappears then mines shut down, any price drop is temporary. "terrorists get rich" doesn't deserve a response.

There's also a strange ocean plastic collection story repeating 2013, 2014 where the inventor stays 19 years old (reported by various news sources), year after year.

I read this (I think on slashdot) about tube bikeways over toronto. Will it ever happen? http://www.treehugger.com/cars...

I guess we can dream and until then maybe radar and goretex will help ;-)

What? No "per capita" cop-out?

Kudos.

Such thinking actually managed to get Krugman to say the T word. Arguing for working class jobs and maintaining an industrial base? Tariffs mean "trade war" and that's baaad. Arguing for carbon limits? Bring on the tariffs baby.

Funny, I recently bought a place and I'm planting a garden. The soil is so clay heavy I could throw it on a wheel, and fire it to at least earthenware temperatures. This also means a rototiller is useless, so I've been using a shovel to remove the grass layer, which I pile up around the edges of the bed, a fork to break up the top 10 inches of clay, and then a wheelbarrow and shovel to cart over topsoil from a pile I had delivered. In a post-apocolypse world, we can omit the delivered dirt, because you wouldn't choose such crappy soil to start with.

I'm 45, not a weightlifter, runner ... not even a regular exerciser. I'm a little chubby from sitting at a desk all the time. In about about an hour and half I can dig up, till with a fork, and wheel barrow over a 10" layer of top soil to do a 10x10 area. This gives me about 20" of planting bed, the 10" I broke up with a fork and the 10" I dumped on top, the grass clumps act like the frame for a raised bed. If this was done in good dirt without the need for added topsoil, subtract half an hour because of easy digging and no dirt hauling.

If I did two of those beds per day, one in the morning and one in the evening, I could dig up 1400 sq ft in a week.

It looks like I'd need about 23,000 square feet to feed myself, but some of that can be made up with space devoted to animals -- most though still goes to garden.
http://www.treehugger.com/gree...

I started this post feeling sort of positive, but tilling soil in this manner burns 4-500 calories per hour. Do this for three hours per day on a 2000 calorie/day diet, and you're going to turn into a rail fast. If it was only 400 calories to dig 100 sq ft of easy soil, and I had to dig 15000 sq ft, I'm going to need an extra 60,000 calories to make it -- an extra month's worth of food to invest in labor to plant a garden. It is sounding increasingly unrealistic to hand dig a garden in the absence of outside inputs, i.e., food for the digger.

So, Austin Energy is paying $0.05/kWh for solar. http://www.treehugger.com/rene... and that price is expected to fall by 2020 when the technology is expected to be available. So, say $0.02 per kWh. You need about 32 kWh to make a gallon of jet fuel at 100% efficiency so that comes to about $0.64/gallon. If you want to stay under $2/gallon, the process could have an efficiency as low as 32%. Since hydrolysis can be done at much higher efficiency, and catalyzed fuel production is exothermic, they'd have to have very poor CO2 capture efficiency to make this look like the dog you are claiming.

Or, Montsanto will, besides owning the entire food business, also own the entire alcoholic drink business as well.

Or, you know, you could grow your own food and make your own drink using 'heirloom' stock. Rumor has it people have based entire businesses around heirloom strains.

Welcome to the new world - where the only thing you can have is specially filtered water. After all, a plain glass of tap or bottled may have Monstanto yeast in it, and you'll need to license that bottle if you want to drink it.

I've looked at every reported decision where Monsanto has sued some poor innocent farmer who allegedly had pollen blown into his fields -- which is really hard when you're talking about Roundup-ready soybeans -- and, amazingly, the poor farmer always manages to convince the judge that he intentionally planted large quantities of the Roundup-ready crop. He doesn't mean to convince the judge of that. He just happens to do so by 1. nuking a field with Roundup and then collecting the seeds of the surviving crop to replant or 2. buying seed from a non-seed elevator (unusual but not illegal) and then nuking the planted seedlings with Roundup (because of course you'd apply a non-selective herbicide to your non-Roundup-ready crop).

So it's obvious you can karma-whore by railing against the agri-villan, but can you back it up with facts? Or not?

There is one place it might work: Vertical Trailer Parks.

This guy seems to think you could sell it with custom trailer modules.

But I think it could be done much cheaper, and accept current trailer models, with just a steel infrastructure and some large (frame traveling) lift facility. With 3 or 4 feet of crawl space between floors to deal with plumbing, gas and electric, you could stack them three to 8 stories high with no problem, and even supply a balcony walk way for those models that have doors on both sides.

Mosquitoes are irradiated, not genetically modified.

New experiments that painstakingly injected male mosquito embryos are simply too expensive to use in the field. Surgically injecting a mosquito or a rat does not scale.

In short, they aren't "breeding" sterile males, they have to make them one by one in a laboratory.

Further nobody has ever demonstrated this in a mammal. Further your statement:

The male offspring cannot reproduce, but still compete with the males that can, which provides a slow generational decline (which is important) in population, until the only female mice still in the area are all carrying the dominant gene,

is chock full of magical thinking.

Where did all these female carrier "mice" come from? (The story is about rats, not mice). Were they the *cough* nonexistent offspring of sterile males perhaps?

Nobody has developed any dominant sterility mechanism, because there is this little contradiction in terms that seems to always get in the way. As someone else in the thread said "sterility doesn't breed true", quite simply because it doesn't breed at all. In a free ranging population like rats, even magically sterilizing an entire male population, or some how converting all females to carriers, would simply breed resistant rats as infiltrating non-treated rats would be king of the heap in no time.

Rat control is food source control. Pure and simple.

That was paraphrasing for Secretary of Energy Dr. Chu. Though I should correct the record and say that i mistakenly said nuclear waste instead of nuclear power plants. All in all fly ash is still horrible and a serious health hazard.

http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/whoatms-who-on-obamaatms-green-team-stephen-chu-secretary-of-energy.html

Seems to me that the nano/micro-sat crowd is demonstrating that to not really be as much of an issue.

Don't distort his reality anymore by showing him the truth!

Seems to me that the nano/micro-sat crowd is demonstrating that to not really be as much of an issue.

The cause is known but for some reason some countries refuse to take the necessary action - ban the harmful pesticides, fungicides and stop over-working the bees.

Here in Britain we have a history of allowing poisons - MDF, air pollution, pesticides, Asbestos, trans-fats, BPA, a whole slew of nasty shit that are called food additives, if banning anything causes some company to lose money then it isn't banned.

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/scientists-discover-another-cause-bee-deaths-and-its-really-bad-news.html

When bathing in a bath of poison, switching to a different bath design is not going to help.

link: http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/no-more-free-sun-arizona-if-solar-power-fee-approved.html

AZ is, however, a conservative stronghold.

Are you kidding me? BP was into solar from the start of this fad in the 1970's. They only recently dropped their campaign: http://www.treehugger.com/green-investments/bp-drops-solar-division-so-much-beyond-petroleum.html And of course they are heavily involved in wind power to this day through their "beyond Petroleum campaign" So no, oil companies has nothing to do with it.

I wonder why you forgot to mention that solar is on a Moore's Law-like curve, and hence already cheaper today than some sources of energy in use today and expected to be cheaper than most sources of energy within a decade.

http://www.treehugger.com/slideshows/renewable-energy/important-graph-cost-solar-headed-parity-coal-and-gas/

Ummm... It was a good movie and all but the central premise of the movie was that they couldn't stop WOPR from launching the missiles. It's been a while, so I don't remember what the excuse was for why they couldn't just unplug WOPR. It was probably something like: "if the control system goes down, the missiles automatically launch". Now, that's really stupid engineering.

Stupid engineering, but remember that a major goal of good sci-fi is to make people think about the consequences of those sorts of decisions. The fact that any of us are breathing at all is likely in part because Petrov was in the loop in the former Soviet Union just a few months after that movie came out. But there's reason to believe that under the right circumstances, even that would not have protected us, because they did almost precisely what this movie warns us about (minus the artificially intelligent computer hooked up to a dial-in modem, that is). A technical malfunction on the Soviet side of the world could have literally destroyed almost all human life on the planet with little or no human involvement. Our two nations were that far beyond the limits of sanity. So the possibility of such things happening was not out of the question, and possibly still isn't. Scary, no?

I'm not going to be so lenient with the simple question of why the crews who man the missile silos can't sabotage the missiles and/or warheads.

By best estimates, we're talking about getting word out to a dozen or more sites and bringing in the personnel needed to disable over 1,500 missiles. That's not exactly a small order, but yes, that should have been happening in parallel, even knowing that they might not succeed.

I will confess, I knew less about cryptography when I first watched the movie. Knowing more about cryptography makes it more likely to me that there could be a cypher that, through some sort of cryptanalysis, you could figure out one character at a time. It's still pretty implausible.

On that point, I agree. Still, there were an order of magnitude fewer than in most movies of that sort, and they were all the sorts of things that you had to be at least a geek to recognize. Compare that with the sequel, in which the writers apparently didn't recognize that destroying D.C. would never cause missiles to be launched (because NORAD isn't in D.C.), or that a computer would never be built in a room full of CO2 because it would be impossible to repair it, or that just about every cell phone almost certainly requires a different data cable (which makes it really unlikely that the kid would have the right cable for his girlfriend's phone), or that if you have to empty your gas can just to reach a site, you don't stand a chance of making it back, or that people with terminal pancreatic cancer are unlikely to be able to keep up with a bunch of kids, or....

It really is a silly question. IBM has an artificial brain with as many synapses as a human brain right now. Fusion energy is on the verge of a breakthrough, 3-D printers are almost cost effective on a per-household basis, solar power is dropping to the cost of coal power, Moore's law has held steady for decades... We are at the start of a second industrial revolution that will put everything in history to shame and without the exploding population from the first one. The world will be totally unrecognizable in a hundred years.

Mass drivers do not propose to shoot a bullet into space - they are conceived as a launch assist mechanism. You still need propellant, just a whole lot less of it.

This is similar to the idea of using catapults to launch civilian aircraft (sorry for treehugger link, original Economist article is down).

I found one that isn't :)

And why do we assume that these solar panel charging stations will still be working in the advent of a disaster? Rain and flooding can short out the batteries. Wind and falling branches can destroy the solar panels.

Well for one thing, Fort Greene Park is at the top of a hill. It won't flood. As for rain, I imagine that the designer has heard of it and built the things to be waterproof. If not then they will probably die after a few rainstorms but before the next flood leading to design improvements. Some of the parking meters in New York are solar powered, as are the parking stations of the new CitiBike (bike sharing) system. Let's just say that these charging stations would not be the first solar powered devices in NY which are able to survive outdoors.

But it seems to me that rather than spending the money on these storm proof kiosks you could strengthen the infrastructure.

New York City is a wee bit bigger and more complex than your SimCity, kiddo. "Strengthening the infrastructure" takes tremendous effort and in some cases is nearly impossible. How do you flood-proof a subway, exactly? They're constantly pumping out water under normal circumstances. Remember that the entrances have to be near ground level so that people can, you know, actually get in there. Of course improvements take time as well, whereas the last two hurricanes were just a year or so apart. More to the point, all that heavy constructions would cost a liiiiiittle more than these 25 kiosks. Relatively speaking those kiosks are pocket change. Anyway, they can be useful in non-flood circumstances, so why not give it a shot?

So you can charge your iPad, but you have no lights or heat at home, great improvement!

Areas near the water took much longer to get power back after Sandy (and Irene for that matter) than other areas. Fort Greene Park is on a hill but it is a few blocks from the waterfront. Folks living in that area might lack power at home when the rest of town (including the cellular networks) are back up and running again. Surely they could use charged cell phones to... call their families? Call in to work and explain why they won't be in? Call 311 (the city's help line) to report problems, like fallen trees or power lines? Not to mention all the useful information they can get with a smartphone. If the situation is as bad as it was in Far Rockaway people might need it to find food or other handouts (like diapers and heating oil), which gas stations have gas, which routes out of the area are open, etc.

That's that good conservative sense for you; if you have a good argument, like "it hasn't warmed since 1998" which was useful for 10 years or so if you insisted on using single year average rather than multiple year averages; there is no reason to dump it just because more recently, even that isn't true.

http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/11/SkepticsvRealistsSmall.gif.492x0_q85_crop-smart.jpg

The new cans are pretty decent (the lined ones).

You mean the ones lined with BPA?

One other comparison, directly to the "prime energy fountain" in our Solar System.

The sun puts out 3.8×10^26 J per second. The sun emits ~1.367 kW per square meter. So if you want to accelerate 40 tons to 0.1c ( where you need the ~1.316 × 10^14 kWh ) over, let's say, the course of one year ( ~ 8 765 hours ), you would need ~1.5 * 10^10 kW, which would be the energy output of 11 549 431 square kilometres of the sun's surface.

Basically it all boils down to "Cheap Energy" Why do we have cars, trains, planes today that almost anyone can afford to use? Because ~150 years ago someone found out "hey, I can get the same energy that I would have to pay $100 to labourers, horse merchants, mill builders, etc.... for $0.10 by just using that black goo that we just found in abundance over there". That black goo is basically the way we now use up the solar energy that hit the earth over countless millennia.

When you look here how the "human energy consumption" multiplied in the last 200 years, I don't see why it couldn't exapand again to 20-30 or even hundreds times more IF a way is discovered to use a substantial amount of the suns "waste energy" directly.

Basically that is the "big if" in the question on whether we will go to other planets or even stars. 200years ago anyone suggesting that you do a "daily commute" of 100km would have been named a madman. But these days it's quite common, only due to cheap energy.

I hear you.

I see it as an evolutionary process, the hydrogen powered ICE (Internal Combustable Engine) while not that efficient, may well prove to be better than a gasoline powered unit. If we can keep costs down, and then when the next generation of technology is ready to do it cheaply, then slide it in. You will always have early adopters ready to spend big money right away in order to be more green, or perhaps burn less gas. But like the chevy volt, who can affort to pay the full cost of new technology?

If we are using excess energy to produce Hydrogen gas, why not burn it initially in an ICE even if it is not the most efficient use possible? Compared to what we have now, it's found power. We can start using it right away, and then get extra capacity later on by increasing efficiency, either by better production techniques or more efficient engine systems, or both. If we start producing Hydrogen with our spare power, I think there would be room to try several things to see what we can come up with.

Some info here. I've spoken with researchers in SA regarding this issue and it's probably less serious in NA, but we don't understand the ramifications of wind turbines enough to even guess at the full impact.

The problem with wind farms isn't just the silly people surrounding it but the ecological risks and damage done. In NA our bat populations are critically endangered and being destroyed by the pressure differential caused by various wind farms, if you bother to count the bodies. It sounds OK until you realize that bats are incredibly useful, they pollinate more than bees do, they control more insect pest populations than anything else. A single bat can eat many thousands of mosquitoes in a night.

In countries with more wind farms the damage is magnified. See Costa Rica. If only more people even gave a shit.

Do you have actual data to back up how many bats are being killing by wind gennies? I recalled people opposed to wind gennies saying they killed a lot of birds. However studies have shown cats kill more birds than wind generators. The article Do wind turbines kill birds? has a chart of statistics showing how many birds are killed by different things, from cars, wild and feral cats (but not pet cats?), to windows. Some may have a problem with the chart though, out of seven killers of birds 5 of the statistics are provided by the American Wind Energy Association, one by treehugger, and one by American Bird Conservancy. Sciam asks the question Are Wind Turbines Getting More Bird and Bat-Friendly? It partially answers by saying stake holders from AWEA, ABC, and National Audubon are working on ways to reduce bird and bat mortality rates.

Falcon

Generally speaking, the Model S is one of the best reviewed new cars ever.

Motor Trend 2013 Car of the Year
Automobile 2013 Car of the Year

Just as importantly, Elon Musk is a truly great man who has not historically been caught spewing unfounded claims. Consider his eventual vindication about Tesla and SpaceX. People said his rockets were too good to be true (cost vs. capability) and wouldn't work. Now he just needs to scale up production, which he is doing, to corner the entire non-secret space launch market.

People said Tesla wasn't going to ever release a car. Then the Roadster was released. Then people said Tesla wasn't going to release the Model S before going bankrupt. Remember when Elon bet that journalist $1,000,000 that the Model S would be released on time? Yeah, he won that.

I'm suprised people haven't stopped criticizing this guy and got on board. If Elon Musk didn't exist, we wouldn't have PayPal, Tesla, or SpaceX. This is just one guy we are talking about! He revolutionized three separate industries by the time he was 40!

. Provide an environment where it's cheaper and more efficient for US companies to manufacture products, you won't need to subsidize to compete.

You're competing against China. They subsidize their solar panel industry heavily. In order to compete directly on cost, without subsidies, you would have to pay your people less than the average Chinese factory worker. Even Chinese CEOs make a fraction of those in the West.

Besides, the environmental regulations in China are appalling.

If THIS is your ideal place to live, I'm going to strongly disagree.

This is probably half the reason he's still alive/sane. I find that a lot of people die/deteriorate shortly after they stop working, or doing whatever it is they love. Sure a lot of the stories are anecdotal but I wonder if any serious studies have been done. I just read a story the other day about a 103 year old that rides his bike (now an adult tricycle) every day. He's still in great shape, at least for his age. If you look at most of the people to live past 90, most of them have some activity they are still actively engaged in. It's my theory that very soon after one loses the lust for life, their life goes downhill, and fast. My step-dad died at 55, shortly after his mother died. She had a stroke, and for about 10 years visited almost every day and spent a lot of time taking care of her. He had health problems for a while, but he stayed alive until shortly after she died. It almost seemed that he was holding out until she was gone.

Usually the thrown-away food statistics include food which never even reaches the consumer. For example, your shop stocks too much of a certain food, and it doesn't get sold, and the shop throws it away after it got too old.

The largest percentages do seem to get lost at the consumer end though. All of the producers and shippers have clear economic incentives to decrease losses, while few households track their wastage well enough to realize how big it is.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/how-40-of-our-food-goes-to-waste/261498/

The fact that USA food consumption makes up for less than 10% of household income (5.5 percent at home and 3.9 percent eating out) means that as a fraction of total expenses, the wastage might not be that important to people.

http://www.treehugger.com/health/americans-eat-the-cheapest-food-in-the-world-but-what-is-it-really-costing-us.html

Nader Khalili already worked out the basics of building moon habitats using lunar materials...

Actually, for conventional oil, the peak was 2006:
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/iea-chart-says-conventional-oil-production-peaked-in-2006.html

If you've eaten industrial meat, you've eaten something fed by crap (literally or otherwise):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-greger-md/mad-cow-disease-california_b_1450994.html
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/impacts_industrial_agriculture/they-eat-what-the-reality-of.html
http://www.treehugger.com/health/chickens-fed-caffeine-banned-antibiotics-and-prozac-often-without-the-farmers-knowledge.html


Yummy!