Sure. And if that's in the context of synthetic meat which is a clear tech thing, I think that would pretty obviously fit under what Slashdot is supposed to be about.
Even if you don't believe in climate change or you don't care about climate change, stories about new types of electric power and increasing competitiveness of solar power falls pretty strongly under the "news for nerds" ideal.
This is commonly repeated but it is wrong at multiple levels. First, the primary thing that matters is CO2 levels, and since solar power has positive energy return on energy investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested there's now way it produces net CO2. That's before we get to the fact that coal is one of the dirtiest power sources in existence both in terms of CO2 (produces more per a kilowatt-hour than either oil or natural gas) and the fact that coal releases many other nasties such as particulate, heavy metals (especially mercury) as well as NOx and Sulfur Dioxide. Moreover, cradle-to-grave studies for batteries and solar have been done and they've pretty much all conclusively shown that solar pollutes less than coal. See for example summary here https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/solar-panel-cradle-to-grave-analysis-and-environmental-cost.html or see Maggie Koerth-Baker's excellent book "Before the Lights Go Out" about the history and future of the electric grids, which includes many references to detailed studies establishing this.
Solar may be in some contexts cheaper, but that may not continue for the long-term. Solar power experiences value deflation, where the more solar power there is, the less it is worth (because unlike conventional power sources, it all peaks at the same time). This can lead to serious limits on how much solar a given area is likely to have http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11415510/solar-power-costs-innovation. Either the cost per a panel needs to go down by a lot, or the storage and transmission costs need to improve by a lot. The last link includes an estimate that in order to really get solar to succeed one needs an approximate cost of around $0.25 per watt. If one improves batteries and transmission that may not be necessary, especially if we have enough other sources of power, such as wind, nuclear, hydroelectric (which unfortunately has probably gotten close to its peak in much of Europe and North America), tidal, and geothermal. Nuclear is going to definitely be a part of any long-term solution, but one has silly things now like Sweden trying to give up all fossil fuels at the same time they phase out nuclear power http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-first-fossil-fuel-free-country-in-the-world-a6684641.html and they call that "green."
At least in most places, we're very far from where solar can be even without improved transmission and storage. In much of the US, you can get home solar and have it pay back in a few years. The solar panel cost guide is a good place to start http://www.solarpanelscostguide.com/. Or, if you want to help other people out while helping the environment you can donate to Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/ which helps get solar panels for non-profits like schools, homeless shelters and science museums. Every little bit helps.
Yes, you are partially correct. They do mention floods, and that claim is definitely questioned by the sources. (That's actually annoying, I'm fairly confident that a while ago when they originally put up that link it didn't mention floods, and they must have updated it at some point to include that claim). You are however misinterpreting the hydroclimate claim: the paper about hydroclimate is talking about how accurately one can model the variability which is distinct from the fact that sea levels and and temperature levels are increasing and that that's linked. The issue there is how much. That's included for example in the IPCC reports which points to papers which agree with that. How bad it will get in the future is where the serious modeling difficulties really start to come into play.
Sigh. For someone who is concerned that other people can't read science papers, you are terribly misreading both of those. Hydroclimate variability is what they are talking about in the first paper. That's one of many aspects of climate change and it is only marginally related to what is under discussion.
Mc is a very common beginning of a surname. It comes from a word meaning "clan of" or "father of". So fake, deliberately silly names are sometimes done as X McY where X and Y are related in some way. So one might jokingly refer to something like Rocket McBoom as a name for a rocket. In this case, it combines with some other humorous things (including adding face in a semi-random way).
Your basic point is valid. I'm against a right to be forgotten but you are correct that this sort of thing can help people move on from their mistakes and that is a legitimate argument in favor of it. However, comparing it to sealed court records is completely off. Sealed court records are legal documents in the government's hands which are not being released. That's very different than saying that private citizens cannot report on public information that was literally in newspapers a few years ago. The comparison just doesn't work.
Aside from your snide remarks, I'm not sure what your point. If you actually read the articles you are talking about, they are discussing very narrow aspects of what happens from climate change, and nothing in them contradicts the link given.
They have a direct incentive to figure out what is an actual threat and what isn't so they don't waste their time on environmental issues that aren't high priorities. They also did a pretty decent job of linking to sources to back up their statements.
The NWF is hardly just someone's website. Moreover, I'm not even sure what your point is: weather events are not the only impact from global warming. So saying we can't attribute any specific weather reports to climate change isn't very relevant to the vast majority of what is being discussed.
Lead levels were low but increasing. The other example ozone is even more to the point: the hole in the ozone layer never got large enough to do serious damage before we dealt with it.
Yes, "argued by some"- what does that sound like? Oh, just like some people are arguing and have argued about climate change and *were wrong*. You'll always have a minority not accepting hard evidence.
Again, the difference here is not only do we have the evidence, and we've had it for a long time, but the issue actually matters. Now do you want to address that or are you just going to have more fun with fonts?
You seem to be ignoring the entire point, which was that the effects of climate change are being detected now. This has nothing to do with some sort of weird metaphysics. I in fact won't in general eat steak but that has to do with the environmental damage that meat-eating does, and with the general intelligence of the cow, not because I'm related to it at all which is utterly irrelevant. It might help if you actually respond to things people are saying rather than imagine what they must do and imagine a scenario where they must be hypocrites and then use your imagined scenario as an argument.
Yeah, maybe you could read your own sources: the relevant point is the Eddington experiment, where by the 1930s most people accepted it and Lick reinforced that. Yes, there was some small amount of doubt, but the direction of the evidence was already accepted in the 1930s. You'll note by the way, that I explicitly discussed GR and SR separately, whereas the comment I was replying to didn't, so where you get the idea that I'm the person in this conversation confusing the two is beyond me.
So do you want to address the more fundamental point at all about how there wasn't any danger in not accepting GR, whereas there is about about not doing anything about climate change?
Improving the electric grid, switching to a grid supported primarily by nuclear, solar, wind, hydro with small amounts of natural gas will not crash civilization. Switching to electric cars and hybrids will not crash civilization. Reducing meat consumption will not crash civilization. All the necessary changes are small. And you can support the easy ones without much effort. You can eat less meat and take public transport or buy a more efficient car or an electric car (the new Tlsa 3is really nice!) . You can put solar panels on your house or improve your heating system.
That a few extremists have bad ideas about how to solve things is not a reason to ignore the problem or not take the actual steps that we can do to help solve it using good methods.
So, first of all, special relativity was widely accepted within a few years of when it came out. General relativity was accepted based on strong evidence by the 1930s. So your 40 years is simply wrong.
But even if your facts we're right, your comparison still fails. There was already 20 years ago a scientific consensus on climate change, despite active industry attempts to create doubt, and that consensus was based on hard evidence. Moreover, at no point before GR or SR was accepted was there a risk of billions of dollars in economic damage and millions of lives lost by not acting on those ideas.
Your first bit is confusing editorials and op-eds with news coverage. Not the same thing.
If the media wanted to highlight the alignment of Democrats with white supremacists on some issues like abortion, they could. But they don't want to. Why? Because divisiveness doesn't sell? Come on.
No, because there's zero reason to even think or suspect that any of the Democrats are in favor of abortion for the same reason the white supremacists are. In the case of Trump, the motivation behind the agreement looks potentially pretty similar, especially because it isn't any single issue.
That link shows that 30% of blacks support more immigration. It isn't even about illegal immigration, which is Trump's main issue.
First, Trump is pretty strongly in favor of general reductions in immigration. Second, the link was being given to deal with the specific claim that blacks are against immigration. Third, if you do want to focus on illegal immigration there are actually studies showing the same thing there. See e.g. http://www.pewresearch.org/2006/04/25/attitudes-toward-immigration-in-black-and-white/ which shows that blacks are much more in favor of policies which help illegal immigrants.
Yes, the white supremacist groups generally do support Republicans, but it isn't every election cycle where they a) almost all strongly support a specific primary candidate and b) credit that candidate with having record numbers.
Moreover, the BLM comparison doesn't work: the BLM activists are not in favor of blacks over whites (by and large) but are in favor of being treated equally, and not having young black men be shot to death. Not really an accurate comparison. Regarding the New Black Panthers, it is worth noting that they endorsed Obama last election and he then said that he didn't agree with them.
Considering the large number of vocal white supremacists supporting him, it isn't by itself unreasonable to ask him. Even if you think the reporter shouldn't have asked the question, his initial refusal to disavow was pretty unacceptable as responses go.
Every time there's an election. When the media tends to harass one one candidate more than others, they are clearly being biased. Do you support media bias?
If anything, the media has been incredibly favorable to Trump, giving him ridiculous amounts of free coverage. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-donald-trump-hacked-the-media/. It also does not follow that if a given candidate his having the media call out a lot of the things the candidate says that the media is being biased. It can also indicate that the candidate is really saying a lot of crazy stuff. (Which in this case is pretty accurate.)
Fourth, the Dragon who endorsed Hillary did so out of essentially a conspiracy theory about her actual policies being different than her stated policies
You probably won't believe it but I have heard people say they are strongly supportive of abortion because minorities get more abortions.
That's completely believable; I'm not sure why you think I wouldn't believe it, nor do I see what point you are trying to make here.
Trump isn't racist and in fact is more closely aligned with blacks on some issues than most candidates, specifically about illegal immigration. Economically, blacks support a higher minimum wage and tighter immigration control.
I'm not sure what your argument is here. You appear to be arguing that he can't be racist because he agrees with blacks on a specific issue. However, the primary racism under discussion is directed at Hispanics, not blacks. Moreover, your claim about blacks and immigration is incorrect. Black Americans are consistently more pro-immigration than white Americans. See http://www.gallup.com/poll/184529/support-increased-immigration.aspx. You can argue that they shouldn't be, but apparently they disagree.
And again, you seem to be ignoring what I said in my first comment: I don't know if Trump is racist, but if he isn't, he's going through a lot of effort to appeal to racists.
Yes, see the end of my comment where I noted that I couldn't tell if he was racist or just appealing to racists. Note by the way that the claimed quote about running as a Republican is actually not true: See http://www.snopes.com/1998-trump-people-quote/.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. And if that's in the context of synthetic meat which is a clear tech thing, I think that would pretty obviously fit under what Slashdot is supposed to be about.
Or the many people in developing countries who can't afford to give a fuck and will be the most hardest hit by global warming.
Even if you don't believe in climate change or you don't care about climate change, stories about new types of electric power and increasing competitiveness of solar power falls pretty strongly under the "news for nerds" ideal.
This is commonly repeated but it is wrong at multiple levels. First, the primary thing that matters is CO2 levels, and since solar power has positive energy return on energy investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested there's now way it produces net CO2. That's before we get to the fact that coal is one of the dirtiest power sources in existence both in terms of CO2 (produces more per a kilowatt-hour than either oil or natural gas) and the fact that coal releases many other nasties such as particulate, heavy metals (especially mercury) as well as NOx and Sulfur Dioxide. Moreover, cradle-to-grave studies for batteries and solar have been done and they've pretty much all conclusively shown that solar pollutes less than coal. See for example summary here https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/solar-panel-cradle-to-grave-analysis-and-environmental-cost.html or see Maggie Koerth-Baker's excellent book "Before the Lights Go Out" about the history and future of the electric grids, which includes many references to detailed studies establishing this.
Solar may be in some contexts cheaper, but that may not continue for the long-term. Solar power experiences value deflation, where the more solar power there is, the less it is worth (because unlike conventional power sources, it all peaks at the same time). This can lead to serious limits on how much solar a given area is likely to have http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11415510/solar-power-costs-innovation. Either the cost per a panel needs to go down by a lot, or the storage and transmission costs need to improve by a lot. The last link includes an estimate that in order to really get solar to succeed one needs an approximate cost of around $0.25 per watt. If one improves batteries and transmission that may not be necessary, especially if we have enough other sources of power, such as wind, nuclear, hydroelectric (which unfortunately has probably gotten close to its peak in much of Europe and North America), tidal, and geothermal. Nuclear is going to definitely be a part of any long-term solution, but one has silly things now like Sweden trying to give up all fossil fuels at the same time they phase out nuclear power http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-first-fossil-fuel-free-country-in-the-world-a6684641.html and they call that "green."
At least in most places, we're very far from where solar can be even without improved transmission and storage. In much of the US, you can get home solar and have it pay back in a few years. The solar panel cost guide is a good place to start http://www.solarpanelscostguide.com/. Or, if you want to help other people out while helping the environment you can donate to Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/ which helps get solar panels for non-profits like schools, homeless shelters and science museums. Every little bit helps.
Yes, you are partially correct. They do mention floods, and that claim is definitely questioned by the sources. (That's actually annoying, I'm fairly confident that a while ago when they originally put up that link it didn't mention floods, and they must have updated it at some point to include that claim). You are however misinterpreting the hydroclimate claim: the paper about hydroclimate is talking about how accurately one can model the variability which is distinct from the fact that sea levels and and temperature levels are increasing and that that's linked. The issue there is how much. That's included for example in the IPCC reports which points to papers which agree with that. How bad it will get in the future is where the serious modeling difficulties really start to come into play.
Which is specifically talking about extreme weather events, and not what was being discussed in the original link.
Rent-seeking for a limited time, to encourage people to actually write things. Limited time is really important there.
Sigh. For someone who is concerned that other people can't read science papers, you are terribly misreading both of those. Hydroclimate variability is what they are talking about in the first paper. That's one of many aspects of climate change and it is only marginally related to what is under discussion.
Mc is a very common beginning of a surname. It comes from a word meaning "clan of" or "father of". So fake, deliberately silly names are sometimes done as X McY where X and Y are related in some way. So one might jokingly refer to something like Rocket McBoom as a name for a rocket. In this case, it combines with some other humorous things (including adding face in a semi-random way).
Your basic point is valid. I'm against a right to be forgotten but you are correct that this sort of thing can help people move on from their mistakes and that is a legitimate argument in favor of it. However, comparing it to sealed court records is completely off. Sealed court records are legal documents in the government's hands which are not being released. That's very different than saying that private citizens cannot report on public information that was literally in newspapers a few years ago. The comparison just doesn't work.
Aside from your snide remarks, I'm not sure what your point. If you actually read the articles you are talking about, they are discussing very narrow aspects of what happens from climate change, and nothing in them contradicts the link given.
They have a direct incentive to figure out what is an actual threat and what isn't so they don't waste their time on environmental issues that aren't high priorities. They also did a pretty decent job of linking to sources to back up their statements.
The NWF is hardly just someone's website. Moreover, I'm not even sure what your point is: weather events are not the only impact from global warming. So saying we can't attribute any specific weather reports to climate change isn't very relevant to the vast majority of what is being discussed.
Lead levels were low but increasing. The other example ozone is even more to the point: the hole in the ozone layer never got large enough to do serious damage before we dealt with it.
Yes, "argued by some"- what does that sound like? Oh, just like some people are arguing and have argued about climate change and *were wrong*. You'll always have a minority not accepting hard evidence. Again, the difference here is not only do we have the evidence, and we've had it for a long time, but the issue actually matters. Now do you want to address that or are you just going to have more fun with fonts?
You seem to be ignoring the entire point, which was that the effects of climate change are being detected now. This has nothing to do with some sort of weird metaphysics. I in fact won't in general eat steak but that has to do with the environmental damage that meat-eating does, and with the general intelligence of the cow, not because I'm related to it at all which is utterly irrelevant. It might help if you actually respond to things people are saying rather than imagine what they must do and imagine a scenario where they must be hypocrites and then use your imagined scenario as an argument.
Yeah, maybe you could read your own sources: the relevant point is the Eddington experiment, where by the 1930s most people accepted it and Lick reinforced that. Yes, there was some small amount of doubt, but the direction of the evidence was already accepted in the 1930s. You'll note by the way, that I explicitly discussed GR and SR separately, whereas the comment I was replying to didn't, so where you get the idea that I'm the person in this conversation confusing the two is beyond me.
So do you want to address the more fundamental point at all about how there wasn't any danger in not accepting GR, whereas there is about about not doing anything about climate change?
Improving the electric grid, switching to a grid supported primarily by nuclear, solar, wind, hydro with small amounts of natural gas will not crash civilization. Switching to electric cars and hybrids will not crash civilization. Reducing meat consumption will not crash civilization. All the necessary changes are small. And you can support the easy ones without much effort. You can eat less meat and take public transport or buy a more efficient car or an electric car (the new Tlsa 3is really nice!) . You can put solar panels on your house or improve your heating system.
You can also donate money in ways that will help. Good charities are Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/,and the Solar Electric Light Fund http://self.org/ as well as the Wind Energy Foundation http://windenergyfoundation.org/.
That a few extremists have bad ideas about how to solve things is not a reason to ignore the problem or not take the actual steps that we can do to help solve it using good methods.
So, first of all, special relativity was widely accepted within a few years of when it came out. General relativity was accepted based on strong evidence by the 1930s. So your 40 years is simply wrong. But even if your facts we're right, your comparison still fails. There was already 20 years ago a scientific consensus on climate change, despite active industry attempts to create doubt, and that consensus was based on hard evidence. Moreover, at no point before GR or SR was accepted was there a risk of billions of dollars in economic damage and millions of lives lost by not acting on those ideas.
Global climate change is happening now with current negative results https://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Threats-to-Wildlife/Global-Warming/Global-Warming-is-Happening-Now.aspx. Moreover, how would you feel if previous generations had taken your attitude about lead in gasoline or about the ozone layer because it wouldn't happen to be a problem for a few years?
If the media wanted to highlight the alignment of Democrats with white supremacists on some issues like abortion, they could. But they don't want to. Why? Because divisiveness doesn't sell? Come on.
No, because there's zero reason to even think or suspect that any of the Democrats are in favor of abortion for the same reason the white supremacists are. In the case of Trump, the motivation behind the agreement looks potentially pretty similar, especially because it isn't any single issue.
That link shows that 30% of blacks support more immigration. It isn't even about illegal immigration, which is Trump's main issue.
First, Trump is pretty strongly in favor of general reductions in immigration. Second, the link was being given to deal with the specific claim that blacks are against immigration. Third, if you do want to focus on illegal immigration there are actually studies showing the same thing there. See e.g. http://www.pewresearch.org/2006/04/25/attitudes-toward-immigration-in-black-and-white/ which shows that blacks are much more in favor of policies which help illegal immigrants.
Yes, the white supremacist groups generally do support Republicans, but it isn't every election cycle where they a) almost all strongly support a specific primary candidate and b) credit that candidate with having record numbers. Moreover, the BLM comparison doesn't work: the BLM activists are not in favor of blacks over whites (by and large) but are in favor of being treated equally, and not having young black men be shot to death. Not really an accurate comparison. Regarding the New Black Panthers, it is worth noting that they endorsed Obama last election and he then said that he didn't agree with them.
No the point is he shouldn't have to do it.
Considering the large number of vocal white supremacists supporting him, it isn't by itself unreasonable to ask him. Even if you think the reporter shouldn't have asked the question, his initial refusal to disavow was pretty unacceptable as responses go.
Every time there's an election. When the media tends to harass one one candidate more than others, they are clearly being biased. Do you support media bias?
If anything, the media has been incredibly favorable to Trump, giving him ridiculous amounts of free coverage. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-donald-trump-hacked-the-media/. It also does not follow that if a given candidate his having the media call out a lot of the things the candidate says that the media is being biased. It can also indicate that the candidate is really saying a lot of crazy stuff. (Which in this case is pretty accurate.)
Fourth, the Dragon who endorsed Hillary did so out of essentially a conspiracy theory about her actual policies being different than her stated policies
You probably won't believe it but I have heard people say they are strongly supportive of abortion because minorities get more abortions.
That's completely believable; I'm not sure why you think I wouldn't believe it, nor do I see what point you are trying to make here.
Trump isn't racist and in fact is more closely aligned with blacks on some issues than most candidates, specifically about illegal immigration. Economically, blacks support a higher minimum wage and tighter immigration control.
I'm not sure what your argument is here. You appear to be arguing that he can't be racist because he agrees with blacks on a specific issue. However, the primary racism under discussion is directed at Hispanics, not blacks. Moreover, your claim about blacks and immigration is incorrect. Black Americans are consistently more pro-immigration than white Americans. See http://www.gallup.com/poll/184529/support-increased-immigration.aspx. You can argue that they shouldn't be, but apparently they disagree. And again, you seem to be ignoring what I said in my first comment: I don't know if Trump is racist, but if he isn't, he's going through a lot of effort to appeal to racists.
Yes, see the end of my comment where I noted that I couldn't tell if he was racist or just appealing to racists. Note by the way that the claimed quote about running as a Republican is actually not true: See http://www.snopes.com/1998-trump-people-quote/.