"Before the discovery of insulin, uranium was used therapeutically for the treatment of diabetes with daily doses in the milligram or even greater range; no poisonings were reported."
Uranium is toxic in pretty much the same way as most other heavy metals, they are not great, but they certain are not _extremely_ toxic, another anti-nucelar lie to add to the list.
You so realise how much radioactivity coal burners spew out in to the atmosphere, and how carcinogenic their ash is, right?
Lets hope the same editorial board is sool working at a 'new' journal, the Open Journal of Library Administration, available only online/free. Wouldnt that be a somewhat simple solution?
Publishers want to protect 'their' cash cow, but its not theirs to protect. not much of a surprise really.
Yes, it probably is a good thing, since it means it is a little less like the astroturfing, general interest approach of some articles these days. If you had much interest in this area, you would find the summary is quite a good, well summary.
IMHO you badly need to add 'lack of SD memory slot' to that list.. badly. Its unforgivable not to include one, makes developing for/backup of/etc the phone SO much easier/better. Its not about the amount of storage, its about the removability.
"A nuclear reactor offers the promise of unlimited, cheap, carbon-free energy. OTOH, there is a small risk of a very big catastrophe, Are great benefits worth great risks? Hard to say. We now have Chernobyl as one real-world worst-case scenario."
Chernobyl was not an accident, you understand? the reactor was a terrible design intentionally being pushed way outside design specs for no better reason that to see what happened... it is not a real-world worst-case scenario for western reactors, let alone any modern designs.
"Three Mile Island wasn't reassuring either. The reason why it blew, you may recall, is that a relief valve, made by Dresser, failed. It had a classic design flaw, a piston diameter that was too large for its length, like a wide window that gets wedged into the frame when you try to open it. This valve had been tested before -- and failed, about 2% of the time. Scientific American, itself a nuclear power advocate, had a good article about this"
TMI did not 'blow', it had an internal failure resulting in a shutdown, and a very small (barely detectible) amount of released radiation. You do realise that a coal power station would release more radioactive material in a few minutes of operation than TMI did, right? Not to mention the fact that again, it was an ancient design that needed specific human operator control, and thats why it had an internal meltdown, the operators stuffed up (badly) after the valve failed.
"I always favored a free-market solution: The Price-Anderson Act absolved the nuclear industry of liability for any accident, and instead had the government step in, to compensate everyone for the damage (up to $120 million, which wouldn't go too far in Chernobyl). My solution: Repeal the Price-Anderson Act, and let the nuclear power industry get its liability insurance on the free market like everyone else. If they're so safe, let them convince the insurance industry. It seems that American capitalism always needs a government handout."
I suspect you dont know what the NRC is, and dont understand how the global nuclear industry is stricly controlled by it, and therefore by proxy the USA and its government, do you? there is NO free market in the nuclear industry, it is specifically and strictly controlled by one governing body. this is part of what has held it back of course. the fact that reactors in America appear to be privately owned it really just more smoke and mirrors.
The reason they are desperately trying to stretch out the life of the old plants is because the kneejerkers/dumb greens (yes, there are some clued up ones), and NIMBYs have made it next to impossible, and definitely not affordable, to build any new ones, in fact even to improve the existing ones..
New power plants are much cheaper to run, lower risk, lower cost of operating materials, lower waste, etc - but are simply unbuildable under the wests anti-everything regime due to the wonders of local/global pressure groups making regulators tie it up in so much red tape..
The result of this stupidity is what are now low safety (relative to modern designs) stations are kept running way beyond design life - so exactly the opposite of what should be desirable (clean, reliable, affordable nuclear power) is the result of the pressure groups. And I suspect they want it this way, any 'disaster' is going to swell their supporters, bring money in the door, and increase their political power - why would they want safe nuclear power? (they of course being the many and varied anti-nuclear power groups).
The whole thing is of course complex as hell, but the big picture really is people ignoring technical realities, and instead treating nuclear power like it is a social issue (and of course mixing that with huge dis-information as to the realities of radiation, etc).
It's mainly because people were so convinced by the cold war 'nuclear terror' campaigns run by the west (and probably the other side also) that they cannot see past that.
Hence we get large amounts of patently false 'common knowledge' ingrained in peoples minds when they evaluate anything to do with the words nuclear or radiation.
The biggest problem we should be worried about is that old, out of date, and less safe (than modern) plants will be kept active WAY past their best before dates because so much effort has gone in to making it basically impossible to even design, let al9ong build next generation plants that there is little choice.
Costs and timelines in the west (especially America) have ballooned due to the mountain of legal and social blocks put in the way of building plants, meaning time lines and non-technical costs now hugely dwarf the actual real cost of building the plants, and make them unaffordable.
In the meantime we have the same organisations both screaming at us that we need to reduce CO2 emissions (or the world will end!), AND that anything related to the word 'radiation' is satans work and must be stopped at all costs.
It is good that the Japanese are showing some signs of reality-based decision making here, and at least the Chinese are actually starting to progress design improvements. America should be burying its head in shame over how it has controlled/managed the worlds nuclear power development (and thats pretty much how it has been until now, via the NRC..)
Of course a lot of the problem boils down to the childishness of the modern public, where they assume everything will be handed to them on a plate, in a way that makes them feel most comfortable and happy, without offending any little sensibility they have decided to have, as they are obviously THE most important entity on the planet. Sad, really.
So yet again its time to sit back, get a cup of tea, and watch the backlash against satans radiation again, damn the torpedoes.
And dont forget, it better be a pretty damn small city, and you need a way to get the (not small...) bomb to correct altitude, AND it would have to work..
It would probably be much more effective, and one hell of a lot easier to mail what ever fissile material you have to the local media, claiming to have a bomb...
Now, can you just let me know how to avoid the car that suddenly swerves from the opposing traffic in to the front of me? And while you are at it, what to do when the car sufferes a critical mechanical failure at speed, ramming me straight in to a power pole? Since you are such a good drive, you must know something I dont..
Of course some are better (a lot better even) than others, just pointing out that doesnt help driving be safer than flying, not even close.
Much of the bandwidth/media etc claims are rubbish. 4k has (approximately) 4 time the pixels of standard full HD, so at most a given format will increase by 4 times, HOWEVER, most lossy compression methods (for example AVC/MPEG4) on real footage scale better than linear with pixel count, as detail becomes more repeated at higher resolutions, so a more likely estimate for such formats is 2 times, which is not crazy (blueray for example can already delivery that for many movies if needed). newer compression methods are coming on line that can deliver close to double the compression for equivalent quality, meaning we end up back to normal HD data sizes.
Is it needed? thats a whole different story, with the size of living rooms/available and comfortable wall space for screen, etc it is pretty marginal, but trying to use raw uncompressed bitrates as a scare tactic is rubbish.
Their raw figures are of course not even right as they seem to be assuming 444/12bit storage, which would be rather rare in real life, 422 10 bit would be MUCH more common, and most workflows would actually use comrpessed storage (as they do now for HD.).
You do realise that the 'emp attack' was discovered by accident when the US detonated an orbital nuke over the south pacific, and accidentally EMPd a bunch of countries, and the death toll was approximately zero, right?
EMP is not nearly as devistating or effective as many seem to think, NKs nuclear tech is basically unlaunchable, would have tiny yield, and minimal effect. They would be MUCH MUCH better to simply put one on a boat and drive it in to a suitable US/Japanese/SK harbor (and even they they will need to get pretty damn close to land, but that wouldnt be too hard)..
They want a delivery vehicle (rocket..) simply so the unwashed masses THINK there is a threat, its all politics.
And both are small compared to Daewoo, who make supertankers, etc.
Really? trucks are big? um, no.
World shipbuilding market share by countries (2011) Rank Country Combined GT % 1 South Korea South Korea 137,596,000 37.45% 2 China China 123,961,000 33.7% 3 Japan Japan 63,641,000 17.3% 4 Philippines Philippines 423,000 1.6%
Well, I ordered mine in (early) July, and I still dont have it (via RS). I complained, and got told dates it would definitely ship, 3 times, which never got hit. I got sent a 'congratulations, you have been upgraded to 512MB of ram, lucky you!' email that happened to mention I could cancel it any time before I got a shipping confirmation email. I filled out the cancel order form, and got an immediate email claiming I could not cancel it as it had been forwarded to shipping. I replied saying I had got no confirmation email, so they should honour the cancellation. I still have received no confirmation of the shipping, no tracking number, and no reply to my request.
I have in the meantime purchased for less $ several much more functional devices from aliexpress.com. All of which arrived much more quickly, at a cheaper price, for less fuss.
I am NOT based in the US. Sounds to me like the 'locals' are getting service, and the rest of us are getting scammed, hmmm?
The pi has gone from a great idea to a mismanaged, underperforming, poorly supported joke, which is a great pity.
a) you have absolutely no understanding of statistics, do you? the sample sizes here are representative of exactly nothing, primarily due to the extreme bias within the selectable community, or are you suggesting people be selected BECAUSE they are minorities?
b) how many of the 'minorities' applied for the 5 remaining positions and were unfairly excluded?
c) you have made NO reference to relative merit of the people you seem to think should have been included - the fact that they exist means what exactly?
YOU are part of the problem, YOU are trying to be exclusive, YOU are labeling people above, and looking down on them. YOU are a racist.
You sicked me with your holier than thou attitude. BTW, the south of ENGLAND holds grudges? oh, you didnt notice this is about a different COUNTRY, hmmm.
What would make you think any natural balance has been upset? Global CO2 levels have been this high before, and in fact cycle up and down, sometimes very rapidly, with quite some rapidity. In fact there is a lot of evidence that our controlling of forrest fires (which previously would at times burn out huge areas..) has greatly reduced spikes (although volcanic spikes can be even larger still.. damn that nature!) - we have a self-adjusting ecosystem, thats why life has survived so far, through changes FAR larger than we see now.
The models you are talking about are not carbon/temperature prediction climate models, you are talking about direct first-order effects which are quite easy to model. I am talking about the full system models that purport to predict global temperature a distance in the future, care to provide an example of one of those that has predicted within 10% (of the change, not the absolute, of course) over a 5 year window? remember in a cumulative system that would make its error 100% (at a minimum, probably much higher) in 50 years...
And finally, you do realise even the most aggressive predictions of 'rapid' are in the orders of hundreds of years, not a couple, right? large tides, (normal) flooding, and our changing land/resource uses have MUCH larger impacts over tens of years than even the most extreme GW predictions..
Humans have become so insanely change-adverse as a culture, time to accept the world is not a static place.
Did you just cut and paste that off your favorite pundits blog? Perhaps you should go and learn some actual facts.
None of the models has yet managed to predict, in fact they tend to be wildly off, and generally hide behind claims of 'weather is not climate' and yet expect their long term predictions to be accurate when their 1-5 year predictions have been wildly inaccurate (no one is asking them for week or month scale predictions, THAT is weather..). They are trying to predict chaotic systems with massive feedback, small inaccuracies amplify over time, not the opposite.
And we are not talking about a 3-4% increase in atmospheric carbon, learn to read, total human output is 3-4% of the yearly output of carbon, that is what the carbon cycle is about! Global atmospheric CO2 levels are highly cyclic, and have been above the current level many many times before, and have also fallen many many times before - as ecosystems ADJUST, funny how log lasting natural systems tend to be highly resilient and self-adjusting...
As there are about 70 nuclear reactors (all old bad designs) in the US, we could replace all of those in much less than 2 years by your 'one a week' BS, nuclear is of course only 20% of US power generation (although 80% in france for example, where rampant over consumption of energy is not as endemic), but at one a week, you would have replaced the total US power generation infrastructure in around 7-8 years, even the US power consumption is not growing THAT fast (in fact dropped 5% from 2004 to 2010, but again dont let facts get in the way of your stupidity)..
I notice you ignore the statements about real pollution and rampant waste, I guess you like YOUR BS lifestyle, and just think money and governments are just going to magic the problems away if you put some fashionable bumper stickers on, and bake cookies for some nice rallies, hmmm?
And if it is natural, what makes you think we can do anything to counteract it?
Since total human carbon emission is about 3 to 4% (even by IPCC figures), we are not going to make a big impact on the natural cycles even if we reduce to zero..
So far exactly zero of the 'models' have managed to predict anything, so it would seem our science on the matter is incorrect, our 'measures' to combat it seem primarily designed to fill government and large business coffers and everyone has completely lost focus on such 'small' issues as chemical pollution (poisons..) and spiraling inefficiency in our base lifestyles (you think massive systemic waste DOESNT effect the environment? really?
And what makes you think it would be much of a challenge to survive? I am amazed by how people seem to confuse inconvenience with survival these days.
If you really want to massively cut back carbon emissions, then start rallying against GreenPeace and the other kneejerk 'enviromentalists' blocking of latest generation nuclear power. Rolling out that to replace both old dangerous design reactors and combustion based generation is by FAR the biggest step there could be.
The USSR has dumped over 39PBq in to oceans intentionally . The UK has dumped over 35PBq in to the oceans intentionally. A total dumping over all countries of 85PBq is known (ignoring of course military dumping, etc)
So I assume by 'largest' they simply mean as a single event, certainly a lot more than that has been dumped, and there are single sights with more than that also..
While we are at it..
Weapons testing released 2,566,087 PBq also, just for reference (a lot of it not that far from Vegas..) Chernobyl released 12,060 PBq
Also for reference, 1kg of coffee, and 1kg of granite also has around 1000 becquerels, the remaining number we are supposed to consider 'relatively high' So here is hoping no one has granite kitchen tops, or drinks coffee regularly..
I wonder if these are the same teachers that insist kids need laptops, or even better ipads (and of course a generous number of those to be given to the teachers, their friends, etc) to that they can 'teach them'..
I would agree technology is an issue, especially for younger children - the teachers in general are not exactly fighting against it in general. All our local schools now REQUIRE laptops for children who are quite honestly too young for them, and one is now REQUIRING ipads unless a child has 'special dispensation', what a load of BS.
There are still some great teachers, they are just a rapidly dwindling minority, being replaced by the hoards who just want their job to be made easier and easier, while having more and more say in the social/moral/health/etc areas of the kids upbringings.
I know its a rant, but a very true one - parents these days are pretty much assumed to not have their own kids best interests in mind, meanwhile the average abilities of kids leaving (especially younger levels of..) schools is dropping, what a surprise.
IMHO being a responsible parent has gained a new requirement - fighting the BS educator and political attacks on parents and children, to keep at least a hint of freedom of thought for the next generation. Its a sad day.
Ummm... that was Steve 'go nuclear on android' Jobs, I think you will find.
Cannot disagree on the rest, we are starting to see the tablet transition as we saw on the phones a couple of years ago. If Apple doesnt find a new 'wonder' product in the next 12 months, its going to get mighty difficult for them.
Slashdot Mirror
http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q450.html
"Before the discovery of insulin, uranium was used therapeutically for the treatment of diabetes with daily doses in the milligram or even greater range; no poisonings were reported."
Uranium is toxic in pretty much the same way as most other heavy metals, they are not great, but they certain are not _extremely_ toxic, another anti-nucelar lie to add to the list.
You so realise how much radioactivity coal burners spew out in to the atmosphere, and how carcinogenic their ash is, right?
Have a nice day.
Just to prove the point...
http://library.columbia.edu/news/libraries/2008/20080619_jaggars.html
'Damon Jaggars Appointed New Associate University Librarian for Collections and Services at Columbia'
Sounds like a viable day-job to me...
Ah, you mean just like they were before?
Or do you think that those positions were their primary employment?
I think you have a lot to learn about academic journals and positions...
Lets hope the same editorial board is sool working at a 'new' journal, the Open Journal of Library Administration, available only online/free.
Wouldnt that be a somewhat simple solution?
Publishers want to protect 'their' cash cow, but its not theirs to protect. not much of a surprise really.
Oh you stupid Americans make me laugh :) ;) many phones cover a wide range of frequencies these days ;)
Put the koolaid aside and learn something
(of course there are non stupid americans also...)
I am thinking that would be required to become a drone DESIGNER, not a drone PILOT.
Normal pilots dont generally need a degree (although practical degrees do exist).
Sounds much more like universities smell a gravy train, and want to jump on.
Yes, it probably is a good thing, since it means it is a little less like the astroturfing, general interest approach of some articles these days.
If you had much interest in this area, you would find the summary is quite a good, well summary.
Have a nice day.
IMHO you badly need to add 'lack of SD memory slot' to that list..
badly. Its unforgivable not to include one, makes developing for/backup of/etc the phone SO much easier/better.
Its not about the amount of storage, its about the removability.
Damn pleased S4 kept it.
"A nuclear reactor offers the promise of unlimited, cheap, carbon-free energy. OTOH, there is a small risk of a very big catastrophe, Are great benefits worth great risks? Hard to say. We now have Chernobyl as one real-world worst-case scenario."
Chernobyl was not an accident, you understand? the reactor was a terrible design intentionally being pushed way outside design specs for no better reason that to see what happened... it is not a real-world worst-case scenario for western reactors, let alone any modern designs.
"Three Mile Island wasn't reassuring either. The reason why it blew, you may recall, is that a relief valve, made by Dresser, failed. It had a classic design flaw, a piston diameter that was too large for its length, like a wide window that gets wedged into the frame when you try to open it. This valve had been tested before -- and failed, about 2% of the time. Scientific American, itself a nuclear power advocate, had a good article about this"
TMI did not 'blow', it had an internal failure resulting in a shutdown, and a very small (barely detectible) amount of released radiation. You do realise that a coal power station would release more radioactive material in a few minutes of operation than TMI did, right? Not to mention the fact that again, it was an ancient design that needed specific human operator control, and thats why it had an internal meltdown, the operators stuffed up (badly) after the valve failed.
"I always favored a free-market solution: The Price-Anderson Act absolved the nuclear industry of liability for any accident, and instead had the government step in, to compensate everyone for the damage (up to $120 million, which wouldn't go too far in Chernobyl). My solution: Repeal the Price-Anderson Act, and let the nuclear power industry get its liability insurance on the free market like everyone else. If they're so safe, let them convince the insurance industry. It seems that American capitalism always needs a government handout."
I suspect you dont know what the NRC is, and dont understand how the global nuclear industry is stricly controlled by it, and therefore by proxy the USA and its government, do you? there is NO free market in the nuclear industry, it is specifically and strictly controlled by one governing body. this is part of what has held it back of course. the fact that reactors in America appear to be privately owned it really just more smoke and mirrors.
You need to think it a little deeper.
The reason they are desperately trying to stretch out the life of the old plants is because the kneejerkers/dumb greens (yes, there are some clued up ones), and NIMBYs have made it next to impossible, and definitely not affordable, to build any new ones, in fact even to improve the existing ones..
New power plants are much cheaper to run, lower risk, lower cost of operating materials, lower waste, etc - but are simply unbuildable under the wests anti-everything regime due to the wonders of local/global pressure groups making regulators tie it up in so much red tape..
The result of this stupidity is what are now low safety (relative to modern designs) stations are kept running way beyond design life - so exactly the opposite of what should be desirable (clean, reliable, affordable nuclear power) is the result of the pressure groups.
And I suspect they want it this way, any 'disaster' is going to swell their supporters, bring money in the door, and increase their political power - why would they want safe nuclear power? (they of course being the many and varied anti-nuclear power groups).
The whole thing is of course complex as hell, but the big picture really is people ignoring technical realities, and instead treating nuclear power like it is a social issue (and of course mixing that with huge dis-information as to the realities of radiation, etc).
It's mainly because people were so convinced by the cold war 'nuclear terror' campaigns run by the west (and probably the other side also) that they cannot see past that.
Hence we get large amounts of patently false 'common knowledge' ingrained in peoples minds when they evaluate anything to do with the words nuclear or radiation.
The biggest problem we should be worried about is that old, out of date, and less safe (than modern) plants will be kept active WAY past their best before dates because so much effort has gone in to making it basically impossible to even design, let al9ong build next generation plants that there is little choice.
Costs and timelines in the west (especially America) have ballooned due to the mountain of legal and social blocks put in the way of building plants, meaning time lines and non-technical costs now hugely dwarf the actual real cost of building the plants, and make them unaffordable.
In the meantime we have the same organisations both screaming at us that we need to reduce CO2 emissions (or the world will end!), AND that anything related to the word 'radiation' is satans work and must be stopped at all costs.
It is good that the Japanese are showing some signs of reality-based decision making here, and at least the Chinese are actually starting to progress design improvements. America should be burying its head in shame over how it has controlled/managed the worlds nuclear power development (and thats pretty much how it has been until now, via the NRC ..)
Of course a lot of the problem boils down to the childishness of the modern public, where they assume everything will be handed to them on a plate, in a way that makes them feel most comfortable and happy, without offending any little sensibility they have decided to have, as they are obviously THE most important entity on the planet. Sad, really.
So yet again its time to sit back, get a cup of tea, and watch the backlash against satans radiation again, damn the torpedoes.
And dont forget, it better be a pretty damn small city, and you need a way to get the (not small...) bomb to correct altitude, AND it would have to work..
It would probably be much more effective, and one hell of a lot easier to mail what ever fissile material you have to the local media, claiming to have a bomb...
Great!
Now, can you just let me know how to avoid the car that suddenly swerves from the opposing traffic in to the front of me?
And while you are at it, what to do when the car sufferes a critical mechanical failure at speed, ramming me straight in to a power pole?
Since you are such a good drive, you must know something I dont..
Of course some are better (a lot better even) than others, just pointing out that doesnt help driving be safer than flying, not even close.
It appears that hotmail is blocking/trashing all emails, and not putting them in junk, very interesting.
gmail works, FWIW.
Much of the bandwidth/media etc claims are rubbish. 4k has (approximately) 4 time the pixels of standard full HD, so at most a given
format will increase by 4 times, HOWEVER, most lossy compression methods (for example AVC/MPEG4) on real footage scale better
than linear with pixel count, as detail becomes more repeated at higher resolutions, so a more likely estimate for such formats is
2 times, which is not crazy (blueray for example can already delivery that for many movies if needed). newer compression methods are
coming on line that can deliver close to double the compression for equivalent quality, meaning we end up back to normal HD data sizes.
Is it needed? thats a whole different story, with the size of living rooms/available and comfortable wall space for screen, etc it is pretty
marginal, but trying to use raw uncompressed bitrates as a scare tactic is rubbish.
Their raw figures are of course not even right as they seem to be assuming 444/12bit storage, which would be rather rare in real life, 422 10 bit
would be MUCH more common, and most workflows would actually use comrpessed storage (as they do now for HD.).
You do realise that the 'emp attack' was discovered by accident when the US detonated an orbital nuke over the south pacific, and accidentally EMPd a bunch of countries, and the death toll was approximately zero, right?
EMP is not nearly as devistating or effective as many seem to think, NKs nuclear tech is basically unlaunchable, would have tiny yield, and minimal effect.
They would be MUCH MUCH better to simply put one on a boat and drive it in to a suitable US/Japanese/SK harbor (and even they they will need to get pretty damn close to land, but that wouldnt be too hard)..
They want a delivery vehicle (rocket..) simply so the unwashed masses THINK there is a threat, its all politics.
And both are small compared to Daewoo, who make supertankers, etc.
Really? trucks are big? um, no.
World shipbuilding market share by countries (2011)
Rank Country Combined GT %
1 South Korea South Korea 137,596,000 37.45%
2 China China 123,961,000 33.7%
3 Japan Japan 63,641,000 17.3%
4 Philippines Philippines 423,000 1.6%
Not seeing the US of A on that list..
Well, I ordered mine in (early) July, and I still dont have it (via RS).
I complained, and got told dates it would definitely ship, 3 times, which never got hit.
I got sent a 'congratulations, you have been upgraded to 512MB of ram, lucky you!' email that happened to mention I could cancel it any time before I got a shipping confirmation email.
I filled out the cancel order form, and got an immediate email claiming I could not cancel it as it had been forwarded to shipping.
I replied saying I had got no confirmation email, so they should honour the cancellation.
I still have received no confirmation of the shipping, no tracking number, and no reply to my request.
I have in the meantime purchased for less $ several much more functional devices from aliexpress.com.
All of which arrived much more quickly, at a cheaper price, for less fuss.
I am NOT based in the US. Sounds to me like the 'locals' are getting service, and the rest of us are getting scammed, hmmm?
The pi has gone from a great idea to a mismanaged, underperforming, poorly supported joke, which is a great pity.
a) you have absolutely no understanding of statistics, do you? the sample sizes here are representative of exactly nothing, primarily due to the
extreme bias within the selectable community, or are you suggesting people be selected BECAUSE they are minorities?
b) how many of the 'minorities' applied for the 5 remaining positions and were unfairly excluded?
c) you have made NO reference to relative merit of the people you seem to think should have been included - the fact that they exist means what exactly?
YOU are part of the problem, YOU are trying to be exclusive, YOU are labeling people above, and looking down on them.
YOU are a racist.
You sicked me with your holier than thou attitude. BTW, the south of ENGLAND holds grudges? oh, you didnt notice this is about a different COUNTRY, hmmm.
Where to start...
What would make you think any natural balance has been upset? Global CO2 levels have been this high before, and in fact cycle up and down, sometimes very rapidly, with quite some rapidity. In fact there is a lot of evidence that our controlling of forrest fires (which previously would at times burn out huge areas..) has greatly reduced spikes (although volcanic spikes can be even larger still.. damn that nature!) - we have a self-adjusting ecosystem, thats why life has survived so far, through changes FAR larger than we see now.
The models you are talking about are not carbon/temperature prediction climate models, you are talking about direct first-order effects which are quite easy to model. I am talking about the full system models that purport to predict global temperature a distance in the future, care to provide an example of one of those that has predicted within 10% (of the change, not the absolute, of course) over a 5 year window? remember in a cumulative system that would make its error 100% (at a minimum, probably much higher) in 50 years...
And finally, you do realise even the most aggressive predictions of 'rapid' are in the orders of hundreds of years, not a couple, right? large tides, (normal) flooding, and our changing land/resource uses have MUCH larger impacts over tens of years than even the most extreme GW predictions..
Humans have become so insanely change-adverse as a culture, time to accept the world is not a static place.
Did you just cut and paste that off your favorite pundits blog? Perhaps you should go and learn some actual facts.
None of the models has yet managed to predict, in fact they tend to be wildly off, and generally hide behind claims of 'weather is not climate' and yet expect their long term predictions to be accurate when their 1-5 year predictions have been wildly inaccurate (no one is asking them for week or month scale predictions, THAT is weather..). They are trying to predict chaotic systems with massive feedback, small inaccuracies amplify over time, not the opposite.
And we are not talking about a 3-4% increase in atmospheric carbon, learn to read, total human output is 3-4% of the yearly output of carbon, that is what the carbon cycle is about! Global atmospheric CO2 levels are highly cyclic, and have been above the current level many many times before, and have also fallen many many times before - as ecosystems ADJUST, funny how log lasting natural systems tend to be highly resilient and self-adjusting...
As there are about 70 nuclear reactors (all old bad designs) in the US, we could replace all of those in much less than 2 years by your 'one a week' BS, nuclear is of course only 20% of US power generation (although 80% in france for example, where rampant over consumption of energy is not as endemic), but at one a week, you would have replaced the total US power generation infrastructure in around 7-8 years, even the US power consumption is not growing THAT fast (in fact dropped 5% from 2004 to 2010, but again dont let facts get in the way of your stupidity)..
I notice you ignore the statements about real pollution and rampant waste, I guess you like YOUR BS lifestyle, and just think money and governments are just going to magic the problems away if you put some fashionable bumper stickers on, and bake cookies for some nice rallies, hmmm?
And if it is natural, what makes you think we can do anything to counteract it?
Since total human carbon emission is about 3 to 4% (even by IPCC figures), we are not
going to make a big impact on the natural cycles even if we reduce to zero..
So far exactly zero of the 'models' have managed to predict anything, so it would seem our science on the matter
is incorrect, our 'measures' to combat it seem primarily designed to fill government and large business coffers and
everyone has completely lost focus on such 'small' issues as chemical pollution (poisons..) and spiraling inefficiency
in our base lifestyles (you think massive systemic waste DOESNT effect the environment? really?
And what makes you think it would be much of a challenge to survive? I am amazed by how people seem to confuse
inconvenience with survival these days.
If you really want to massively cut back carbon emissions, then start rallying against GreenPeace and the other
kneejerk 'enviromentalists' blocking of latest generation nuclear power. Rolling out that to replace both old
dangerous design reactors and combustion based generation is by FAR the biggest step there could be.
The USSR has dumped over 39PBq in to oceans intentionally .
The UK has dumped over 35PBq in to the oceans intentionally.
A total dumping over all countries of 85PBq is known (ignoring of course military dumping, etc)
So I assume by 'largest' they simply mean as a single event, certainly a lot more than that has been dumped, and there are single sights with more than that also..
While we are at it..
Weapons testing released 2,566,087 PBq also, just for reference (a lot of it not that far from Vegas..)
Chernobyl released 12,060 PBq
Also for reference, 1kg of coffee, and 1kg of granite also has around 1000 becquerels, the remaining number we are supposed to consider 'relatively high'
So here is hoping no one has granite kitchen tops, or drinks coffee regularly..
Yawn.
I wonder if these are the same teachers that insist kids need laptops, or even better ipads
(and of course a generous number of those to be given to the teachers, their friends, etc)
to that they can 'teach them'..
I would agree technology is an issue, especially for younger children - the teachers in general
are not exactly fighting against it in general. All our local schools now REQUIRE laptops
for children who are quite honestly too young for them, and one is now REQUIRING ipads
unless a child has 'special dispensation', what a load of BS.
There are still some great teachers, they are just a rapidly dwindling minority, being replaced
by the hoards who just want their job to be made easier and easier, while having more and more
say in the social/moral/health/etc areas of the kids upbringings.
I know its a rant, but a very true one - parents these days are pretty much assumed to not have
their own kids best interests in mind, meanwhile the average abilities of kids leaving (especially
younger levels of..) schools is dropping, what a surprise.
IMHO being a responsible parent has gained a new requirement - fighting the BS educator and
political attacks on parents and children, to keep at least a hint of freedom of thought for the next
generation. Its a sad day.
Ummm... that was Steve 'go nuclear on android' Jobs, I think you will find.
Cannot disagree on the rest, we are starting to see the tablet transition as we saw
on the phones a couple of years ago. If Apple doesnt find a new 'wonder' product in
the next 12 months, its going to get mighty difficult for them.