Yes, and that's exactly what the paper's authors looked at.
However, this is a draft paper, and hasn't made it through the peer-review process. I've had a couple of papers that were drastically transformed by the peer-review process. It would be interesting to track down this paper if it gets published. My bet is that the suggestion of an artificial explanation to the acceleration will be very much toned down, if not removed entirely.
I remember those on-stage demos and seeing them repeated on one of the local tech TV shows. The big gains were on a few filters (one was lens flare) which were optimized for the PPC architecture. The difference on the optimized filters was stark, but the rest of the comparisons were pretty...comparable.
But tech is a horse race...without a finish line. Intel's MMX came out, and that was that.
Where is this researcher asking for more research dollars? I'm not seeing it.
I am seeing the part where he is asking for protections on the remaining wilderness areas. See like a good idea to avoid collapse of biological systems.
Reading isn't as tough as you might think. But you don't get paid to read, just to comment. Is that correct, AC?
Nuclear energy hasn't replaced fossil fuels because it is massively more expensive than fossil fuels, especially in the USA where wild mismanagement and corruption in large construction projects is so prevalent. This is well quantified, to the point that it was covered in detail in a course on water management that I took a couple of years ago. The studies were on the building of dams. It turns out that small really is beautiful.
Besides, no new construction of nuclear power plants has happened since the 70s. One of the last two NPPs to go into production took 9 years after construction was complete. The other took 23 years from ground-breaking to commercial production. To investors, that is a huge risk. When compared to combined cycle natural gas fired electrical generation and, more recently, wind and solar generation, nuclear just isn't a good option.
Clearly, this isn't a partisan issue as both parties have had power many times since the 70s.
You are either joking, making a subtle and important point, or have been misinformed.
The catastrophes have been happening for quite some time. The ripple affects of these catastrophes have affected much of humanity and those affects are becoming harder to ignore.
Exactly. I've been wondering if the ACs, which tend strongly towards denialism and conspiracy theories, are organized in some way. If Slashdot logs the IP associated with a post we could learn a great deal.
My suspicion is that several organized groups are hitting the comments on many sites, but I need evidence to form a conclusion...just like I did with climate change.
We would then be executing a great many people that became addicted to opiates due to an injury and following the advice of their doctor. My buddy is a psychologist and 9 out of 10 of his clinic's clients are addicts, three-quarters of whom became addicted under the care of a doctor for treatment of an injury or chronic pain.
I'm a Canadian that has never used recreational drugs (excepting alcohol) and has no plans to change. I'm pretty enthused about the upcoming change in legality for marijuana. It's not like it will make it any easier to obtain the stuff as it is already pervasive. Even in the small town where I live, one can have pretty much any recreational drug, and definitely marijuana, delivered to one's door quicker, and less expensively, than a couple of pizza.
If legalization goes well for Canada, and I expect it will, the rest of the world will follow.
Can you really not see the connection between inefficient software and environmental harm? All those computers running code that uses four times as much data, and four times the number crunching, as is reasonable? That excess RAM and storage has to be built as well as powered along with the CPU. Those material and electrical resources have to come from somewhere.
But the calculus changes completely when the software manufacturer hosts the software (or pays for the hosting) for their customers. Our projected AWS bill motivated our management to let me write the sort of efficient code I've been trained to write. After two years of maintaining some pretty horrible legacy code, it is a welcome change.
The big players care a great deal about efficiency when they can't outsource inefficiency to the user's computing resources.
What natural cause would produce plastics found in and on flying insects? In this case, correlation absolutely does mean causation, because there can be man-made plastics are the only possible explanation.
But stick to your conspiracy theories. You are in good company.
I used a Palm Pilot for my last two undergrad semesters in university. Besides not being able to mix drawing and text, I loved it. Once I was done with school and tied to a workstation in a cubicle, I completely stopped using it. But ever since cell phones became smart, I've been yearning for styli to become ubiquitous. Apple going this route may help with that. I mean, if other manufacturers have been adopting the, obviously stupid, notch...
The first generation Galaxy Note almost had me when I got to try a demo for a month, but it wasn't quite there. The price of the Notes has kept me from buying in. I'd welcome more competition in stylus-equipped smartphones.
But maybe I'm the only one that sees promise in being able to scribble on a shared piece of virtual paper with a work group spread across the globe?
You have wonderfully highlighted the difference between serious scientific measurement, where the method is provided and error in measurements is quantified, and pure blathering, which is what you are doing.
See, if you looked into this at all, which is what this wonderful technology called the internet allows with minimal effort, you'd see that there is real data backing the Earth Overshoot Day estimate. In fact, their data is covered by a creative commons license so you can go over it with a fine-toothed comb and make constructive criticisms or contribute improvements.
But you didn't do that. Instead, you just called it "Pure Propaganda" without bothering to back up your statement. Your statements, sir, are much closer to propaganda.
To be fair, the most accessible parts of their material are dumbed down for a general audience, and I don't like that a bit of digging finds Schneider Electric as a prominent sponsor of the project's data source, but the message is completely fair: Mankind is running up against resource limits.
Worked as a technology director for a school authority. Most of the people I served were great. Many didn't understand the balancing act I had getting the necessary work done with the resources I had. A few selfish idiots were always complaining. Long hours. A tech department that was too small. Unhelpful management. The work was interesting but the politics were not. The usual story. But I was successful at building robust systems for a pittance. Over a couple of years, my department pulled the entire school authority out of the stone age.
Two years in I felt I would burn out in five.
Then we got a new top dog who was a micro-manager and intent on showing that he was in complete control. This was disappointing, but not all that foreign to me. Unfortunately, the fellow was pretty dim, didn't understand privacy laws, and brought along his entire working directory from his previous school authority, including a bunch of staff and students' personal information. This made the act of moving it from one school authority to another illegal. Long story short: I chose to politely and quietly let on that I understood that the issue needed to be dealt with, a simple matter that would only put a bit of egg on his face. I was fully aware that he might see this as an attack and choose to retaliate rather than admit any fault. Sure enough, I was done a few days later. I then reported the problem to the appropriate authorities. Again, he chose to retaliate. Lawyers were involved. It dragged on for more than a year and was quite stressful, but I ultimately emerged mentally intact and financially unscathed.
The unfortunate lesson I learned was not to care so much about my work. I now view the systems and relationships I build like sand castles built below the high-tide line.
Having talked to quite a few other whistle-blowers, I'm pretty wary of the public sector as well. There are plenty of sharks in those waters.
Solar generation, including storage, has fallen to the point that it is often the cheapest option. Cheaper than coal (which isn't all that cheap) and significantly less than natural gas peaker plants. 10-year production contracts at under 3 cents per kWh are the norm.
But don't believe me. Do a bit of googling or check out this.
You are correct that there are powerful interests on both sides, but both will soon disappear. The green energy advocates will be unnecessary because they will be the norm. The fossil fuelled electrical generation interests will be too busy talking to bankruptcy lawyers to bother anyone else. (Yes, there's some hyperbole in this paragraph, but some truth too.)
There's so much more media than one could possibly consume, with left or right narratives, that one can choose only that which supports their preference. And that's a problem.
I try to watch a bit of both camps to mix things up. But both Fox and MSNBC's Trump coverage make me lose my appetite. More Fox than MSNBC, but still...
And that's just televised news. Social media makes me violently ill.
Plastic is long-lived pollution, even and especially in landfills. Replacing plastic straws with a biodegradable alternative is a clear win. The personal responsibility angle is a red herring.
So I attended and volunteered at a Father's Day pancake breakfast for a local charity this weekend. Emptying the trash got me thinking about how it could be done better. I wanted the food scraps for my compost pile. (We have a 1500 square-foot garden.) We might get some folk to separate the plastic cups and utensils from the compostables, but not all. So I looked into sourcing compostable utensils and cups, and there are loads of practical and affordable offerings. So next year, I'll be able to take all of their "garbage" and throw it in the compost bin.
Change isn't that hard once you stop fighting the idea of change.
Aren't the paper cups impregnated in wax? They certainly were in the not-too-distant past. It's been a while since I drank a sugary beverage from the waxy cups, but I don't remember any kind of off-flavour.
Wouldn't you think someone pretty small in choosing more long-lived pollution over a "slight bitter flavour"? I would.
Yes, they really are. If by small percentage you mean around 10 to 15%, I can agree.
I have the luxury of walking to and from work, about six minutes one-way. As I walk, I pick up any trash that isn't too far out of the way. Nearly all of it is fast food and junk food wrappers. A small portion is packaging for home-made lunches (ie. sandwich bags). I find the occasional failed exam/assignment and debt collection messages. I honestly can't think of a time that I came across anything that didn't fit into these categories and I've never found anything that was household garbage that escaped the system that moves it to the landfill.
The problem with plastic is that it hangs around for centuries. Which is plenty of time for it to migrate into the seas. To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, there is already more plastic in the seas than fish.
Plastic for single use applications, packaging, and even in textiles (where it is already well on its way to being tiny fibers that can't be controlled) should be curtailed ASAP. The long-term goal should be to drastically reduce all uses of plastic in favour of stuff that can biodegrade once discarded.
The US absolutely can not produce all the oil it needs domestically, even with fracking. The US consumes approximately 20 million barrels of oil per day and imports just over half of that. Doubling domestic oil production is just not something that the US can do. Even if it could (it can't) that production would require a huge investment and would be very short-lived.
More to your meaning, the US could probably live without imports from the middle-east (about 2.6 million barrels of oil per day). It would be immensely painful. Certainly, many many countries would like to see the US pull out of the region, but I think US interests in the region have as much to do with the Jewish community's strong connection to Israel as oil interests.
Your comment is absolutely true. There are radical environmentalists that fit your description perfectly. Mind you, they are so rare that they aren't worth worrying about.
Using wind will alter the natural balance of wind currents... but not in any sort of significant way, especially weighed against sticking with fossil fuels.
The fact that you were expecting someone to point out the negatives of using wind for shipping is worrying, especially given your signature. It's like you are just primed and ready to rage. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
How many scientists engaged in climate science research understand even the basics of the Carbon Cycle?
[...]
Given that the first topic in my first university course on climate change was The Carbon Cycle, my bet is that nearly all climate scientists have a fairly well-developed understanding of the Carbon Cycle.
So much of science and scientific publishing relies on what I cynically call "argument by authority" -- someone got some claim past peer review so I will cite it without having to defend it to the reviewers of my paper.[...]
"Argument by Authority" is a well known logical fallacy, in which most scientists are well-versed. Argument by Authority is particularly egregious when the argument is by someone who isn't an authority at all, yet claims to be. This is common in more main stream media, including the kinds of crappy general interest books you can find at your local big box stores, like the ones on fad diets, but is incredibly rare in reputable scientific journals.
The fact is that if a scientist can over-throw an argument made by an authority in a field, they get a tremendous amount of respect, probably becoming authorities in the field as a result. The same goes for over-throwing the scientific consensus. That's the thing about scientists, we really like pushing understanding forward. That's the focus of our work.
Now your comment is instructive on logical fallacies, because your own arguments are absolutely packed with them. Your main problem is motivated reasoning (ie. proving your foregone conclusion), and that you are anomaly hunting, but you are also way behind on the literature, if you have any first-hand exposure to it at all. This means that you make several assertions that simply aren't true: It is well understood that and how the ocean's are absorbing the bulk of carbon emissions. The atmospheric and oceanic isotope ratios are well understood and continue to support our climate models, including absorption of the oceons. The seasonal variations due to the actions of biological systems are also well-understood. In short, the disagreement you see simply does not exist, the dominant models are supported by observation to an amazing degree.
All of this would be covered in detail in any university-level introductory climate change course. If you want to do some reading, I'd recommend Global Climate Change: Convergence of Disciplines, by Arnold Bloom. Honestly, if you can't at least give a common textbook on a well-developed field a read, you'd best just put your faith in the scientific consensus.
Also, if you have a criminal breaking in, a home invasion, they are likely armed. I'd like to have the option to also be armed,
You may want the option. You may even want to be armed. But you definitely do not want the home invader to realise you are armed unless you strongly expect that lives are being threatened.
Think about it. If only the invader is armed, he is in control and you don't represent much of a threat to him. He can take your wallet, or whatever property he is after, and go on his way. If you are armed as well, and he knows it, then he is threatened and much more likely to pull the trigger. This is why law enforcement recommends that you cooperate. It reduces the risk that you will be harmed. Only when reasonably sure that the invader wants to do you harm, rather than just obtain property, does it make sense to bring another firearm into the situation.
And as a member of the rest of the world, living in a country where we still have gun rights, but have to be trained, tested, and licensed to possess a firearm, I certainly don't envy Americans' on the gun issue. More like pity.
As someone who unintentionally found himself spear-heading a move to ChromeBooks in two school authorities, has two kids in the school system who use ChromeBooks daily, and a wife who teaches two students with ChromeBooks, I have to disagree with two of your points.
I agree with the privacy problem. It is a big negative and, in my view, disqualified the platform. Unfortunately, I was over-ruled...twice.
They are absolutely not mostly useless. The software options are quite decent because there are so many cloud-based tools, and it gets better all the time.
The tools available on Windows laptop in schools are generally more decrepit because schools can't afford the licensing and don't have the staff to maintain the software. And as someone who is constantly interacting with organizations, Google's tools are everywhere, including a large provincial bank. They reflect real world usage.
Chromebooks completely changed the classroom, arguably more than digital whiteboards. I would have preferred a bunch of pure Linux laptops, but could never have afforded the time to manage them in addition to the administration's Windows boxes. Deploying a few hundred Chromebooks was incredibly painless.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and that's exactly what the paper's authors looked at.
However, this is a draft paper, and hasn't made it through the peer-review process. I've had a couple of papers that were drastically transformed by the peer-review process. It would be interesting to track down this paper if it gets published. My bet is that the suggestion of an artificial explanation to the acceleration will be very much toned down, if not removed entirely.
I remember those on-stage demos and seeing them repeated on one of the local tech TV shows. The big gains were on a few filters (one was lens flare) which were optimized for the PPC architecture. The difference on the optimized filters was stark, but the rest of the comparisons were pretty...comparable.
But tech is a horse race...without a finish line. Intel's MMX came out, and that was that.
Where is this researcher asking for more research dollars? I'm not seeing it.
I am seeing the part where he is asking for protections on the remaining wilderness areas. See like a good idea to avoid collapse of biological systems.
Reading isn't as tough as you might think. But you don't get paid to read, just to comment. Is that correct, AC?
Nuclear energy hasn't replaced fossil fuels because it is massively more expensive than fossil fuels, especially in the USA where wild mismanagement and corruption in large construction projects is so prevalent. This is well quantified, to the point that it was covered in detail in a course on water management that I took a couple of years ago. The studies were on the building of dams. It turns out that small really is beautiful.
Besides, no new construction of nuclear power plants has happened since the 70s. One of the last two NPPs to go into production took 9 years after construction was complete. The other took 23 years from ground-breaking to commercial production. To investors, that is a huge risk. When compared to combined cycle natural gas fired electrical generation and, more recently, wind and solar generation, nuclear just isn't a good option.
Clearly, this isn't a partisan issue as both parties have had power many times since the 70s.
You are either joking, making a subtle and important point, or have been misinformed.
The catastrophes have been happening for quite some time. The ripple affects of these catastrophes have affected much of humanity and those affects are becoming harder to ignore.
Exactly. I've been wondering if the ACs, which tend strongly towards denialism and conspiracy theories, are organized in some way. If Slashdot logs the IP associated with a post we could learn a great deal.
My suspicion is that several organized groups are hitting the comments on many sites, but I need evidence to form a conclusion...just like I did with climate change.
We would then be executing a great many people that became addicted to opiates due to an injury and following the advice of their doctor. My buddy is a psychologist and 9 out of 10 of his clinic's clients are addicts, three-quarters of whom became addicted under the care of a doctor for treatment of an injury or chronic pain.
I'm a Canadian that has never used recreational drugs (excepting alcohol) and has no plans to change. I'm pretty enthused about the upcoming change in legality for marijuana. It's not like it will make it any easier to obtain the stuff as it is already pervasive. Even in the small town where I live, one can have pretty much any recreational drug, and definitely marijuana, delivered to one's door quicker, and less expensively, than a couple of pizza.
If legalization goes well for Canada, and I expect it will, the rest of the world will follow.
Yes. Optimizing one variable is always tremendously easy. But that's not what they were trying to do. The article is worth a read.
Can you really not see the connection between inefficient software and environmental harm? All those computers running code that uses four times as much data, and four times the number crunching, as is reasonable? That excess RAM and storage has to be built as well as powered along with the CPU. Those material and electrical resources have to come from somewhere.
But the calculus changes completely when the software manufacturer hosts the software (or pays for the hosting) for their customers. Our projected AWS bill motivated our management to let me write the sort of efficient code I've been trained to write. After two years of maintaining some pretty horrible legacy code, it is a welcome change.
The big players care a great deal about efficiency when they can't outsource inefficiency to the user's computing resources.
What natural cause would produce plastics found in and on flying insects? In this case, correlation absolutely does mean causation, because there can be man-made plastics are the only possible explanation. But stick to your conspiracy theories. You are in good company.
I'm surprised he didn't wait until late October to make that jab. The timing could make for a knock-out on November 6th.
I used a Palm Pilot for my last two undergrad semesters in university. Besides not being able to mix drawing and text, I loved it. Once I was done with school and tied to a workstation in a cubicle, I completely stopped using it. But ever since cell phones became smart, I've been yearning for styli to become ubiquitous. Apple going this route may help with that. I mean, if other manufacturers have been adopting the, obviously stupid, notch...
The first generation Galaxy Note almost had me when I got to try a demo for a month, but it wasn't quite there. The price of the Notes has kept me from buying in. I'd welcome more competition in stylus-equipped smartphones.
But maybe I'm the only one that sees promise in being able to scribble on a shared piece of virtual paper with a work group spread across the globe?
You have wonderfully highlighted the difference between serious scientific measurement, where the method is provided and error in measurements is quantified, and pure blathering, which is what you are doing.
See, if you looked into this at all, which is what this wonderful technology called the internet allows with minimal effort, you'd see that there is real data backing the Earth Overshoot Day estimate. In fact, their data is covered by a creative commons license so you can go over it with a fine-toothed comb and make constructive criticisms or contribute improvements.
But you didn't do that. Instead, you just called it "Pure Propaganda" without bothering to back up your statement. Your statements, sir, are much closer to propaganda.
To be fair, the most accessible parts of their material are dumbed down for a general audience, and I don't like that a bit of digging finds Schneider Electric as a prominent sponsor of the project's data source, but the message is completely fair: Mankind is running up against resource limits.
Worked as a technology director for a school authority. Most of the people I served were great. Many didn't understand the balancing act I had getting the necessary work done with the resources I had. A few selfish idiots were always complaining. Long hours. A tech department that was too small. Unhelpful management. The work was interesting but the politics were not. The usual story. But I was successful at building robust systems for a pittance. Over a couple of years, my department pulled the entire school authority out of the stone age.
Two years in I felt I would burn out in five.
Then we got a new top dog who was a micro-manager and intent on showing that he was in complete control. This was disappointing, but not all that foreign to me. Unfortunately, the fellow was pretty dim, didn't understand privacy laws, and brought along his entire working directory from his previous school authority, including a bunch of staff and students' personal information. This made the act of moving it from one school authority to another illegal. Long story short: I chose to politely and quietly let on that I understood that the issue needed to be dealt with, a simple matter that would only put a bit of egg on his face. I was fully aware that he might see this as an attack and choose to retaliate rather than admit any fault. Sure enough, I was done a few days later. I then reported the problem to the appropriate authorities. Again, he chose to retaliate. Lawyers were involved. It dragged on for more than a year and was quite stressful, but I ultimately emerged mentally intact and financially unscathed.
The unfortunate lesson I learned was not to care so much about my work. I now view the systems and relationships I build like sand castles built below the high-tide line.
Having talked to quite a few other whistle-blowers, I'm pretty wary of the public sector as well. There are plenty of sharks in those waters.
Here's a powerful interest for you: Value.
Solar generation, including storage, has fallen to the point that it is often the cheapest option. Cheaper than coal (which isn't all that cheap) and significantly less than natural gas peaker plants. 10-year production contracts at under 3 cents per kWh are the norm.
But don't believe me. Do a bit of googling or check out this.
You are correct that there are powerful interests on both sides, but both will soon disappear. The green energy advocates will be unnecessary because they will be the norm. The fossil fuelled electrical generation interests will be too busy talking to bankruptcy lawyers to bother anyone else. (Yes, there's some hyperbole in this paragraph, but some truth too.)
There's so much more media than one could possibly consume, with left or right narratives, that one can choose only that which supports their preference. And that's a problem.
I try to watch a bit of both camps to mix things up. But both Fox and MSNBC's Trump coverage make me lose my appetite. More Fox than MSNBC, but still...
And that's just televised news. Social media makes me violently ill.
Plastic is long-lived pollution, even and especially in landfills. Replacing plastic straws with a biodegradable alternative is a clear win. The personal responsibility angle is a red herring.
So I attended and volunteered at a Father's Day pancake breakfast for a local charity this weekend. Emptying the trash got me thinking about how it could be done better. I wanted the food scraps for my compost pile. (We have a 1500 square-foot garden.) We might get some folk to separate the plastic cups and utensils from the compostables, but not all. So I looked into sourcing compostable utensils and cups, and there are loads of practical and affordable offerings. So next year, I'll be able to take all of their "garbage" and throw it in the compost bin.
Change isn't that hard once you stop fighting the idea of change.
Aren't the paper cups impregnated in wax? They certainly were in the not-too-distant past. It's been a while since I drank a sugary beverage from the waxy cups, but I don't remember any kind of off-flavour.
Wouldn't you think someone pretty small in choosing more long-lived pollution over a "slight bitter flavour"? I would.
Yes, they really are. If by small percentage you mean around 10 to 15%, I can agree.
I have the luxury of walking to and from work, about six minutes one-way. As I walk, I pick up any trash that isn't too far out of the way. Nearly all of it is fast food and junk food wrappers. A small portion is packaging for home-made lunches (ie. sandwich bags). I find the occasional failed exam/assignment and debt collection messages. I honestly can't think of a time that I came across anything that didn't fit into these categories and I've never found anything that was household garbage that escaped the system that moves it to the landfill.
The problem with plastic is that it hangs around for centuries. Which is plenty of time for it to migrate into the seas. To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, there is already more plastic in the seas than fish.
Plastic for single use applications, packaging, and even in textiles (where it is already well on its way to being tiny fibers that can't be controlled) should be curtailed ASAP. The long-term goal should be to drastically reduce all uses of plastic in favour of stuff that can biodegrade once discarded.
The US absolutely can not produce all the oil it needs domestically, even with fracking. The US consumes approximately 20 million barrels of oil per day and imports just over half of that. Doubling domestic oil production is just not something that the US can do. Even if it could (it can't) that production would require a huge investment and would be very short-lived.
More to your meaning, the US could probably live without imports from the middle-east (about 2.6 million barrels of oil per day). It would be immensely painful. Certainly, many many countries would like to see the US pull out of the region, but I think US interests in the region have as much to do with the Jewish community's strong connection to Israel as oil interests.
Your comment is absolutely true. There are radical environmentalists that fit your description perfectly. Mind you, they are so rare that they aren't worth worrying about.
I'll bite.
Using wind will alter the natural balance of wind currents... but not in any sort of significant way, especially weighed against sticking with fossil fuels.
The fact that you were expecting someone to point out the negatives of using wind for shipping is worrying, especially given your signature. It's like you are just primed and ready to rage. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
How many scientists engaged in climate science research understand even the basics of the Carbon Cycle?
[...]
Given that the first topic in my first university course on climate change was The Carbon Cycle, my bet is that nearly all climate scientists have a fairly well-developed understanding of the Carbon Cycle.
So much of science and scientific publishing relies on what I cynically call "argument by authority" -- someone got some claim past peer review so I will cite it without having to defend it to the reviewers of my paper.[...]
"Argument by Authority" is a well known logical fallacy, in which most scientists are well-versed. Argument by Authority is particularly egregious when the argument is by someone who isn't an authority at all, yet claims to be. This is common in more main stream media, including the kinds of crappy general interest books you can find at your local big box stores, like the ones on fad diets, but is incredibly rare in reputable scientific journals.
The fact is that if a scientist can over-throw an argument made by an authority in a field, they get a tremendous amount of respect, probably becoming authorities in the field as a result. The same goes for over-throwing the scientific consensus. That's the thing about scientists, we really like pushing understanding forward. That's the focus of our work.
Now your comment is instructive on logical fallacies, because your own arguments are absolutely packed with them. Your main problem is motivated reasoning (ie. proving your foregone conclusion), and that you are anomaly hunting, but you are also way behind on the literature, if you have any first-hand exposure to it at all. This means that you make several assertions that simply aren't true: It is well understood that and how the ocean's are absorbing the bulk of carbon emissions. The atmospheric and oceanic isotope ratios are well understood and continue to support our climate models, including absorption of the oceons. The seasonal variations due to the actions of biological systems are also well-understood. In short, the disagreement you see simply does not exist, the dominant models are supported by observation to an amazing degree.
All of this would be covered in detail in any university-level introductory climate change course. If you want to do some reading, I'd recommend Global Climate Change: Convergence of Disciplines, by Arnold Bloom. Honestly, if you can't at least give a common textbook on a well-developed field a read, you'd best just put your faith in the scientific consensus.
You may want the option. You may even want to be armed. But you definitely do not want the home invader to realise you are armed unless you strongly expect that lives are being threatened.
Think about it. If only the invader is armed, he is in control and you don't represent much of a threat to him. He can take your wallet, or whatever property he is after, and go on his way. If you are armed as well, and he knows it, then he is threatened and much more likely to pull the trigger. This is why law enforcement recommends that you cooperate. It reduces the risk that you will be harmed. Only when reasonably sure that the invader wants to do you harm, rather than just obtain property, does it make sense to bring another firearm into the situation.
And as a member of the rest of the world, living in a country where we still have gun rights, but have to be trained, tested, and licensed to possess a firearm, I certainly don't envy Americans' on the gun issue. More like pity.
As someone who unintentionally found himself spear-heading a move to ChromeBooks in two school authorities, has two kids in the school system who use ChromeBooks daily, and a wife who teaches two students with ChromeBooks, I have to disagree with two of your points.
I agree with the privacy problem. It is a big negative and, in my view, disqualified the platform. Unfortunately, I was over-ruled...twice.
They are absolutely not mostly useless. The software options are quite decent because there are so many cloud-based tools, and it gets better all the time.
The tools available on Windows laptop in schools are generally more decrepit because schools can't afford the licensing and don't have the staff to maintain the software. And as someone who is constantly interacting with organizations, Google's tools are everywhere, including a large provincial bank. They reflect real world usage.
Chromebooks completely changed the classroom, arguably more than digital whiteboards. I would have preferred a bunch of pure Linux laptops, but could never have afforded the time to manage them in addition to the administration's Windows boxes. Deploying a few hundred Chromebooks was incredibly painless.