The Analysis in the spreadsheet is of CO2 levels, not Carbon.
It looks like the spreadsheet is mislabelled, from the page I linked: "Converted to carbon dioxide, so as to include the mass of the oxygen molecules, this amounts to over 33.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide".
Your 33.5 billion metric ton number is complete BS.
The same number is used on the Wikipedia page I linked and in this report from the EU JRC: "After a decline in CO2 emissions in 2009 of 1% (including a correction for the leap year 2008), global emissions have jumped by more than 5% in 2010, which is unprecedented in the last two decades, also the absolute figure of 1.8 billion tonnes of additional CO2, leading to about 33.0 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions for 2010."
Also, your analysis of Mt St Helens is ridiculous. You are citing flows of magma on the surface (lava and so on) and occasional emissions. Not the gas emitted in the eruption itself. Only a small part of the in the magma magma chamber is erupted as solids on the surface. Most volcanoes have several cubic miles of magma in their magma chamber. Of that, the majority of the magma, up to 60% BY VOLUME, is turned into CO2/SO2. That's where the explosive eruption comes from.
As far as I can tell you're pulling those numbers out of your ass, I can't find any evidence to substantiate your claims, you haven't provided any, and everything I do find says you're wrong.
You are probably making a mistake somewhere, but since there are no sources for your numbers, the Carbon Dioxide Information Analsysis Center (CDIAC) says that the world's fuel burning and cement use emitted 9,139 Tg of Carbon into the atmosphere in 2010, that's a little over 33.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.
According to PBS, world carbon dioxide sources break down this way (The EPA has similar numbers):
25.9% - energy supply
19.4% - industry
17.4% - forestry
13.5% - agriculture
13.1% - transportation
7.9% - residential and commerical buildings
2.8% - waste and waste water
So your back of the envelope calculation for human emissions looks like it's based on incorrect assumptions (under estimating because you only considered transportation and only in 2 countries).
If we try to fix the obvious errors and multiply your estimate by 7.7, to get from 13% to 100, that puts us at around 22 billion tons of CO2, which is still lower than the actual measured number. If we also account for only considering two countries (Wikipedia puts the combined emissions of China and the United States at around 41% of world emissions) by multiplying by 2.5, that gives us 55 billion tons of carbon dioxide from your estimate, which is almost double the measured amount. I'm guessing that your estimate of gas used for transportation is actually a little on the high side.
As for the amount of CO2 released by Mt. St. Helens, here's an article about the Eyjafjoell eruption. The estimate places it's emissions at around 150,000 tonnes of CO2 per day. Your calculation would mean the St. Helens eruption produced about 681,818 times the daily emissions of Eyjafjoell. According to wikipedia article on the Mt. St. Helens eruption only about 0.045 cubic miles of new lava was released, which means about the upper limit of CO2 emissions from lava would be about 153 million tonnes, that's for the initial eruption, the subsequent flows produced about an additional 0.05 cubic miles of new lava. That puts the estimate at a little over 300 million tonnes for the upper limit of the emissions using your conversion rates.
It has all been based on computer models, and most of the predictions of those models have been wrong.
Models don't make predictions, they make projections. It's an important distinction. They project what will happen based on scenarios. Most of the stories I've seen about how the "model predictions are wrong" have involved tortured manipulation of the projections, most commonly taking a scenario that didn't occur and comparing it to the scenario that did occur. For example, some people love to take a "high" emissions prediction from 1988 and compare it to subsequent events, however, the decline of the USSR caused a large drop in CO2 emissions which made emissions closer to the "middle" scenario. Why don't they back port actual emission into the model projection? I can only assume because they aren't interested in evaluating the model, they're interested in getting an article published that says "scientists were wrong".
The best estimate is that Mt. St. Helens emitted 200 MILLION metric tons of CO2 during it's eruption, which is about 1% of annual human emissions, which are about 20 BILLION metric tons of CO2 per year (8 billion tons of Carbon).
This is why it's important to keep your units straight.
I'd say that "sterilisation" is a "negative" impact on the biosphere, in that it destroys the biosphere. Furthermore, any event that causes a major loss in biodiversity can reasonably be categorised as "negative" as well, because we should be able to agree that a diverse biosphere that supports higher level creatures (such as humans) is a "positive" thing and that making the biosphere more fragile is therefore sufficiently "negative".
The biosphere may not care if it's extinguished, but fortunately, we don't need to ask it's opinion on the matter, we have brains that we can use to reason for ourselves.
I know this is pedantic, but the planet has continued warming over the last 15 years, however the La Nina dominated weather has been pushing most of the additional heat energy into the ocean, instead of the atmosphere, where the warming is much less visible to the average human.
Of course, if we control for the ENSO (El Nino and La Nina variations) cycle's temporary atmospheric effects, the atmosphere does show a warming trend. If I remember correctly, El Nino events tend to temporarily increase atmospheric temperatures by 0.2 C and La Nina events tend to temporarily decrease atmospheric temperatures by 0.2 C. Since those variations are approximately equal to the decadal warming signal, they can easily mask or exaggerate the short term trend.
Maybe the U.S. needs to make a new rule: He who authorises the maintenance gets to have their name painted on the side bridge/road. Of course, then the bridges would get repainted and the roads repaved every 2 years...
While global warming is expected to aggravate a number of weather conditions both in degree and frequency, these weather conditions, such as extreme heat waves would still be expected to happen even in the absence of global warming.
It's important to remember the climate change affects the probability of extreme events and changes the distribution of what events occur. For example, as the world warms, heat waves become ever warmer. Compared to a baseline of 1951-1980 weather we are already seeing seasons that are 4 sigmas above the baseline, and will soon be seeing seasons that are 5 sigmas above the baseline. Normally, 5 sigma events are be so rare (1 in 2,000,000) that they are the standard used for evidence in particle physics.
This particular issue, no. However, Canada has other issues based on receding permafrost and other effects. Climate change is expected to cost the Government of Canada about $5 billion in direct costs by the end of the decade and between $21 billion and $43 billion by 2050.
I expect the story is pretty much the same around the world, that countries are facing infrastructure costs related to the changing climate.
Ron Paul is the only hope we have to cast off our corporate overlords.
Oh really? His new "Internet Freedom" campaign is all about giving corporations the freedom to restrict the Internet in the name of profits. If he's fighting "our corporate overlords" by campaigning to give them even more power, I think he's doing it wrong.
Really? By what mechanism can the Federal Reserve, all by itself, without consent or support from the president, bail out banks, investment banks, homeowners, and auto companies?
Interest free loans made by the Federal reserve: Citigroup - $2.513 trillion Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion Bank of America - $1.344 trillion Barclays PLC - $868 billion Bear Sterns - $853 billion Goldman Sachs - $814 billion Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion Deutsche Bank - $354 billion UBS - $287 billion Credit Suisse - $262 billion Lehman Brothers - $183 billion Bank of Scotland - $181 billion BNP Paribas - $175 billion Wells Fargo - $159 billion Dexia - $159 billion Wachovia - $142 billion Dresdner Bank - $135 billion Societe Generale - $124 billion "All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion
Now, can you put some meat into your claim that Romney could be a disaster for the country? I really don't see on which dimension he could be worse than Obama.
You must be lacking in imagination, all Romney needs to do is trigger another recession to be worse than Obama, and he could easily do that with any of the big Republican policies. Romney has a number of billionaire backers who want him to cut taxes for the very rich even further than they already are. With the help of a Republican congress and senate he could very well cut the rates even further and increase the debt (doing so would probably trigger an across the board downgrade of the U.S. debt, but since he can insulate himself and his wealthy patrons from paying the costs, why should they care?). Sharp cuts to government spending are particularly likely to trigger another recession, something that the Tea Party base wants to see because they really know nothing of economics. Romney's also promised to start a War with Iran, it's stupid, but I didn't think Bush would invade Iraq in 2000, either. Bush taught me one great lesson: the greater evil can be pretty damn bad.
Or in other words, Romney could be worse than Obama on every dimension. Romney has a history of enriching himself at everyone else's expense, what makes you think he will act any different as President?
What Romney's backers want is the elimination of federal pollution regulations, billion dollar earmarks, and reduced taxes. If he wins, they will likely get what they want.
No, sorry, I don't even give you that much intellectual credit.
Of course, you don't. I suppose there are too many plebeians leeching off your greatness for you to ever blossom out of your mother's basement.
And from that you somehow conclude that any criticism of one candidate automatically translates into an endorsement of the other?
Not all, however, only a pedantic fool would challenge "it was the least worse option" without intending to endorse the other option. So are you an idiot or just argumentative?
Your know, if you had said "You want to know why the economy hasn't recovered slower? Obama's policies are part of the reason." It would have had exactly the same amount of intellectual rigour as you used to demonstrate your actual point, in other words, none. It's easy to be an arm-chair economic quarterback because none of your recommendations will ever matter.
Of course, most of the bank bail outs were done while Bush was President and most of it was actually done by the Federal Reserve which the President has no control over. But frankly, I don't expect you to actually demonstrate knowledge or understanding because you write like a particularly pretentious free market fool.
Why is this relevant? Assessing the failures of the Obama presidency doesn't imply that one thinks McCain would have been better or that one should vote for Romney.
Because in the American political system, it's always a choice between the lesser of two evils. Why? Because with only two viable choices you will never get a perfect candidate, so you choose the best (or least worst) candidate. Additionally, it's important to remember that while you think Obama went too far, almost half of Americans think he didn't go far enough.
We haven't had an "economic collapse", we have had a recession; they happen quite regularly all by themselves.
That was no normal recession. The world is still struggling with the consequences of it, 4 years later. The "economic collapse" I was referring to was the toxic asset market which requires trillions of dollars in loans and bailouts to prevent a depression.
The idea that they are "brought to you" by anybody is itself a misguided outgrowth of a view of economics rooted in central planning.
Yes, I know, everyone who disagrees with you is a communist. Care to indulge in any more Randian fantasies?
Frankly, Romney can't be any worse than that either.
Foolish, ignorant words. Romney could do much, much worse.
The majority of Republicans aren't racists, but if you're a racist, chances are you're a Republican.
There are lots of reason for that, but the most obvious one is that the Republicans tolerate racism more than the democrats because it helps them get the old, white vote (which is their current voting base).
The only problem with your comment is that it's completely wrong. Other countries that have more "fascist and socialist" medical system cost less to both society and the individual. It's getting to the point where the other developed nations are paying about half what the U.S. pays for health care for similar (or better) outcomes.
Here's the text of the 16th Amendment: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
It was specifically passed with the intention to make income taxes constitutional by amending the constitution to allow them. In other words, you couldn't be more wrong.
Sorry, but I also disagree with you. There is small but vocal group of libertarians on Slashdot and an overlapping vocal group of Ron Paul supporters but I'm convinced from observation that they are both small minorities. They are, perhaps, larger in comparison to what you would find on other sites with different demographics but Ron Paul supporters are a definitely a minority of Slashdot posters.
The pro-Ron Paul group's voice is magnified because they tend toward boorish krankerism which means they never shut up about their dear leader, but you should be careful to not confuse a small but loud group with a large group.
Of course you can't blame the president for everything that happens in the economy, but his policies haven't been effective.
Of course, his policies might have been more effective if they had actually been enacted. Since 2009, the primary goal of the Republican party has been to deny Obama any public policy victories regardless of the cost to Americans.
I don't think you understand the problem: on all but one of those issues the Republicans say Obama didn't go far enough (apparently only Republicans are allowed to deny FOIA requests).
Obama has his faults, but McCain has since shown repeatedly that he would be worse on all of those issues than Obama and I sincerely doubt Romney would do any better. Frankly, Romney appears to be another figure head who will take the blame for the policies implemented in his name by the same team that brought you the 2008 economic collapse. It seems to me that Romney wants to be president for the prestige, and that's a dangerous quality in a presidential candidate. It's the root cause of why Bush was such an awful president.
Because "keeping it secret from other nations" is exactly the same as "keeping it secret from our own people" and is used for the exact same reason, doing unethical things that neither your own people nor other nation's people would like.
The difference is entirely in what you say to justify hiding your misdeeds, there is no practical difference.
That was then, recently a U.S. military hearing tried to sentence a Canadian citizen to 40 years of prison (on top of the already 10 years spent in custody) for killing a U.S. medic during a fire fight in Afghanistan despite the fact that the defendant was 15 and injured at the time (he was shot three times in the back during the fire fight). The sentence was longer than the one requested by the prosecution and the evidence to support the conviction was a confession extracted under torture which was allowed as evidence by the "judge".
I have zero confidence that the U.S. system believes in justice any more, especially for people who are not U.S. citizens and I'm not alone in that view. Compounded with the fact that multiple American politicians have called for Assange's execution for "treason" against the U.S. and there is significant reason to doubt that he'd ever see a fair trial. That the real problem with all this torture for hire, special prisons, black ops, CIA stuff. It tarnishes your reputation, and soon people expect your country to murder innocent people because it's convenient. Maybe he would get one after all, however, no one who might have to face the consequences would ever want to take that risk.
Slashdot Mirror
The Analysis in the spreadsheet is of CO2 levels, not Carbon.
It looks like the spreadsheet is mislabelled, from the page I linked: "Converted to carbon dioxide, so as to include the mass of the oxygen molecules, this amounts to over 33.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide".
Your 33.5 billion metric ton number is complete BS.
The same number is used on the Wikipedia page I linked and in this report from the EU JRC: "After a decline in CO2 emissions in 2009 of 1% (including a correction for the leap year 2008), global emissions have jumped by more than 5% in 2010, which is unprecedented in the last two decades, also the absolute figure of 1.8 billion tonnes of additional CO2, leading to about 33.0 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions for 2010."
Also, your analysis of Mt St Helens is ridiculous. You are citing flows of magma on the surface (lava and so on) and occasional emissions. Not the gas emitted in the eruption itself. Only a small part of the in the magma magma chamber is erupted as solids on the surface. Most volcanoes have several cubic miles of magma in their magma chamber. Of that, the majority of the magma, up to 60% BY VOLUME, is turned into CO2/SO2. That's where the explosive eruption comes from.
As far as I can tell you're pulling those numbers out of your ass, I can't find any evidence to substantiate your claims, you haven't provided any, and everything I do find says you're wrong.
You are probably making a mistake somewhere, but since there are no sources for your numbers, the Carbon Dioxide Information Analsysis Center (CDIAC) says that the world's fuel burning and cement use emitted 9,139 Tg of Carbon into the atmosphere in 2010, that's a little over 33.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.
According to PBS, world carbon dioxide sources break down this way (The EPA has similar numbers):
So your back of the envelope calculation for human emissions looks like it's based on incorrect assumptions (under estimating because you only considered transportation and only in 2 countries).
If we try to fix the obvious errors and multiply your estimate by 7.7, to get from 13% to 100, that puts us at around 22 billion tons of CO2, which is still lower than the actual measured number. If we also account for only considering two countries (Wikipedia puts the combined emissions of China and the United States at around 41% of world emissions) by multiplying by 2.5, that gives us 55 billion tons of carbon dioxide from your estimate, which is almost double the measured amount. I'm guessing that your estimate of gas used for transportation is actually a little on the high side.
As for the amount of CO2 released by Mt. St. Helens, here's an article about the Eyjafjoell eruption. The estimate places it's emissions at around 150,000 tonnes of CO2 per day. Your calculation would mean the St. Helens eruption produced about 681,818 times the daily emissions of Eyjafjoell. According to wikipedia article on the Mt. St. Helens eruption only about 0.045 cubic miles of new lava was released, which means about the upper limit of CO2 emissions from lava would be about 153 million tonnes, that's for the initial eruption, the subsequent flows produced about an additional 0.05 cubic miles of new lava. That puts the estimate at a little over 300 million tonnes for the upper limit of the emissions using your conversion rates.
It has all been based on computer models, and most of the predictions of those models have been wrong.
Models don't make predictions, they make projections. It's an important distinction. They project what will happen based on scenarios. Most of the stories I've seen about how the "model predictions are wrong" have involved tortured manipulation of the projections, most commonly taking a scenario that didn't occur and comparing it to the scenario that did occur. For example, some people love to take a "high" emissions prediction from 1988 and compare it to subsequent events, however, the decline of the USSR caused a large drop in CO2 emissions which made emissions closer to the "middle" scenario. Why don't they back port actual emission into the model projection? I can only assume because they aren't interested in evaluating the model, they're interested in getting an article published that says "scientists were wrong".
The best estimate is that Mt. St. Helens emitted 200 MILLION metric tons of CO2 during it's eruption, which is about 1% of annual human emissions, which are about 20 BILLION metric tons of CO2 per year (8 billion tons of Carbon).
This is why it's important to keep your units straight.
I'd say that "sterilisation" is a "negative" impact on the biosphere, in that it destroys the biosphere. Furthermore, any event that causes a major loss in biodiversity can reasonably be categorised as "negative" as well, because we should be able to agree that a diverse biosphere that supports higher level creatures (such as humans) is a "positive" thing and that making the biosphere more fragile is therefore sufficiently "negative".
The biosphere may not care if it's extinguished, but fortunately, we don't need to ask it's opinion on the matter, we have brains that we can use to reason for ourselves.
Well, you know what they say, sociopaths form 25% of the prison population and 100% of the CEO population.
I know this is pedantic, but the planet has continued warming over the last 15 years, however the La Nina dominated weather has been pushing most of the additional heat energy into the ocean, instead of the atmosphere, where the warming is much less visible to the average human.
Of course, if we control for the ENSO (El Nino and La Nina variations) cycle's temporary atmospheric effects, the atmosphere does show a warming trend. If I remember correctly, El Nino events tend to temporarily increase atmospheric temperatures by 0.2 C and La Nina events tend to temporarily decrease atmospheric temperatures by 0.2 C. Since those variations are approximately equal to the decadal warming signal, they can easily mask or exaggerate the short term trend.
You can be inarticulate and still be right.
But would anyone know?
Maybe the U.S. needs to make a new rule: He who authorises the maintenance gets to have their name painted on the side bridge/road. Of course, then the bridges would get repainted and the roads repaved every 2 years...
While global warming is expected to aggravate a number of weather conditions both in degree and frequency, these weather conditions, such as extreme heat waves would still be expected to happen even in the absence of global warming.
That's not quite true. One of the major issues with global warming is that it is affecting the probability of these events occurring and making new events, which were effectively impossible, possible.
It's important to remember the climate change affects the probability of extreme events and changes the distribution of what events occur. For example, as the world warms, heat waves become ever warmer. Compared to a baseline of 1951-1980 weather we are already seeing seasons that are 4 sigmas above the baseline, and will soon be seeing seasons that are 5 sigmas above the baseline. Normally, 5 sigma events are be so rare (1 in 2,000,000) that they are the standard used for evidence in particle physics.
This particular issue, no. However, Canada has other issues based on receding permafrost and other effects. Climate change is expected to cost the Government of Canada about $5 billion in direct costs by the end of the decade and between $21 billion and $43 billion by 2050.
I expect the story is pretty much the same around the world, that countries are facing infrastructure costs related to the changing climate.
Ron Paul is the only hope we have to cast off our corporate overlords.
Oh really? His new "Internet Freedom" campaign is all about giving corporations the freedom to restrict the Internet in the name of profits. If he's fighting "our corporate overlords" by campaigning to give them even more power, I think he's doing it wrong.
The 's' stands for simpletons who can't spell speech, yet insist on lecturing other people about how important it is.
Really? By what mechanism can the Federal Reserve, all by itself, without consent or support from the president, bail out banks, investment banks, homeowners, and auto companies?
Interest free loans made by the Federal reserve:
Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC - $868 billion
Bear Sterns - $853 billion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
UBS - $287 billion
Credit Suisse - $262 billion
Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
BNP Paribas - $175 billion
Wells Fargo - $159 billion
Dexia - $159 billion
Wachovia - $142 billion
Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
Societe Generale - $124 billion
"All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion
Now, can you put some meat into your claim that Romney could be a disaster for the country? I really don't see on which dimension he could be worse than Obama.
You must be lacking in imagination, all Romney needs to do is trigger another recession to be worse than Obama, and he could easily do that with any of the big Republican policies. Romney has a number of billionaire backers who want him to cut taxes for the very rich even further than they already are. With the help of a Republican congress and senate he could very well cut the rates even further and increase the debt (doing so would probably trigger an across the board downgrade of the U.S. debt, but since he can insulate himself and his wealthy patrons from paying the costs, why should they care?). Sharp cuts to government spending are particularly likely to trigger another recession, something that the Tea Party base wants to see because they really know nothing of economics. Romney's also promised to start a War with Iran, it's stupid, but I didn't think Bush would invade Iraq in 2000, either. Bush taught me one great lesson: the greater evil can be pretty damn bad.
Or in other words, Romney could be worse than Obama on every dimension. Romney has a history of enriching himself at everyone else's expense, what makes you think he will act any different as President?
What Romney's backers want is the elimination of federal pollution regulations, billion dollar earmarks, and reduced taxes. If he wins, they will likely get what they want.
No, sorry, I don't even give you that much intellectual credit.
Of course, you don't. I suppose there are too many plebeians leeching off your greatness for you to ever blossom out of your mother's basement.
And from that you somehow conclude that any criticism of one candidate automatically translates into an endorsement of the other?
Not all, however, only a pedantic fool would challenge "it was the least worse option" without intending to endorse the other option. So are you an idiot or just argumentative?
Your know, if you had said "You want to know why the economy hasn't recovered slower? Obama's policies are part of the reason." It would have had exactly the same amount of intellectual rigour as you used to demonstrate your actual point, in other words, none. It's easy to be an arm-chair economic quarterback because none of your recommendations will ever matter.
Of course, most of the bank bail outs were done while Bush was President and most of it was actually done by the Federal Reserve which the President has no control over. But frankly, I don't expect you to actually demonstrate knowledge or understanding because you write like a particularly pretentious free market fool.
Why is this relevant? Assessing the failures of the Obama presidency doesn't imply that one thinks McCain would have been better or that one should vote for Romney.
Because in the American political system, it's always a choice between the lesser of two evils. Why? Because with only two viable choices you will never get a perfect candidate, so you choose the best (or least worst) candidate. Additionally, it's important to remember that while you think Obama went too far, almost half of Americans think he didn't go far enough.
We haven't had an "economic collapse", we have had a recession; they happen quite regularly all by themselves.
That was no normal recession. The world is still struggling with the consequences of it, 4 years later. The "economic collapse" I was referring to was the toxic asset market which requires trillions of dollars in loans and bailouts to prevent a depression.
The idea that they are "brought to you" by anybody is itself a misguided outgrowth of a view of economics rooted in central planning.
Yes, I know, everyone who disagrees with you is a communist. Care to indulge in any more Randian fantasies?
Frankly, Romney can't be any worse than that either.
Foolish, ignorant words. Romney could do much, much worse.
The majority of Republicans aren't racists, but if you're a racist, chances are you're a Republican.
There are lots of reason for that, but the most obvious one is that the Republicans tolerate racism more than the democrats because it helps them get the old, white vote (which is their current voting base).
I'm not sure I'd count him as friend, maybe more of a temporary ally.
The only problem with your comment is that it's completely wrong. Other countries that have more "fascist and socialist" medical system cost less to both society and the individual. It's getting to the point where the other developed nations are paying about half what the U.S. pays for health care for similar (or better) outcomes.
Here's the text of the 16th Amendment:
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
It was specifically passed with the intention to make income taxes constitutional by amending the constitution to allow them. In other words, you couldn't be more wrong.
Sorry, but I also disagree with you. There is small but vocal group of libertarians on Slashdot and an overlapping vocal group of Ron Paul supporters but I'm convinced from observation that they are both small minorities. They are, perhaps, larger in comparison to what you would find on other sites with different demographics but Ron Paul supporters are a definitely a minority of Slashdot posters.
The pro-Ron Paul group's voice is magnified because they tend toward boorish krankerism which means they never shut up about their dear leader, but you should be careful to not confuse a small but loud group with a large group.
Of course you can't blame the president for everything that happens in the economy, but his policies haven't been effective.
Of course, his policies might have been more effective if they had actually been enacted. Since 2009, the primary goal of the Republican party has been to deny Obama any public policy victories regardless of the cost to Americans.
I don't think you understand the problem: on all but one of those issues the Republicans say Obama didn't go far enough (apparently only Republicans are allowed to deny FOIA requests).
Obama has his faults, but McCain has since shown repeatedly that he would be worse on all of those issues than Obama and I sincerely doubt Romney would do any better. Frankly, Romney appears to be another figure head who will take the blame for the policies implemented in his name by the same team that brought you the 2008 economic collapse. It seems to me that Romney wants to be president for the prestige, and that's a dangerous quality in a presidential candidate. It's the root cause of why Bush was such an awful president.
Because "keeping it secret from other nations" is exactly the same as "keeping it secret from our own people" and is used for the exact same reason, doing unethical things that neither your own people nor other nation's people would like.
The difference is entirely in what you say to justify hiding your misdeeds, there is no practical difference.
That was then, recently a U.S. military hearing tried to sentence a Canadian citizen to 40 years of prison (on top of the already 10 years spent in custody) for killing a U.S. medic during a fire fight in Afghanistan despite the fact that the defendant was 15 and injured at the time (he was shot three times in the back during the fire fight). The sentence was longer than the one requested by the prosecution and the evidence to support the conviction was a confession extracted under torture which was allowed as evidence by the "judge".
I have zero confidence that the U.S. system believes in justice any more, especially for people who are not U.S. citizens and I'm not alone in that view. Compounded with the fact that multiple American politicians have called for Assange's execution for "treason" against the U.S. and there is significant reason to doubt that he'd ever see a fair trial. That the real problem with all this torture for hire, special prisons, black ops, CIA stuff. It tarnishes your reputation, and soon people expect your country to murder innocent people because it's convenient. Maybe he would get one after all, however, no one who might have to face the consequences would ever want to take that risk.