Except that really you'll get all but very new releases for $10 - $15 ( or €5 - €10 over here ). €5 is more or less my impulse buy price point - as a result I've a fair amount of DVD's. I think it's the same for most people, especially because Blu-Ray's are generally twice the price of a given DVD
Hmmm, that certainly makes more sense - any writings on this I've read have referred to tipping points as points after which positive feedback mechanisms kick in and it has never made sense to me such positive feedbacks that led to runaway global warming could be as boundless as the various authors suggested.
It's not us denial: Even if it's happening it's nature, the billions of tonnes of CO we've released can't possibly have an effect
An interesting way of putting it - it's certainly not in the category of what you name the Full out denial. It's also clear what side of the fence you're on too:)
You could just a validly say "The tiny percentage of CO2 we've released compared to the overall levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and the sheer volume of the atmosphere cannot possibly have had an effect". I have yet to be convinced that CO2 emissions alone are having a significant effect on global temperatures. Many other things that we do are having massive effects, to be sure - soot production and deforestation are the most serious environmental issues to my mind. CO2 production may also affect oceanic acidity, which worries me far more than warming.
I don't really run into many people who believes there will be a catastrophic (run-away) temperature feedback like the one on Venus... imagine we hit a tipping point and temperature warms rapidly for a bit.... Then there's the water level rise that might cause, what happens if we hit a tipping point and in we have a large sea level rise over the course of a few years?
I snipped a fair bit in the middle here.
The problem with this is that tipping points imply that there are levels after which runaway effects will occur. You've proposed that there may be natural systems that will eventually stop the warming but if, as predicted, CO2->increase in temperature->more CO2->increase in temperature->etc...and anthropogenic emissions cause CO2 production to overwhelm the systems that regulate atmospheric CO2 levels, then you will get runaway warming and the end result is Venusian, unless you're speculating even further about an unknown system that will bring it all back into balance. An anthropogenic "sudden jump of a couple degrees of local warming" is more than possible, mind you, the urban heat island effect is the simplest example. A global significant anthropogenic effect on overall climate due to CO2 emissions is much less certain.
If you're proposing tipping points you're either speculating about a further brake, or you're ending up with Venus. In the first case, why doesn't the brake kick in earlier, and in the second case, given that both temperature and CO2 levels have been higher in the past, why hasn't it already happened.
I really hope not. Everyone seems to be avoiding the chinese's elephant in the room, which is that due to their strict population control and the cultural obsession with male children, within 100 years there will be possible revolution, probable population collapse and certain social unrest. Zap Brannigan's "wave after wave of people" approach might have to be used to cut down on the single males.
The major worry is what the Chinese will do in this situation - historically the result of both internal social unrest and population pressure has been warfare (you gotta get rid of those ornery single males somehow).
Before everyone starts shouting that Hurricanes happen every year look at the averages. When is the last time that many people were displaced in the US by a Hurricane?
First of all, hundreds of thousands were displaced by Katrina because public officials in New Orleans did not maintain vital flood defenses and the city is largely below the water level. Claiming this is a result of climate change is the same as claiming that the tidal waves and earthquakes that caused such damage in Haiti, New Zealand and Japan were because of climate change. They weren't.
There's been displacements in Australia due to the worst drought in a thousand years
Citation please. Australia is the most arid continent on the planet. It is equally likely that it was colonized during a period of relative wetness as the drought is exceptional.
places like Bangladesh has seen many thousands displaced due to unusual flooding. I think if you focus on drought and flooding and compare it to yearly averages from the past I think you'll find the 50 million number isn't too far off.
Perhaps, but again the effect of increasing population has more to do with the increase of displaced than any other factor. The volumes of water falling in the monsoon are high, but not unprecedentedly so, but the increase in populations affected is massive in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. It still says nothing about the effect of climate change, and more particularly, about the factors causing the climate change which is what we should be looking at, but which doesn't sell newspapers. It's possible that increasing temperatures is causing an increase in precipitation, but I certainly have not seen any comparative studies on the volumes of rainfall, and this would be quite difficult over any useful timespan because the recording of volumes either didn't happen or is unreliable until recently.
Also in 50 years you will see large numbers move from coastal areas since there is a worldwide melt that is well documented and the water has to go somewhere.
Really? The majority of the melting I've heard about is sea ice. The melting of this will have no effect on sea levels - it's already in the sea. The danger is that the continental ice sheet in Antarctica may be starting to melt in large volumes, but the reports on this do not agree (or rather any reports I've read are about the increase in continental ice volume). Glacier melting in the Himalayas cannot be directly attributed to climate change - the prime factor there is soot levels from people in the lowlands cooking their food on stoves. Kilimanjero's glacial retreat is attributable to the destruction of the rainforest on it's lower slopes. Greenland's melting appears to be temperature related. The general picture seems to be a much more significant melting in the northern hemisphere than in the southern one.
I think we can agree that most of the media presentation of the issue is awful, and that's a big problem.
Agreed!
I find it interesting that I haven't seen a discussion on population trends - it's easy to point out "natural disaster causes more refugees than ever before" when you completely neglect that fact that as a general rule this is because more people live there. As I've pointed out before, taking Florida as an example, the cost and hardship associated with hurricanes increases, but not because of hurricane frequency or severity, but because the population living on that rather exposed peninsula had exploded. The population of Florida has increased by 10 million in the last 30 years alone. The South Florida Metropolitan Area has increased from ~700,000 to just under 5 million in the last 60 years. The data on hurricane severity and frequency does not indicate an increase either.
Similarly the drought - droughts are common (and usually cyclical) on great plains (like central China) but the severity of the droughts seems to be measured in human impact. Shedloads more people live in China now than did 60 years ago, so the human impact will be correspondingly much larger. The effect on food prices is even less relevant to the debate - food prices have increased because there's quite a lot of people to feed in China alone, and because the markets are volatile after the Russian drought and corresponding wheat export embargo last year. None of these are necessarily indicators of longer term trends - in fact, we know that there was a drought of similar or worse severity 60 years ago in China.
The climate change debate is now a political one, and largely driven from the US (you may or may not agree with this statement). As with all political discussion in the US it is viciously polarized with no middle ground. This is a problem that needs to be resolved.
You know, I've never actually heard anyone saying this. The contention of the skeptical side is that the current warming trend is not anthropogenic.
For myself, my major problem is that the catastrophic positive temperature feedback predicted by the people who believe the warming is anthropogenic makes no sense and has little evidence historically to back it up. The very long term temperature cycles show that what we should be actually worried about is the ice-age that follows quickly after most temperature maxima. If the temperature feedback positied existed, the planet would look like Venus - after all, both temperature and CO2 levels have been higher than they are now.
It's a solid state laser built by Northrop Grumann. They're smaller units (15kW) that can be chained to create higher powered lasers, with 100kW being the (rather arbitrary) power at which lasers are considered combat effective. A chemical dye powered laser would make no sense in this case.
No, no, you've made it clear that you haven't read any history anywhere and don't understand that there are such things as aggressors.
On its own, your claim that
Winston Churchill was a smart man, but he was not one that limited his military ambitions to defense by any stretch of the imagination. He declared war against Germany, not the other way around, and his goal was to defeat her, not to defend and preserve Britannia. So naturally he would see it that way - but his viewpoint isnt very relevant to the defense of a Republic which "does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
is so shockingly inaccurate that it begs correction.
1. Winston Churchill didn't declare war on anyone. He became prime minister in 1940. 2. Germany was a threat to everyone on continental Europe. Given that the British Empire had spent a goodly portion of the preceding 200 years fighting expansionist continental empires (to be specific, France), wars which they would have lost without their Navy and undoubtedly would have led to their invasion, the Navy was a definitely a defensive must. 3. Defeating Germany WAS preserving Brittania in WWII (world war one is much murkier). 4. The unconditional defeat of Germany was a condition laid down by Stalin, who didn't trust the western allies not to make peace separately. 5. If you don't destroy the monsters abroad, historically they will generally end up on your doorstep. Appeasement doesn't work. Ask the Russians. And Chamberlain.
You're not entirely correct - there was resistance, but it was because of firing rates - the rifles traded speed for accuracy and the (very successful) British tactical doctrine at the time emphasized speed of firing. So they used the rifles for their skirmishers, and dressed them green because they were mostly in front of the redcoats and needed to be less conspicuous.
It was Napoleon who regarded the rifle as a toy and refused, point blank, to allow them to be used.
You're correct about conservatism in the armed forces, but I was wearing my nerd hat and had to respond:)
Classic misunderstanding. Nodding from a Japanese person does not indicate agreement - it merely indicates that they are paying attention. It is very common for western companies to misunderstand this. Personally I find this hilarious.
The GP is correct. The PS3 is a great media center out of the box, and with a media server on a network it's exceptional.
Its decent - it lacks a LOT of things, like proper DLNA/UPnP support (no remote control??), DLNA integration (choose your music, as long as it is NOT on the network), media support (what are subtitles in MP4 files?!?) etc. Google it, or compare it to just about anything else. Only my Philips radio does worse - every other kit I have has the PS3 licked in terms of being a media center.
Well, if you've been playing movies on the radio, I can see where you're having problems. The PS3 has DLNA support - here's the manual entry. You get a remote control free with the console - it's a controller that's remote, it's just not dedicated to A/V functionality. It doesn't support subtitles on.mp4 files, fair enough. It's also compact, looks pretty good and fits on a shelf under the TV for a reasonable price.
It's also extremely quiet, as the parent would know if he'd ever, y'know, used one. In fact, this was the primary motivator for choosing the PS3 over the XBox360 (which sounded like a jet engine and destroyed a disc in the 2 weeks we had it).
Less noisy than a jet-engine is not the same as quiet. Seriously, I have 2 PS3s, 1 first gen 60gig and a most-recent gen. Even the newest one, in the hallway, is more noisy than ANY DVD/BD player I have seen. Even my old Philips surround-DVD-radio-otherthings player is no-where as noisy. So relative to XBoxes, F16s and tumbledryers - sure. Compared to other things - not in this world.
Really? I'm sorry to hear that because mine is almost completely silent. It might be marginally louder than my DVD player, but you'd need a sensitive decibel measuring device to tell the difference. And if I'm watching anything on it, it is entirely unnoticeable. The disc drive in the slim PS3 is marginally louder than the one in the fat PS3 when spinning up, but that's about it and they're both comparable to any DVD player I've used. I've never, I must admit, used a standalone blu-ray player (why would I, I have 2 PS3's) but I can't imagine they're that much quieter.
(here's a tip - that 5% referenced is people who have money to buy games consoles - i.e. their market).
You're saying only people in the US (the 5% that can get netflix etc) can afford PS3s? And you called ME an idiot??? No, Europeans and others also buy PS3s, but these features advertised by GP as being reasons to buy a PS3 doesn't apply to them.
Fair enough there, I misread your original point. In Europe we don't have netflix and hulu, but in Ireland the PS3 integrates the local TV channel's digital service into the main menu and there's a specific app just for it, which is really very nice indeed. So there are compensations.
Your original point was incorrect, it does a lot of things very well. Our mutual dislike of Sony's behaviour does not change this, and saying it does makes you sound like you're bashing its capabilities simply because you dislike Sony, which is stupid.
Ah, I love watching slashtards on their high horses.
The GP is correct. The PS3 is a great media center out of the box, and with a media server on a network it's exceptional. It's also extremely quiet, as the parent would know if he'd ever, y'know, used one. In fact, this was the primary motivator for choosing the PS3 over the XBox360 (which sounded like a jet engine and destroyed a disc in the 2 weeks we had it).
The PS3 is a great bit of kit, fact. I disagree with Sony's fruitless attempts to stop the tide, and I'm sure they'll spread plenty of misery around but it doesn't change that fact. And nonsense postings like the one above just serve to make the poster look like an idiot (here's a tip - that 5% referenced is people who have money to buy games consoles - i.e. their market).
The problem with wind isn't generation per-se (although that can be an issue) it's that the power can't be stored reliably for any length of time. As a result, you still have to have a base-load generation capacity that's equal to or greater than the maximum power requirements, or you get brown and black outs. This is a result of the fact that wind does not blow all the time and it's proven difficult so far to place the windfarms so that there will always be power available.
We rely on electricity. It needs to be available all the time. Wind cannot promise that at the moment. Perhaps combining wind farms with stored energy hydro would work, but again, it starts to get very expensive indeed when you look at that.
There are technologies being researched that can mitigate the problems of wind power but they're not there yet.
We want to reduce our dependence on coal, gas and oil, and it looks like, at the moment, the competing technology is not there yet. We know nuclear CAN do it, but there's significant hangovers from Three Mile Island, Chernoybl, and other incidents, as well as the link between power generation and weapons. The net result of this is that building any kind of reactor is difficult, and research on it has slowed to a snails pace. It would be wonderful to see that change and safer fission designs researched and implemented. As has been mentioned, the other roadblocks are 1. the bulk of the nuclear price is up-front in the building of the plant requiring sigificant investment and 2. the waste, which even when re-processed is pretty nasty stuff for a while.
Eisenhower - who remains the only US president to reduce military spending. Also coined the phrase "the military/industrial complex". Backed the Marshall plan - he hated hitler and the nazi's but ended up quite liking the germans. Had another few notable foreign policy acheivements, such as ending the Korean war and refusing point blank to get involved in Vietnam because he knew that the US couldn't win there and besides sympathised with the vietnamese wanting to cast off French rule. Was probably the single most popular man in the world due to WWII - he was all but worshipped in Europe, had decent relations with Russian leaders and was largely respected everywhere else. Pushed HARD for a common european defence force, but the french nixed that (and de Gaulle insulted him and the American soldiers who'd fought to liberate France). Was the commander in chief of the compromise - NATO. He also tried for a worldwide atomic research agency and nuclear weapons treaties with Russia, but that fell apart when the U2 spy plane was shot down in the last months of his presidency. It was one of his great regrets that he authorised that flight, but anti communist fever was sweeping the US at the time and the CIA insisted that they needed it.
Those that followed undid all his work so quickly it was shameful leading to the 60's which had the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile crisis, the Vietnam war, the nuclear and conventional arms race and numerous other proxy wars. They spent the considerable capital that their soldiers and leaders like Marshall and Eisenhower had built up as if it was water. Shame, really.
No, a cartel comprises a group that seeks to control a resource. In this case, labor.
I'm sorry, you're just redefining terms to suit your argument.
No, he's not, you are. A cartel is defined exactly how he defined it, and unions are effectively a labour cartel in many instances.
And seriously, you're saying that forcing the employees to join the union is a point in favor of freedom of association? You have an interesting definition of freedom.
Yes, allowing every party to assert who he will associate with and for a final compromise to be reached is precisely freedom of association. Recall that freedom of association includes the freedom to choose for others not to associate with you, just as freedom of speech must imply that you get to choose to you listen to.
You're making absolutely no sense here. He's just stated that he feels that forcing mandatory union membership, which includes annual dues, on anyone who joins a business is wrong. He is correct.
By the way, will you answer the question of What is "actually happening to the US middle class"?
I thought it was obvious from the first two times I ignored that question that I was not going to. It is like prodding someone for what is "actually happening to the Earth's climate": either you're truly not paying attention, in which case here is not the place to start, or you're trolling.
I'd like an answer to this too - not everyone is from the US, for instance. The US labourers have managed to piss in their own pot, in large part due to Unions (I'm looking at you, UAW). When they were first formed, unions were necessary, and in large parts of the world I'm sure unions are still necessary. They're simply not important in much of the 1st world. In fact they lead directly to less competitive economies and the strangling of business with amazingly complex labour legislation. On top of this they actively discourage upward mobility based on ability. What's to like?
With the N900 you've got OVI maps, which are just as good, or sometimes better, than google maps. It also has routefinding, and turn-by turn navigation, and works very well anytime I've had to use it.
It has been documented that the massive rise in the economic impact of hurricanes, particularly in the US, is not really any indicator that hurricane intensity is increasing. Instead, it is an indicator that there is more economic activity happening in areas that are in the path of hurricanes. For instance, the population of Florida has increased by 10 million in the last 30 years alone. The South Florida Metropolitan Area has increased from ~700,000 to just under 5 million in the last 60 years. More people == more stuff to break, which means a higher cost to repair/replace.
Also, the devestation caused by Katrina in New Orleans was more due to the dam bursting, flooding the city than to the high winds and heavy rainfall.
These are both due to human intervention, all right, yet not a result of climate change. I don't have the reference handy, but I have read that the severity of hurricanes in terms of frequency, wind speed or size (as in area affected) has not increased significantly on average.
That's not to say that climate change won't affect everyone - the increased rainfall in Europe and the drought in Russia are two examples of small weather system changes causing big ass problems. But hysteria doesn't help support your view. Let's keep it calm, rational, and focused
on sea level rise alone - a lot of Tuvalu is 1m above sea level. To cover it in water would require 250 years of 4mm per year, so it's not going to disappear overnight.
Bear in mind that 250 years ago there were an estimated 1.5m colonists in North America divided between British, Dutch and French colonies, the Prussians, the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and others were fighting the Seven Years war, the British had just gained control of Canada by capturing Montreal from the French and beginning the end of the French and Indian war, the Marathas kingdom in India was fighting (and losing to) the Afghans to their North, and George III was raised to the British throne. A quarter of a millenium is a long time:)
1.1mm per year being the best available globally measured data? Outliers being 2mm? Worst case scenario being 4mm? That WILL displace people,eventually. 4mm per year means that in just under a century, sea levels will have risen a foot. This is the worst case scenario - it's more likely to be 150-200 years based on existing data (it's actually hard to measure exactly - between isostatic rebound, tidal variation, building, etc)
That's not going to chase anyone out of their homes. Flooding is more likely from heavy rainfall or really stupid building decisions such as building below the water level (New Orleans) or building on flood plains (everywhere else) than from sea level increases. Even the melting of ice causing sea level rises isn't a problem (work out 500Gt versus the amount of ice on Greenland alone), reduced salinity affecting currents is more likely to be a problem.
On a purely pedantic note, the UK did not fight WWII, the British Commonwealth did. In fact, it's not unreasonable to state that the British bankrupted the largest empire in world history on a point of principle - the invasion of Poland. Up until quite late in the war, Hitler believed that the British Commonwealth would fight with them against the communists.
The Commonwealth was introduced formally with the Treaty of Westminister in 1931 (although the Aussies asked to be specifically excluded, and thus were technically a self-governing colony until 1973)
So when measuring casualties, it's British Commonwealth forces that should really be measured. Newfoundland, Burma and India were directly controlled by the British Empire, so were included in the declaration of war UK : 326,000 Newfoundland: 1,000 India: 87,000 Burma: 22,000
Total 426,000
The Australia, Canada and New Zealand were part of the commonwealth andreiterated the declaration of war (as they had control over their own foreign policy) Australia: 39,800 New Zealand : 11,900 Canada : 45,300
Total 96,400
South Africa was also part of the commonwealth, but their prime minister refused the declaration which led to the immediate collapse of his government. South Africa: 11,900
Total: 11, 900
Which means that there were 534,300 military casualties to the British Commonwealth. Which, incidentally, was fighting on at least four fronts - SouthEast Asia (where they frankly got hammered by the japanese in Burma and at Singapore), Eritrea, North Africa and Europe (both the north coast and the mediterranian coast).
It's also easy to forget about China. Those poor feckers had WWII start earlier on them, with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and the 2nd Sino-Chinese war starting in 1937 and merging with WWII. Such charming incidents as the Rape of Nanking happened during these times. There were over 5 million chinese military deaths.
Sulfur dioxide is cheaper, and there's loads of it lying around as a byproduct of certain mining processes.
The plan is to put a hose on a balloon, float it into the upper atmosphere, and pump that shit out. It'll cause some acid rain, but it clears out of the atmosphere relatively quickly once the pumping stops (certainly quickly in comparison to CO2). If the cause of the current warming is anthropogenic, this gives us time to ameliorate the causes, and if not gives us time to figure better solutions. Side effects are unknown, though, certainly long term side effects.
The other green idea that needs more evidence is "tipping points" beyond which warming is irreversible. This makes no sense to me, surely if such a thing existed the planet would look more like Venus already - it seems like the natural systems keep the planet within a temperature band and that it would be fairly difficult to disrupt that system. I'd also like to see solutions for the massive amount of methane produced by us - cutting that back would have more immediate effects because it doesn't last as long as CO2 in the atmosphere...
Slashdot Mirror
Except that really you'll get all but very new releases for $10 - $15 ( or €5 - €10 over here ). €5 is more or less my impulse buy price point - as a result I've a fair amount of DVD's. I think it's the same for most people, especially because Blu-Ray's are generally twice the price of a given DVD
Hmmm, that certainly makes more sense - any writings on this I've read have referred to tipping points as points after which positive feedback mechanisms kick in and it has never made sense to me such positive feedbacks that led to runaway global warming could be as boundless as the various authors suggested.
It's not us denial: Even if it's happening it's nature, the billions of tonnes of CO we've released can't possibly have an effect
An interesting way of putting it - it's certainly not in the category of what you name the Full out denial. It's also clear what side of the fence you're on too :)
You could just a validly say "The tiny percentage of CO2 we've released compared to the overall levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and the sheer volume of the atmosphere cannot possibly have had an effect". I have yet to be convinced that CO2 emissions alone are having a significant effect on global temperatures. Many other things that we do are having massive effects, to be sure - soot production and deforestation are the most serious environmental issues to my mind. CO2 production may also affect oceanic acidity, which worries me far more than warming.
I don't really run into many people who believes there will be a catastrophic (run-away) temperature feedback like the one on Venus... imagine we hit a tipping point and temperature warms rapidly for a bit. ... Then there's the water level rise that might cause, what happens if we hit a tipping point and in we have a large sea level rise over the course of a few years?
I snipped a fair bit in the middle here.
The problem with this is that tipping points imply that there are levels after which runaway effects will occur. You've proposed that there may be natural systems that will eventually stop the warming but if, as predicted, CO2->increase in temperature->more CO2->increase in temperature->etc...and anthropogenic emissions cause CO2 production to overwhelm the systems that regulate atmospheric CO2 levels, then you will get runaway warming and the end result is Venusian, unless you're speculating even further about an unknown system that will bring it all back into balance. An anthropogenic "sudden jump of a couple degrees of local warming" is more than possible, mind you, the urban heat island effect is the simplest example. A global significant anthropogenic effect on overall climate due to CO2 emissions is much less certain.
If you're proposing tipping points you're either speculating about a further brake, or you're ending up with Venus. In the first case, why doesn't the brake kick in earlier, and in the second case, given that both temperature and CO2 levels have been higher in the past, why hasn't it already happened.
Besides, they are the future of civilisation now
I really hope not. Everyone seems to be avoiding the chinese's elephant in the room, which is that due to their strict population control and the cultural obsession with male children, within 100 years there will be possible revolution, probable population collapse and certain social unrest. Zap Brannigan's "wave after wave of people" approach might have to be used to cut down on the single males.
The major worry is what the Chinese will do in this situation - historically the result of both internal social unrest and population pressure has been warfare (you gotta get rid of those ornery single males somehow).
So what you've actually "proved" is that there was an equivalent terrible global drought 50 years ago...
Before everyone starts shouting that Hurricanes happen every year look at the averages. When is the last time that many people were displaced in the US by a Hurricane?
First of all, hundreds of thousands were displaced by Katrina because public officials in New Orleans did not maintain vital flood defenses and the city is largely below the water level. Claiming this is a result of climate change is the same as claiming that the tidal waves and earthquakes that caused such damage in Haiti, New Zealand and Japan were because of climate change. They weren't.
There's been displacements in Australia due to the worst drought in a thousand years
Citation please. Australia is the most arid continent on the planet. It is equally likely that it was colonized during a period of relative wetness as the drought is exceptional.
places like Bangladesh has seen many thousands displaced due to unusual flooding. I think if you focus on drought and flooding and compare it to yearly averages from the past I think you'll find the 50 million number isn't too far off.
Perhaps, but again the effect of increasing population has more to do with the increase of displaced than any other factor. The volumes of water falling in the monsoon are high, but not unprecedentedly so, but the increase in populations affected is massive in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. It still says nothing about the effect of climate change, and more particularly, about the factors causing the climate change which is what we should be looking at, but which doesn't sell newspapers. It's possible that increasing temperatures is causing an increase in precipitation, but I certainly have not seen any comparative studies on the volumes of rainfall, and this would be quite difficult over any useful timespan because the recording of volumes either didn't happen or is unreliable until recently.
Also in 50 years you will see large numbers move from coastal areas since there is a worldwide melt that is well documented and the water has to go somewhere.
Really? The majority of the melting I've heard about is sea ice. The melting of this will have no effect on sea levels - it's already in the sea. The danger is that the continental ice sheet in Antarctica may be starting to melt in large volumes, but the reports on this do not agree (or rather any reports I've read are about the increase in continental ice volume). Glacier melting in the Himalayas cannot be directly attributed to climate change - the prime factor there is soot levels from people in the lowlands cooking their food on stoves. Kilimanjero's glacial retreat is attributable to the destruction of the rainforest on it's lower slopes. Greenland's melting appears to be temperature related. The general picture seems to be a much more significant melting in the northern hemisphere than in the southern one.
I think we can agree that most of the media presentation of the issue is awful, and that's a big problem.
Agreed!
I find it interesting that I haven't seen a discussion on population trends - it's easy to point out "natural disaster causes more refugees than ever before" when you completely neglect that fact that as a general rule this is because more people live there. As I've pointed out before, taking Florida as an example, the cost and hardship associated with hurricanes increases, but not because of hurricane frequency or severity, but because the population living on that rather exposed peninsula had exploded. The population of Florida has increased by 10 million in the last 30 years alone. The South Florida Metropolitan Area has increased from ~700,000 to just under 5 million in the last 60 years.
The data on hurricane severity and frequency does not indicate an increase either.
Similarly the drought - droughts are common (and usually cyclical) on great plains (like central China) but the severity of the droughts seems to be measured in human impact. Shedloads more people live in China now than did 60 years ago, so the human impact will be correspondingly much larger. The effect on food prices is even less relevant to the debate - food prices have increased because there's quite a lot of people to feed in China alone, and because the markets are volatile after the Russian drought and corresponding wheat export embargo last year. None of these are necessarily indicators of longer term trends - in fact, we know that there was a drought of similar or worse severity 60 years ago in China.
The climate change debate is now a political one, and largely driven from the US (you may or may not agree with this statement). As with all political discussion in the US it is viciously polarized with no middle ground. This is a problem that needs to be resolved.
One side says nothing is happening at all.
You know, I've never actually heard anyone saying this. The contention of the skeptical side is that the current warming trend is not anthropogenic.
For myself, my major problem is that the catastrophic positive temperature feedback predicted by the people who believe the warming is anthropogenic makes no sense and has little evidence historically to back it up. The very long term temperature cycles show that what we should be actually worried about is the ice-age that follows quickly after most temperature maxima. If the temperature feedback positied existed, the planet would look like Venus - after all, both temperature and CO2 levels have been higher than they are now.
It's a solid state laser built by Northrop Grumann. They're smaller units (15kW) that can be chained to create higher powered lasers, with 100kW being the (rather arbitrary) power at which lasers are considered combat effective. A chemical dye powered laser would make no sense in this case.
They've cut down on the size it seems, since mid 2009. :)
As this is slashdot, I'll point out that this is six months old news
No, no, you've made it clear that you haven't read any history anywhere and don't understand that there are such things as aggressors.
On its own, your claim that
Winston Churchill was a smart man, but he was not one that limited his military ambitions to defense by any stretch of the imagination. He declared war against Germany, not the other way around, and his goal was to defeat her, not to defend and preserve Britannia. So naturally he would see it that way - but his viewpoint isnt very relevant to the defense of a Republic which "does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
is so shockingly inaccurate that it begs correction.
1. Winston Churchill didn't declare war on anyone. He became prime minister in 1940.
2. Germany was a threat to everyone on continental Europe. Given that the British Empire had spent a goodly portion of the preceding 200 years fighting expansionist continental empires (to be specific, France), wars which they would have lost without their Navy and undoubtedly would have led to their invasion, the Navy was a definitely a defensive must.
3. Defeating Germany WAS preserving Brittania in WWII (world war one is much murkier).
4. The unconditional defeat of Germany was a condition laid down by Stalin, who didn't trust the western allies not to make peace separately.
5. If you don't destroy the monsters abroad, historically they will generally end up on your doorstep. Appeasement doesn't work. Ask the Russians. And Chamberlain.
You're not entirely correct - there was resistance, but it was because of firing rates - the rifles traded speed for accuracy and the (very successful) British tactical doctrine at the time emphasized speed of firing. So they used the rifles for their skirmishers, and dressed them green because they were mostly in front of the redcoats and needed to be less conspicuous.
It was Napoleon who regarded the rifle as a toy and refused, point blank, to allow them to be used.
You're correct about conservatism in the armed forces, but I was wearing my nerd hat and had to respond :)
No, because that's not what the dispute is about.
Classic misunderstanding. Nodding from a Japanese person does not indicate agreement - it merely indicates that they are paying attention. It is very common for western companies to misunderstand this. Personally I find this hilarious.
The GP is correct. The PS3 is a great media center out of the box, and with a media server on a network it's exceptional.
Its decent - it lacks a LOT of things, like proper DLNA/UPnP support (no remote control??), DLNA integration (choose your music, as long as it is NOT on the network), media support (what are subtitles in MP4 files?!?) etc. Google it, or compare it to just about anything else.
Only my Philips radio does worse - every other kit I have has the PS3 licked in terms of being a media center.
Well, if you've been playing movies on the radio, I can see where you're having problems. The PS3 has DLNA support - here's the manual entry. You get a remote control free with the console - it's a controller that's remote, it's just not dedicated to A/V functionality. It doesn't support subtitles on .mp4 files, fair enough. It's also compact, looks pretty good and fits on a shelf under the TV for a reasonable price.
It's also extremely quiet, as the parent would know if he'd ever, y'know, used one. In fact, this was the primary motivator for choosing the PS3 over the XBox360 (which sounded like a jet engine and destroyed a disc in the 2 weeks we had it).
Less noisy than a jet-engine is not the same as quiet. Seriously, I have 2 PS3s, 1 first gen 60gig and a most-recent gen. Even the newest one, in the hallway, is more noisy than ANY DVD/BD player I have seen. Even my old Philips surround-DVD-radio-otherthings player is no-where as noisy.
So relative to XBoxes, F16s and tumbledryers - sure. Compared to other things - not in this world.
Really? I'm sorry to hear that because mine is almost completely silent. It might be marginally louder than my DVD player, but you'd need a sensitive decibel measuring device to tell the difference. And if I'm watching anything on it, it is entirely unnoticeable. The disc drive in the slim PS3 is marginally louder than the one in the fat PS3 when spinning up, but that's about it and they're both comparable to any DVD player I've used. I've never, I must admit, used a standalone blu-ray player (why would I, I have 2 PS3's) but I can't imagine they're that much quieter.
(here's a tip - that 5% referenced is people who have money to buy games consoles - i.e. their market).
You're saying only people in the US (the 5% that can get netflix etc) can afford PS3s? And you called ME an idiot??? No, Europeans and others also buy PS3s, but these features advertised by GP as being reasons to buy a PS3 doesn't apply to them.
Fair enough there, I misread your original point. In Europe we don't have netflix and hulu, but in Ireland the PS3 integrates the local TV channel's digital service into the main menu and there's a specific app just for it, which is really very nice indeed. So there are compensations.
Your original point was incorrect, it does a lot of things very well. Our mutual dislike of Sony's behaviour does not change this, and saying it does makes you sound like you're bashing its capabilities simply because you dislike Sony, which is stupid.
Ah, I love watching slashtards on their high horses.
The GP is correct. The PS3 is a great media center out of the box, and with a media server on a network it's exceptional. It's also extremely quiet, as the parent would know if he'd ever, y'know, used one. In fact, this was the primary motivator for choosing the PS3 over the XBox360 (which sounded like a jet engine and destroyed a disc in the 2 weeks we had it).
The PS3 is a great bit of kit, fact. I disagree with Sony's fruitless attempts to stop the tide, and I'm sure they'll spread plenty of misery around but it doesn't change that fact. And nonsense postings like the one above just serve to make the poster look like an idiot (here's a tip - that 5% referenced is people who have money to buy games consoles - i.e. their market).
The problem with wind isn't generation per-se (although that can be an issue) it's that the power can't be stored reliably for any length of time. As a result, you still have to have a base-load generation capacity that's equal to or greater than the maximum power requirements, or you get brown and black outs. This is a result of the fact that wind does not blow all the time and it's proven difficult so far to place the windfarms so that there will always be power available.
We rely on electricity. It needs to be available all the time. Wind cannot promise that at the moment. Perhaps combining wind farms with stored energy hydro would work, but again, it starts to get very expensive indeed when you look at that.
There are technologies being researched that can mitigate the problems of wind power but they're not there yet.
We want to reduce our dependence on coal, gas and oil, and it looks like, at the moment, the competing technology is not there yet. We know nuclear CAN do it, but there's significant hangovers from Three Mile Island, Chernoybl, and other incidents, as well as the link between power generation and weapons. The net result of this is that building any kind of reactor is difficult, and research on it has slowed to a snails pace. It would be wonderful to see that change and safer fission designs researched and implemented. As has been mentioned, the other roadblocks are 1. the bulk of the nuclear price is up-front in the building of the plant requiring sigificant investment and 2. the waste, which even when re-processed is pretty nasty stuff for a while.
Eisenhower - who remains the only US president to reduce military spending. Also coined the phrase "the military/industrial complex".
Backed the Marshall plan - he hated hitler and the nazi's but ended up quite liking the germans.
Had another few notable foreign policy acheivements, such as ending the Korean war and refusing point blank to get involved in Vietnam because he knew that the US couldn't win there and besides sympathised with the vietnamese wanting to cast off French rule.
Was probably the single most popular man in the world due to WWII - he was all but worshipped in Europe, had decent relations with Russian leaders and was largely respected everywhere else.
Pushed HARD for a common european defence force, but the french nixed that (and de Gaulle insulted him and the American soldiers who'd fought to liberate France). Was the commander in chief of the compromise - NATO.
He also tried for a worldwide atomic research agency and nuclear weapons treaties with Russia, but that fell apart when the U2 spy plane was shot down in the last months of his presidency. It was one of his great regrets that he authorised that flight, but anti communist fever was sweeping the US at the time and the CIA insisted that they needed it.
Those that followed undid all his work so quickly it was shameful leading to the 60's which had the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile crisis, the Vietnam war, the nuclear and conventional arms race and numerous other proxy wars. They spent the considerable capital that their soldiers and leaders like Marshall and Eisenhower had built up as if it was water. Shame, really.
And they detect it how? Magic?
No, they run some code on the console that tells them whether there's modchips or cheating going on.
no, you are trolling
No, a cartel comprises a group that seeks to control a resource. In this case, labor.
I'm sorry, you're just redefining terms to suit your argument.
No, he's not, you are. A cartel is defined exactly how he defined it, and unions are effectively a labour cartel in many instances.
And seriously, you're saying that forcing the employees to join the union is a point in favor of freedom of association? You have an interesting definition of freedom.
Yes, allowing every party to assert who he will associate with and for a final compromise to be reached is precisely freedom of association. Recall that freedom of association includes the freedom to choose for others not to associate with you, just as freedom of speech must imply that you get to choose to you listen to.
You're making absolutely no sense here. He's just stated that he feels that forcing mandatory union membership, which includes annual dues, on anyone who joins a business is wrong. He is correct.
By the way, will you answer the question of What is "actually happening to the US middle class"?
I thought it was obvious from the first two times I ignored that question that I was not going to. It is like prodding someone for what is "actually happening to the Earth's climate": either you're truly not paying attention, in which case here is not the place to start, or you're trolling.
I'd like an answer to this too - not everyone is from the US, for instance. The US labourers have managed to piss in their own pot, in large part due to Unions (I'm looking at you, UAW). When they were first formed, unions were necessary, and in large parts of the world I'm sure unions are still necessary. They're simply not important in much of the 1st world. In fact they lead directly to less competitive economies and the strangling of business with amazingly complex labour legislation. On top of this they actively discourage upward mobility based on ability. What's to like?
With the N900 you've got OVI maps, which are just as good, or sometimes better, than google maps. It also has routefinding, and turn-by turn navigation, and works very well anytime I've had to use it.
It has been documented that the massive rise in the economic impact of hurricanes, particularly in the US, is not really any indicator that hurricane intensity is increasing. Instead, it is an indicator that there is more economic activity happening in areas that are in the path of hurricanes. For instance, the population of Florida has increased by 10 million in the last 30 years alone. The South Florida Metropolitan Area has increased from ~700,000 to just under 5 million in the last 60 years. More people == more stuff to break, which means a higher cost to repair/replace.
Also, the devestation caused by Katrina in New Orleans was more due to the dam bursting, flooding the city than to the high winds and heavy rainfall.
These are both due to human intervention, all right, yet not a result of climate change. I don't have the reference handy, but I have read that the severity of hurricanes in terms of frequency, wind speed or size (as in area affected) has not increased significantly on average.
That's not to say that climate change won't affect everyone - the increased rainfall in Europe and the drought in Russia are two examples of small weather system changes causing big ass problems. But hysteria doesn't help support your view. Let's keep it calm, rational, and focused
on sea level rise alone - a lot of Tuvalu is 1m above sea level. To cover it in water would require 250 years of 4mm per year, so it's not going to disappear overnight.
Bear in mind that 250 years ago there were an estimated 1.5m colonists in North America divided between British, Dutch and French colonies, the Prussians, the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and others were fighting the Seven Years war, the British had just gained control of Canada by capturing Montreal from the French and beginning the end of the French and Indian war, the Marathas kingdom in India was fighting (and losing to) the Afghans to their North, and George III was raised to the British throne. :)
A quarter of a millenium is a long time
1.1mm per year being the best available globally measured data? Outliers being 2mm? Worst case scenario being 4mm? That WILL displace people,eventually. 4mm per year means that in just under a century, sea levels will have risen a foot. This is the worst case scenario - it's more likely to be 150-200 years based on existing data (it's actually hard to measure exactly - between isostatic rebound, tidal variation, building, etc)
That's not going to chase anyone out of their homes. Flooding is more likely from heavy rainfall or really stupid building decisions such as building below the water level (New Orleans) or building on flood plains (everywhere else) than from sea level increases. Even the melting of ice causing sea level rises isn't a problem (work out 500Gt versus the amount of ice on Greenland alone), reduced salinity affecting currents is more likely to be a problem.
On a purely pedantic note, the UK did not fight WWII, the British Commonwealth did. In fact, it's not unreasonable to state that the British bankrupted the largest empire in world history on a point of principle - the invasion of Poland. Up until quite late in the war, Hitler believed that the British Commonwealth would fight with them against the communists.
The Commonwealth was introduced formally with the Treaty of Westminister in 1931 (although the Aussies asked to be specifically excluded, and thus were technically a self-governing colony until 1973)
So when measuring casualties, it's British Commonwealth forces that should really be measured. Newfoundland, Burma and India were directly controlled by the British Empire, so were included in the declaration of war
UK : 326,000
Newfoundland: 1,000
India: 87,000
Burma: 22,000
Total 426,000
The Australia, Canada and New Zealand were part of the commonwealth andreiterated the declaration of war (as they had control over their own foreign policy)
Australia: 39,800
New Zealand : 11,900
Canada : 45,300
Total 96,400
South Africa was also part of the commonwealth, but their prime minister refused the declaration which led to the immediate collapse of his government.
South Africa: 11,900
Total: 11, 900
Which means that there were 534,300 military casualties to the British Commonwealth. Which, incidentally, was fighting on at least four fronts - SouthEast Asia (where they frankly got hammered by the japanese in Burma and at Singapore), Eritrea, North Africa and Europe (both the north coast and the mediterranian coast).
It's also easy to forget about China. Those poor feckers had WWII start earlier on them, with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and the 2nd Sino-Chinese war starting in 1937 and merging with WWII. Such charming incidents as the Rape of Nanking happened during these times. There were over 5 million chinese military deaths.
Sulfur dioxide is cheaper, and there's loads of it lying around as a byproduct of certain mining processes.
The plan is to put a hose on a balloon, float it into the upper atmosphere, and pump that shit out. It'll cause some acid rain, but it clears out of the atmosphere relatively quickly once the pumping stops (certainly quickly in comparison to CO2). If the cause of the current warming is anthropogenic, this gives us time to ameliorate the causes, and if not gives us time to figure better solutions. Side effects are unknown, though, certainly long term side effects.
The other green idea that needs more evidence is "tipping points" beyond which warming is irreversible. This makes no sense to me, surely if such a thing existed the planet would look more like Venus already - it seems like the natural systems keep the planet within a temperature band and that it would be fairly difficult to disrupt that system. I'd also like to see solutions for the massive amount of methane produced by us - cutting that back would have more immediate effects because it doesn't last as long as CO2 in the atmosphere...