The headline could instead read "Supreme Court nominee supports broad interpretation of First Amendment rights, non-interference in the private sector" and nobody would be upset about it and it would be an equally true headline. It's all in the phrasing. So a conservative-leaning judge supports free markets and broad application of the First Amendment. This surprises people...why, exactly?
Rich people create jobs? How? By buying lots of junk?
Oddly enough, yes. Take Bill Gates or Zuck for example. Rich people create jobs by (a) spending their dough and (b) investing their dough.
Spending: let's say Gates buys (yet another) Porsche. The Porsche sales person makes a commission. All the people who transported the car from the factory to Gates get paid. All the people who were involved in building the car get paid. All the people who designed the car get paid. All the parts and raw materials providers get paid. And so on and so forth. They all make money because Gates spent his money. If he didn't buy that car, Porsche would be down one sale and everyone who would've benefited from that sale would be out that portion. If you extrapolate this for *everything* Gates spends his billions on it works out to thousands of people benefiting from his spending, from dry cleaning to yachts. Everybody wins!
Investing: let's say Zuck invests $100 million (chump change for him) in a particular business. That business now has $100 million to spend on new employees, new infrastructure, advertising, product development, you name it. That creates jobs directly as well as indirectly, the latter being jobs for the people who make the desks, chairs, pens, servers, switches, routers, etc. required to support the business and its expansion. Assuming the investment was a wise one, Zuck makes his $100 million back plus a nice profit either through selling the stock later or via dividends. Everybody wins!
walmart has iphones right next to the huawei and LG phones
Rich people don't shop at Walmart. That's for us 'proles.
Rich people shop at much higher-end stores. Really rich people have other people shop for them. Unbelievably rich people don't even carry phones. They have herds of personal assistants who field their calls for them, answer their emails, surf the web for them, etc.. That's why when these 1% of 1% people are interviewed they seem so disconnected from reality. They're completely insulated from all the stuff you and I have to deal with on a daily basis.
there is *no* singular brand/product choice to indicate wealth very well
I dunno. Owning -- not renting on NetJets or equivalent -- a Gulfstream jet would be damn near exact way to predict wealthy if you want to pick a "consumer" product as your metric.
Doubling CO2 raises the temperature of the Earth by 3.7 W/m^2, or about one degree C.
This assumes nothing else changes in the system. The actual warming could be higher. It could also be lower. You don't bother to address anything except CO2, showing your blindness to the overall complexity of the entire system acting on various feedback and/or self-dampening mechanisms.
I'm sure you've invented wonderful reasons to not believe in climate sensitivity estimates.
Who says I don't believe in the estimates? I do. I also believe they're incomplete and, due to that, absolute conclusions like what you're drawing cannot be relied upon. The actual warming could be higher, spot on, or lower. You can't say because neither you nor anyone else fully understands all the mechanisms. As a result you resort to oversimplifications such as "Doubling CO2 raises the temperature of the Earth by 3.7 W/m^2" when such a thing can only be true if no other variables change. Yet I know -- and I assume you also know -- other variables do change, both independently and in response to the increased CO2. Will these other changes force higher temps? Lower temps? No net change? You won't say. CO2 is your exclusive boogeyman simply because you say so and demand everyone else agree or be branded a heretic.
Get this through that hardened cranium of yours: no one is arguing the climate isn't warming. Neither are they arguing CO2 isn't contributing. Basic physics and chemistry prove both statements. You choose to blame CO2, only CO2, and claim the only remediation possible is drastic cuts in CO2. I respond by saying this is an oversimplification -- which it most obviously is since you neglect any one of a thousand other factors -- and you get all huffy about it like I'm claiming the Earth is flat. Such a thin skin as yours usually hides an unsound argument, one you don't wish questioned. That is antithetical to good science and if you had any respect for science you'd know that.
And all this still begs and even bigger question: is the warming necessarily a bad thing overall for the global population? I'm not arguing it is or isn't. I'm saying nobody seems to care about the answer. The Earth has been both hotter and cooler than its current state over geological timelines. Who are we to say the "proper" temperature isn't higher? Lower? Instead we get people like you who sidestep the question and demand the climate stay static for whatever we deem ideal for the late 19th century. Climate laughs at you, for climate has always changed and will always change, at least until we develop the technology to make it stop changing. Are we contributing to that change? Obviously a single human being exhaling CO2 contributes to that change so the question is silly. The real question is "are we contributing measurably and negatively to that change?" That's the question you won't answer with any specificity because you lack the means to do so. Note I'm not saying we are or are not contributing "measurably and negatively". Instead I'm saying you cannot make the broad-yet-seemingly-specific statements you're making and expect them to be swallowed like a congregation listening to preachers quoting scripture.
You are an ignorant misanthrope, and a liar.
Yours must be a poor argument when you must resort to more ad hominem attacks instead of actually defending your assertion. For the record, please point out exactly where I am "a liar" in any of my prior statements. Go ahead. I'll wait.
It's always funny when one of you gets up on your hind legs and pretends to know something about this subject.
It's always funny when one of you resorts to ad hominem attacks and smug arrogance instead of acknowledging the validity of a statement. The climate is not a simple picture where CO2 is the end-all, be-all of global warming. Yes, additional CO2 must raise global temps, but what percentage of the total increase? To hear you tell it, it's 100% responsible which is (and I'm being charitable here) an uninformed viewpoint. Many things contribute to global temperature changes besides just CO2. For example, water vapor contributes much more to capturing IR than CO2. Beyond CO2 there are many other things -- both natural and man-made -- which have GW potentials higher than CO2. If any of these other variables have GW potential they must also raise global temps. How much? That's a question no climatologist has answered -- or is likely to answer -- with specificity due to the incomplete understanding of how all this interacts. All you can confidently say -- and with which I will not argue -- is "these things are greenhouse gases and therefore must contribute a non-zero effect to overall global temperature in some way."
The argument is not whether CO2 contributes to GW; CO2 is a greenhouse gas which by definition means it's contributing. How much it's contributing and whether or not curbing additional CO2 output will have enough of a positive climate effect to offset the huge economic, political, and cultural effects of CO2 output reductions is an open question that has yet to be answered in any definitive way. There are models, predictions, and suppositions but they are all guesses, all necessarily imprecise due to our lack of full understanding of climate. You would prefer we simplify things down to "CO2 is the sole culprit" which, given the evidence it cannot possibly be the sole culprit, demonstrates this is more of an ideology to you than a science. Your condescension towards anyone who doesn't worship at your altar speaks volumes about your adherence to any kind of scientific method where questions are welcome and data are expected to be verifiable and replicatable.
Of your three possibilities, only #1 is a scientific hypothesis because it is the only one of them which is falsifiable.
I never postulated any of the three were scientific hypotheses, only that there are only three possible permutations. If you want to choose a point-in-time scenario, there are only two, namely:
1. We are alone in the universe at this time. 2. We are not alone in the universe at this time.
perhaps it's necessary that early in the evolution of the planet it be hit by such a large impactor that the continental plate is fractured into multiple tectonic plates and also yielding a large moon that will keep the mantel layer stirred up.
On a cosmological scale, such "rare" events turn out to be not so rare as you'd think. The likelihood of an event so rare as to make Earth unique is so statistically improbable that it begins to resemble divine intervention. Note I'm not attempting to make the case for or against divine intervention. I'm simply saying anything rare enough to make Earth a unique case would be indistinguishable from a "hand of God" kind of event. Such a rare event would have to happen only twice to make us not alone in the Universe and thus disprove conjecture #1. The odds against it would be staggering beyond belief or comprehension without some kind of divine intervention.
The cost of setting up a "space factory" would be orders of magnitude more than anything like this...
You're also forgetting that such an endeavor would make it difficult for a politician to channel funds to his/her home district, thus they have no incentive to even consider it even if the other challenges were removed.
Follow the money. Always follow the money. When billions of dollars are being flung about like they're pocket change you can bet decisions are driven by whose pockets are being lined instead of what actually makes sense for the project.
This is what happens with cost-plus contracting instead of fixed price contracting.
This seems like a good idea but what you actually get is no company will sign such a big contract with so many risks. The threats to the company are simply too large. If something goes wrong -- something not always under the control of the contractor -- it can easily bankrupt the company when billions of dollars are on the line. Then NASA gets left with a half-completed project, a bankrupt company that can't finish it, and all the money spent up to that point was wasted.
What's really needed here is realistic estimates on what it will take to complete the project from whatever companies that bid on it. It should also include a rigorous non-partisan review of the bids to make sure someone isn't lowballing it hoping to get the contract and add fees on later.
What isn't this being done already? Politics. The only thing politicians care about is the money getting spent in their districts. They don't care if things like the JWST actually fly and do good science so there's zero incentive for them to be efficient. After all, it's not their money being spent, is it? It's ours. I've never met a politician who didn't think they could spend my money better than I could and that will probably never change.
Thank God SpaceX is starting to shake things up. Yes, SpaceX sucks off the government teat just like other "private" space companies but at least they're trying to innovate and do things differently.
1. We are alone in the universe and will remain so forever. 2. We are not alone in the universe, being preceded by one or more civilizations. 3. We are alone in the universe at this time but conditions exist for other civilizations to evolve in due time.
Given the vast size and diversity of the universe, #1 seems almost ludicrous absent the intervention of some higher power (i.e. "Intelligent Design"). We occupy a rather mundane planet orbiting a ordinary star in a humdrum galaxy in no particularly special region of the universe. There's no reason to suspect there aren't trillions of other planets just like ours in this galaxy alone, let alone the trillions of galaxies beyond ours. If similar planets exist in similar conditions with similar age there's no reason for life not to have evolved on its own assuming life is a purely accidental event.
Possibility #2 makes more sense assuming humans aren't some special snowflake in the universe like #1 supposes. Humans have evolved and gone from squatting in caves to sending space probes into interstellar space in just a few thousand years. That's a fraction of an eyeblink of cosmological time. If another civilization developed just 10,000 years earlier than us -- again, something less than a rounding error in cosmological time -- imagine how far ahead of us they could be technologically. Imagine where we'll be in 10,000 years given our current exponential rate of progress.
Possibility #3 is a variation on #2 but backwards. Assuming more than one civilization will ever come into being in this universe, somebody has to be first to get there barring a fantastical coincidence. Perhaps we're it. If so, we are alone for now but unlikely to remain so over cosmological time scales.
And there are actual facts backing my assertion up.
How dare you bring facts and logic to this emotionally-based knee-jerk-response argument! Don't you know that can't be tolerated in today's climate of mandatory total tolerance?
If Big Oil had shifted their focus decades ago to renewable energy...
Speaking as someone who was alive decades ago I can state with confidence the very idea of shifting to renewables back then was impossibly impractical. Solar technology was incredibly inefficient and extremely expensive. Battery technology (largely lead-acid) was environmentally harmful and inefficient. Wind power was impractical as materials technology for light, strong wind turbines was not available.
You seem to think the only reason none of this came to pass "decades ago" was because of some evil plot. You might as well complain about the 18th century not have carbon fiber composite wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries, and efficient solar cells! Only in the last decade or so have all these technologies either been developed or become affordable alternatives.
Venus begs to differ. Or are you suggesting that CO2 has no effect at all in the atmosphere?
Mars, which is amazingly cold despite an atmosphere of nearly pure CO2, begs to differ.
See, this is the problem with blaming climate variations on one thing. Climate is a ridiculously complex system dependent upon thousands of inputs and their attendant thousands of feedback and self-dampening mechanisms. The permutations are staggering and that's only considering the variables we know of. Climate science is not a "we know all there is to know" science at this point. We know a lot but we're discovering more every day. Some of those discoveries reinforce our previous beliefs. Some contradict them in surprising ways.
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Absolutely. Does that mean our warming must be due to CO2 increases and nothing else of significance? Only a fool would make such an argument when our understanding of climate is rudimentary at best.
But there are times when civil disobedience -- even on the part of the executive branch of the government -- is the only moral thing to do.
Civil disobedience is a civic right which I support but that's not what is going on. What is going on -- and which you state you and I are in agreement on -- is selective enforcement of laws for political reasons. I agree with you that's a very bad thing. As you state, it gives far too much power to whoever makes the selective enforcement decisions.
I will ask the pointed question: what is your solution to the problem? You don't like the current policy so how would you do it differently?
A better question is if using the lives and mental health of children as a tool to force Democrats to agree to these reforms a reasonable thing to do? Is that how democracy is supposed to work?
First, correct the common misconception we are a democracy. We are not. We are a Constitutional republic.
Second, the way it's supposed to work is the law is made by Congress, signed by the President, and enforced by Federal agencies. That is exactly what is being done right now. The reason this is making headlines is every president since 1997 has ignored the law, preferring to kick the can down the road to someone else.
If you don't like the law there is a mechanism for changing it. All you have to do is get enough citizens to think like you and pressure their representatives in Congress to change it and the President to sign it. So far no one has been able to achieve this, most likely because there aren't a lot of "good" options to stem the tide of illegal immigration. Nobody wants illegals in the country but they also don't want to stop the flow of cheap labor (Republicans) and love appearing as the savior of the underclass (Democrats). Thus nothing gets done.
In Europe we have detention facilities for families.
We had that in the USA as well. Liberals said it was inhumane and got them shut down. Now we're reaping the "unintended" consequences.
I get the feeling they really don't want to do anything about illegal immigration and instead prefer to present themselves as the saviors of the underclass. When that underclass is given amnesty and the ability to vote, who do you think they'll vote for?
Non sequitur. There is no legal requirement to separate families while asylum claims are investigated.
You're being purposefully disingenuous. Yes, there is no legal requirement to separate families. However, when someone comes into the country uninvited (i.e. crosses the border illegally), you have two choices:
1. Start their asylum case and release them into the country awaiting the outcome. 2. Start their asylum case and detain them awaiting the outcome.
Option 1 has been tried and is a dismal failure by any possible measure. More than 80% of those "catch and release" cases never returned to court to finish their asylum hearings. The most obvious motive is they knew their asylum case had no merit and did not wish to be deported. The end result is millions of illegals in the country with no way to deport them and no incentive for them to stop coming.
Option 2 is what's being pursued at this time following the failure of Option 1. If you have a better option that somehow doesn't enable illegal immigration, doesn't require incarceration, doesn't require separating children from parents, and doesn't put an undue burden on citizen and legal immigrant taxpayers, put it forward for consideration. If you don't, be quiet and accept we're pursuing the least-damaging option (to citizens and legal residents as the law is designed to protect) out of two possible non-optimal options.
What is going on now is involuntary confinement of children who can and who have committed no crime.
And your solution to this is...what, exactly? There are relatively few other options and all have significant consequences.
1. Put the kids in jail with the parents. I think all would agree this is no more -- and possibly much less -- humane than the current policy. 2. Don't incarcerate the parents in the first place. This neuters immigration enforcement to the point where it's utterly ineffective, basically enabling the status quo which has existed since Pres. Clinton enacted the policy. He and his successor chose not to put much effort into enforcing it, however, so it was a political stunt designed to kick the can down the road. Which is where we are today, with an immigration problem and still no solution.
If you have another suggestion please put it forward. It takes nothing to bitch about not liking a current policy. It takes brains to also suggest a workable alternative that is objectively better than what you're complaining about. Any "better" solution must somehow stem the tide of illegal immigration, not afflicting families any more than necessary, and not put undue burdens on citizens and legal immigrants. Floor's yours. I'm eager to hear your solution.
Then change the law. This is a republic of laws, after all. There is a legal method to change immigration law and it should be used instead of "legalizing" the violation of said law.
So all you need to do is get enough people to agree with your "this is immoral and wrong" idea and get the law changed to something more to your liking. If you are unable to do so then your idea does not succeed, as the law exists to express the will of the majority of the people through a representative republic. If you end up with a law you don't like it doesn't give you or anyone else the right to violate it. You either get majority agreement with your idea and it becomes law, or you don't and you live with a law you don't like, or you find another country with a different set of laws more in line with your views. Those are your options; you don't get to make up others just because you want to.
Do not conflate immoral and illegal. There are many things which are illegal but moral. There are many thing which are immoral but legal. Our legal system is not intended to reflect moral values but legal ones. Disasters happen when you attempt to use the legal system to enforce a moral principle solely on the grounds it is moral (i.e. Prohibition).
While all your points are true, what you describe is an easily-gamed system. Anyone crossing the border automatically says they're claiming asylum whether they have grounds or not. According to you, they're set free in the USA and given a date for a court hearing to determine the legitimacy of their claim. More than 80% never show up for that hearing. The most probable reason for not showing up is they know their asylum claim has no merit but still wish to reside in the USA illegally. They are, therefore, de facto illegals the moment they crossed the border since they did so under false pretenses.
The whole situation defies any kind of win-win scenario. Leaving the "asylum loophole" open merely invites abuse of it to the detriment of citizens and legal immigrants. Closing it means actual asylum seekers are penalized.
There are defined criteria for asylum. These criteria are not secrets to those crossing the border. I'd wager the overwhelming majority of those crossing the border claiming asylum know full well they have no claim to asylum. That they lie to exploit a weakness in our compassion is despicable opportunism. They are the ones creating this lose-lose situation, not US immigration policy. The optimal solution would be to make it impossible for people to lie when crossing the border but that is impossible. So now we end up where we are: families are separated and legal asylum seekers are jeopardized all because a bunch of people don't wish to go through the legal immigration process. They prefer to skip to the head of the line, a slap in the face to anyone who truly wishes to legally immigrate.
Having taken part in such activities, I agree with you. However, such training and presentation is almost useless when dealing with an objective matter as opposed to a subjective one. Objective facts cannot be reasonably argue with. The tactic most commonly employed is to lead the debate away from the facts or to try and discredit the facts with irrelevant data. A machine cannot be swayed by such. A machine with full knowledge of all the facts of a given objective subject could not be outmaneuvered in such a manner.
And you brilliantly demonstrate why they can get away with that behavior.
Struck a nerve, did I? You brilliantly demonstrate the thin skin and intolerance of divergent viewpoints I am speaking of. You put forth no facts in your statement, only ad hominem attacks, and then draw a conclusion based on your misunderstanding and intolerance of an opinion you disagree with.
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The headline could instead read "Supreme Court nominee supports broad interpretation of First Amendment rights, non-interference in the private sector" and nobody would be upset about it and it would be an equally true headline. It's all in the phrasing. So a conservative-leaning judge supports free markets and broad application of the First Amendment. This surprises people...why, exactly?
Rich people create jobs? How? By buying lots of junk?
Oddly enough, yes. Take Bill Gates or Zuck for example. Rich people create jobs by (a) spending their dough and (b) investing their dough.
Spending: let's say Gates buys (yet another) Porsche. The Porsche sales person makes a commission. All the people who transported the car from the factory to Gates get paid. All the people who were involved in building the car get paid. All the people who designed the car get paid. All the parts and raw materials providers get paid. And so on and so forth. They all make money because Gates spent his money. If he didn't buy that car, Porsche would be down one sale and everyone who would've benefited from that sale would be out that portion. If you extrapolate this for *everything* Gates spends his billions on it works out to thousands of people benefiting from his spending, from dry cleaning to yachts. Everybody wins!
Investing: let's say Zuck invests $100 million (chump change for him) in a particular business. That business now has $100 million to spend on new employees, new infrastructure, advertising, product development, you name it. That creates jobs directly as well as indirectly, the latter being jobs for the people who make the desks, chairs, pens, servers, switches, routers, etc. required to support the business and its expansion. Assuming the investment was a wise one, Zuck makes his $100 million back plus a nice profit either through selling the stock later or via dividends. Everybody wins!
walmart has iphones right next to the huawei and LG phones
Rich people don't shop at Walmart. That's for us 'proles.
Rich people shop at much higher-end stores.
Really rich people have other people shop for them.
Unbelievably rich people don't even carry phones. They have herds of personal assistants who field their calls for them, answer their emails, surf the web for them, etc.. That's why when these 1% of 1% people are interviewed they seem so disconnected from reality. They're completely insulated from all the stuff you and I have to deal with on a daily basis.
there is *no* singular brand/product choice to indicate wealth very well
I dunno. Owning -- not renting on NetJets or equivalent -- a Gulfstream jet would be damn near exact way to predict wealthy if you want to pick a "consumer" product as your metric.
Doubling CO2 raises the temperature of the Earth by 3.7 W/m^2, or about one degree C.
This assumes nothing else changes in the system. The actual warming could be higher. It could also be lower. You don't bother to address anything except CO2, showing your blindness to the overall complexity of the entire system acting on various feedback and/or self-dampening mechanisms.
I'm sure you've invented wonderful reasons to not believe in climate sensitivity estimates.
Who says I don't believe in the estimates? I do. I also believe they're incomplete and, due to that, absolute conclusions like what you're drawing cannot be relied upon. The actual warming could be higher, spot on, or lower. You can't say because neither you nor anyone else fully understands all the mechanisms. As a result you resort to oversimplifications such as "Doubling CO2 raises the temperature of the Earth by 3.7 W/m^2" when such a thing can only be true if no other variables change. Yet I know -- and I assume you also know -- other variables do change, both independently and in response to the increased CO2. Will these other changes force higher temps? Lower temps? No net change? You won't say. CO2 is your exclusive boogeyman simply because you say so and demand everyone else agree or be branded a heretic.
Get this through that hardened cranium of yours: no one is arguing the climate isn't warming. Neither are they arguing CO2 isn't contributing. Basic physics and chemistry prove both statements. You choose to blame CO2, only CO2, and claim the only remediation possible is drastic cuts in CO2. I respond by saying this is an oversimplification -- which it most obviously is since you neglect any one of a thousand other factors -- and you get all huffy about it like I'm claiming the Earth is flat. Such a thin skin as yours usually hides an unsound argument, one you don't wish questioned. That is antithetical to good science and if you had any respect for science you'd know that.
And all this still begs and even bigger question: is the warming necessarily a bad thing overall for the global population? I'm not arguing it is or isn't. I'm saying nobody seems to care about the answer. The Earth has been both hotter and cooler than its current state over geological timelines. Who are we to say the "proper" temperature isn't higher? Lower? Instead we get people like you who sidestep the question and demand the climate stay static for whatever we deem ideal for the late 19th century. Climate laughs at you, for climate has always changed and will always change, at least until we develop the technology to make it stop changing. Are we contributing to that change? Obviously a single human being exhaling CO2 contributes to that change so the question is silly. The real question is "are we contributing measurably and negatively to that change?" That's the question you won't answer with any specificity because you lack the means to do so. Note I'm not saying we are or are not contributing "measurably and negatively". Instead I'm saying you cannot make the broad-yet-seemingly-specific statements you're making and expect them to be swallowed like a congregation listening to preachers quoting scripture.
You are an ignorant misanthrope, and a liar.
Yours must be a poor argument when you must resort to more ad hominem attacks instead of actually defending your assertion. For the record, please point out exactly where I am "a liar" in any of my prior statements. Go ahead. I'll wait.
It's always funny when one of you gets up on your hind legs and pretends to know something about this subject.
It's always funny when one of you resorts to ad hominem attacks and smug arrogance instead of acknowledging the validity of a statement. The climate is not a simple picture where CO2 is the end-all, be-all of global warming. Yes, additional CO2 must raise global temps, but what percentage of the total increase? To hear you tell it, it's 100% responsible which is (and I'm being charitable here) an uninformed viewpoint. Many things contribute to global temperature changes besides just CO2. For example, water vapor contributes much more to capturing IR than CO2. Beyond CO2 there are many other things -- both natural and man-made -- which have GW potentials higher than CO2. If any of these other variables have GW potential they must also raise global temps. How much? That's a question no climatologist has answered -- or is likely to answer -- with specificity due to the incomplete understanding of how all this interacts. All you can confidently say -- and with which I will not argue -- is "these things are greenhouse gases and therefore must contribute a non-zero effect to overall global temperature in some way."
The argument is not whether CO2 contributes to GW; CO2 is a greenhouse gas which by definition means it's contributing. How much it's contributing and whether or not curbing additional CO2 output will have enough of a positive climate effect to offset the huge economic, political, and cultural effects of CO2 output reductions is an open question that has yet to be answered in any definitive way. There are models, predictions, and suppositions but they are all guesses, all necessarily imprecise due to our lack of full understanding of climate. You would prefer we simplify things down to "CO2 is the sole culprit" which, given the evidence it cannot possibly be the sole culprit, demonstrates this is more of an ideology to you than a science. Your condescension towards anyone who doesn't worship at your altar speaks volumes about your adherence to any kind of scientific method where questions are welcome and data are expected to be verifiable and replicatable.
Of your three possibilities, only #1 is a scientific hypothesis because it is the only one of them which is falsifiable.
I never postulated any of the three were scientific hypotheses, only that there are only three possible permutations. If you want to choose a point-in-time scenario, there are only two, namely:
1. We are alone in the universe at this time.
2. We are not alone in the universe at this time.
perhaps it's necessary that early in the evolution of the planet it be hit by such a large impactor that the continental plate is fractured into multiple tectonic plates and also yielding a large moon that will keep the mantel layer stirred up.
On a cosmological scale, such "rare" events turn out to be not so rare as you'd think. The likelihood of an event so rare as to make Earth unique is so statistically improbable that it begins to resemble divine intervention. Note I'm not attempting to make the case for or against divine intervention. I'm simply saying anything rare enough to make Earth a unique case would be indistinguishable from a "hand of God" kind of event. Such a rare event would have to happen only twice to make us not alone in the Universe and thus disprove conjecture #1. The odds against it would be staggering beyond belief or comprehension without some kind of divine intervention.
The cost of setting up a "space factory" would be orders of magnitude more than anything like this...
You're also forgetting that such an endeavor would make it difficult for a politician to channel funds to his/her home district, thus they have no incentive to even consider it even if the other challenges were removed.
Follow the money. Always follow the money. When billions of dollars are being flung about like they're pocket change you can bet decisions are driven by whose pockets are being lined instead of what actually makes sense for the project.
This is what happens with cost-plus contracting instead of fixed price contracting.
This seems like a good idea but what you actually get is no company will sign such a big contract with so many risks. The threats to the company are simply too large. If something goes wrong -- something not always under the control of the contractor -- it can easily bankrupt the company when billions of dollars are on the line. Then NASA gets left with a half-completed project, a bankrupt company that can't finish it, and all the money spent up to that point was wasted.
What's really needed here is realistic estimates on what it will take to complete the project from whatever companies that bid on it. It should also include a rigorous non-partisan review of the bids to make sure someone isn't lowballing it hoping to get the contract and add fees on later.
What isn't this being done already? Politics. The only thing politicians care about is the money getting spent in their districts. They don't care if things like the JWST actually fly and do good science so there's zero incentive for them to be efficient. After all, it's not their money being spent, is it? It's ours. I've never met a politician who didn't think they could spend my money better than I could and that will probably never change.
Thank God SpaceX is starting to shake things up. Yes, SpaceX sucks off the government teat just like other "private" space companies but at least they're trying to innovate and do things differently.
The following possibilities exist:
1. We are alone in the universe and will remain so forever.
2. We are not alone in the universe, being preceded by one or more civilizations.
3. We are alone in the universe at this time but conditions exist for other civilizations to evolve in due time.
Given the vast size and diversity of the universe, #1 seems almost ludicrous absent the intervention of some higher power (i.e. "Intelligent Design"). We occupy a rather mundane planet orbiting a ordinary star in a humdrum galaxy in no particularly special region of the universe. There's no reason to suspect there aren't trillions of other planets just like ours in this galaxy alone, let alone the trillions of galaxies beyond ours. If similar planets exist in similar conditions with similar age there's no reason for life not to have evolved on its own assuming life is a purely accidental event.
Possibility #2 makes more sense assuming humans aren't some special snowflake in the universe like #1 supposes. Humans have evolved and gone from squatting in caves to sending space probes into interstellar space in just a few thousand years. That's a fraction of an eyeblink of cosmological time. If another civilization developed just 10,000 years earlier than us -- again, something less than a rounding error in cosmological time -- imagine how far ahead of us they could be technologically. Imagine where we'll be in 10,000 years given our current exponential rate of progress.
Possibility #3 is a variation on #2 but backwards. Assuming more than one civilization will ever come into being in this universe, somebody has to be first to get there barring a fantastical coincidence. Perhaps we're it. If so, we are alone for now but unlikely to remain so over cosmological time scales.
And there are actual facts backing my assertion up.
How dare you bring facts and logic to this emotionally-based knee-jerk-response argument! Don't you know that can't be tolerated in today's climate of mandatory total tolerance?
Orwell would be proud.
If Big Oil had shifted their focus decades ago to renewable energy...
Speaking as someone who was alive decades ago I can state with confidence the very idea of shifting to renewables back then was impossibly impractical. Solar technology was incredibly inefficient and extremely expensive. Battery technology (largely lead-acid) was environmentally harmful and inefficient. Wind power was impractical as materials technology for light, strong wind turbines was not available.
You seem to think the only reason none of this came to pass "decades ago" was because of some evil plot. You might as well complain about the 18th century not have carbon fiber composite wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries, and efficient solar cells! Only in the last decade or so have all these technologies either been developed or become affordable alternatives.
Venus begs to differ. Or are you suggesting that CO2 has no effect at all in the atmosphere?
Mars, which is amazingly cold despite an atmosphere of nearly pure CO2, begs to differ.
See, this is the problem with blaming climate variations on one thing. Climate is a ridiculously complex system dependent upon thousands of inputs and their attendant thousands of feedback and self-dampening mechanisms. The permutations are staggering and that's only considering the variables we know of. Climate science is not a "we know all there is to know" science at this point. We know a lot but we're discovering more every day. Some of those discoveries reinforce our previous beliefs. Some contradict them in surprising ways.
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Absolutely. Does that mean our warming must be due to CO2 increases and nothing else of significance? Only a fool would make such an argument when our understanding of climate is rudimentary at best.
What argument were you making again?
You don't fix a problem by going full-on Third Reich.
By the power of Godwin's Law and the rules of Hysterial Hyperbole, you have now lost the argument.
But there are times when civil disobedience -- even on the part of the executive branch of the government -- is the only moral thing to do.
Civil disobedience is a civic right which I support but that's not what is going on. What is going on -- and which you state you and I are in agreement on -- is selective enforcement of laws for political reasons. I agree with you that's a very bad thing. As you state, it gives far too much power to whoever makes the selective enforcement decisions.
I will ask the pointed question: what is your solution to the problem? You don't like the current policy so how would you do it differently?
I have no idea how other countries handle that sort of thing.
You're arrested, detained, and deported. The US is the only country doing all this hand-wringing.
A better question is if using the lives and mental health of children as a tool to force Democrats to agree to these reforms a reasonable thing to do? Is that how democracy is supposed to work?
First, correct the common misconception we are a democracy. We are not. We are a Constitutional republic.
Second, the way it's supposed to work is the law is made by Congress, signed by the President, and enforced by Federal agencies. That is exactly what is being done right now. The reason this is making headlines is every president since 1997 has ignored the law, preferring to kick the can down the road to someone else.
If you don't like the law there is a mechanism for changing it. All you have to do is get enough citizens to think like you and pressure their representatives in Congress to change it and the President to sign it. So far no one has been able to achieve this, most likely because there aren't a lot of "good" options to stem the tide of illegal immigration. Nobody wants illegals in the country but they also don't want to stop the flow of cheap labor (Republicans) and love appearing as the savior of the underclass (Democrats). Thus nothing gets done.
In Europe we have detention facilities for families.
We had that in the USA as well. Liberals said it was inhumane and got them shut down. Now we're reaping the "unintended" consequences.
I get the feeling they really don't want to do anything about illegal immigration and instead prefer to present themselves as the saviors of the underclass. When that underclass is given amnesty and the ability to vote, who do you think they'll vote for?
Non sequitur. There is no legal requirement to separate families while asylum claims are investigated.
You're being purposefully disingenuous. Yes, there is no legal requirement to separate families. However, when someone comes into the country uninvited (i.e. crosses the border illegally), you have two choices:
1. Start their asylum case and release them into the country awaiting the outcome.
2. Start their asylum case and detain them awaiting the outcome.
Option 1 has been tried and is a dismal failure by any possible measure. More than 80% of those "catch and release" cases never returned to court to finish their asylum hearings. The most obvious motive is they knew their asylum case had no merit and did not wish to be deported. The end result is millions of illegals in the country with no way to deport them and no incentive for them to stop coming.
Option 2 is what's being pursued at this time following the failure of Option 1. If you have a better option that somehow doesn't enable illegal immigration, doesn't require incarceration, doesn't require separating children from parents, and doesn't put an undue burden on citizen and legal immigrant taxpayers, put it forward for consideration. If you don't, be quiet and accept we're pursuing the least-damaging option (to citizens and legal residents as the law is designed to protect) out of two possible non-optimal options.
What is going on now is involuntary confinement of children who can and who have committed no crime.
And your solution to this is...what, exactly? There are relatively few other options and all have significant consequences.
1. Put the kids in jail with the parents. I think all would agree this is no more -- and possibly much less -- humane than the current policy.
2. Don't incarcerate the parents in the first place. This neuters immigration enforcement to the point where it's utterly ineffective, basically enabling the status quo which has existed since Pres. Clinton enacted the policy. He and his successor chose not to put much effort into enforcing it, however, so it was a political stunt designed to kick the can down the road. Which is where we are today, with an immigration problem and still no solution.
If you have another suggestion please put it forward. It takes nothing to bitch about not liking a current policy. It takes brains to also suggest a workable alternative that is objectively better than what you're complaining about. Any "better" solution must somehow stem the tide of illegal immigration, not afflicting families any more than necessary, and not put undue burdens on citizens and legal immigrants. Floor's yours. I'm eager to hear your solution.
The law is immoral and wrong
Then change the law. This is a republic of laws, after all. There is a legal method to change immigration law and it should be used instead of "legalizing" the violation of said law.
So all you need to do is get enough people to agree with your "this is immoral and wrong" idea and get the law changed to something more to your liking. If you are unable to do so then your idea does not succeed, as the law exists to express the will of the majority of the people through a representative republic. If you end up with a law you don't like it doesn't give you or anyone else the right to violate it. You either get majority agreement with your idea and it becomes law, or you don't and you live with a law you don't like, or you find another country with a different set of laws more in line with your views. Those are your options; you don't get to make up others just because you want to.
Do not conflate immoral and illegal. There are many things which are illegal but moral. There are many thing which are immoral but legal. Our legal system is not intended to reflect moral values but legal ones. Disasters happen when you attempt to use the legal system to enforce a moral principle solely on the grounds it is moral (i.e. Prohibition).
While all your points are true, what you describe is an easily-gamed system. Anyone crossing the border automatically says they're claiming asylum whether they have grounds or not. According to you, they're set free in the USA and given a date for a court hearing to determine the legitimacy of their claim. More than 80% never show up for that hearing. The most probable reason for not showing up is they know their asylum claim has no merit but still wish to reside in the USA illegally. They are, therefore, de facto illegals the moment they crossed the border since they did so under false pretenses.
The whole situation defies any kind of win-win scenario. Leaving the "asylum loophole" open merely invites abuse of it to the detriment of citizens and legal immigrants. Closing it means actual asylum seekers are penalized.
There are defined criteria for asylum. These criteria are not secrets to those crossing the border. I'd wager the overwhelming majority of those crossing the border claiming asylum know full well they have no claim to asylum. That they lie to exploit a weakness in our compassion is despicable opportunism. They are the ones creating this lose-lose situation, not US immigration policy. The optimal solution would be to make it impossible for people to lie when crossing the border but that is impossible. So now we end up where we are: families are separated and legal asylum seekers are jeopardized all because a bunch of people don't wish to go through the legal immigration process. They prefer to skip to the head of the line, a slap in the face to anyone who truly wishes to legally immigrate.
Having taken part in such activities, I agree with you. However, such training and presentation is almost useless when dealing with an objective matter as opposed to a subjective one. Objective facts cannot be reasonably argue with. The tactic most commonly employed is to lead the debate away from the facts or to try and discredit the facts with irrelevant data. A machine cannot be swayed by such. A machine with full knowledge of all the facts of a given objective subject could not be outmaneuvered in such a manner.
And you brilliantly demonstrate why they can get away with that behavior.
Struck a nerve, did I? You brilliantly demonstrate the thin skin and intolerance of divergent viewpoints I am speaking of. You put forth no facts in your statement, only ad hominem attacks, and then draw a conclusion based on your misunderstanding and intolerance of an opinion you disagree with.