I have various investments, primarily in stocks and bonds. These have the advantage of representing real things. There is a company called 3M that I hold stock in. As long as 3M is around and healthy, these shares have some real worth. Somebody's going to want them enough to pay me for them, and I can collect my share of dividends issued in the meantime. I have bonds, which are basically legally enforceable promises for a company to pay me money at some future date. As long as the company stays solvent that long, these bonds have monetary value. Neither is a sure thing. I've had stocks and bonds in companies that went bust before. However, both stocks and bonds are things that will hold value as long as the companies do.
If I were to invest in some cryptocoin, I'd be betting that there would continue to be a thriving subeconomy using them. If I bought a few hundred bogocoin, and it never caught on, my money goes away, as there is no trace of inherent value in a cryptocoin. Bitcoin is doing well currently, but that's no guarantee. It's currency speculation, and I'm not touching that any more than I'm touching day trading. I'd feel too much like a wounded fish in a shark tank.
It's true that any currency that's not a promise to give me something valuable (and "valuable" is a difficult-to-define word here) has similar risks, but let's look at the US dollar. It's the main currency in one very large economy and in several small shaky ones. The most powerful government on Earth and its numerous subgovernments require that people who deal with it do so in dollars, and when it's required to show them some accounting it has to be in dollars. As long as these are true, dollars will be in demand.
If you mined those coins, then there's no way to tie them to you. Why worry about taxes?
Nobody's coming after him because of bitcoin. If he'd kept the bitcoin and sold it for $75K, the IRS would be very interested in his acquisition of that amount in dollars.
it's the world's leading business for international money transfer, which is a function that bitcoin can provide with less hassle, more security, and lower fees.
It may well be that bitcoin can provide international money transfer with less hassle, more security, and lower fees, but that's mostly a function of how Western Union is set up rather than the advantages of bitcoin.
Let's say I want to send the equivalent of $500 to Gunther in Austria. To do that, I pay someone to transfer the appropriate amount of bitcoin to Gunther's wallet, and Gunther transfers it to someone else to get euros. That's two relatively expensive transactions. I'm assuming here that neither Gunther nor I are active bitcoin users, since most people aren't. It doesn't matter if I am, since that's still two transfers to get Gunther his euros. If Gunther is, he's assuming the risk of currency fluctuation. Gunther, in addition, needs to know an accessible reputable bitcoin exchange, and if I don't hold my own bitcoin I need to know one too.
Western Union can presumably do a bank transfer of my money to their account, and a bank transfer of their money to Gunther's account, if they can't do it directly. That's two bank transfers which are not inherently expensive, and trusting one company rather than two.
There is scientific evidence of AGW. We know the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere affects the climate, and we have measured the rise of CO2 from about 280ppm to about 400ppm. We know what's driving global warming for the most part.
We also know about our fossil fuel use, and how much CO2 that produces. We also measure the isotopic concentration of carbon atoms in the air, and they're short on C-14 (which is going to screw up carbon dating for future archaeologists). The increase in CO2 is due to our burning of fossil fuels, and that causes the warming.
BTW, I don't know of any grant money going to AGW. There's grant money going to climate science, which is a good idea. If a climate scientist can provide a model showing that AGW isn't happening which matches the evidence currently available, that scientist is going to be famous. I really don't expect it to happen.
What I do as an individual has absolutely no measurable effect. It's lost in the noise. It's what we do collectively that matters. Driving a 50mpg car may give you a virtuous feeling, but if people are still buying sub-20mpg vehicles in quantity it won't do much good.
The most productive thing to do is to replace burning fossil carbon for energy. If we can turn more power generation over to wind, solar, and nuclear, we're doing some real good.
And one more Trump supporter is stupid enough to not realize that Trump won. The election was over seven months ago, and Hillary Clinton is largely irrelevant. You can stop running against her now, because the important stuff is what the actual winner says and does.
Did it account for the difference in what we think of as "hot" and "cold"?
Figure that comfortable temperatures are 70F. TFS refers to temperatures approaching 120F, which is considered extreme. Back before global warming took off, winters around here, in a large metro area, almost always had one dip to -20F. The range from comfortable to hot (about 20F) is smaller than the range from comfortable to cold (say 50F), and the range from comfortable to i'm-dying-but-it's-too-hot-for-the-aircraft-to-carry-me-away is about 50F, whereas I've driven in temperatures 100F below comfortable.
When it's cold out, I can wear warmer clothes and it's fairly simple to heat my immediate environment by burning things. When it's hot out, there's a hard limit to the clothes I can remove, and air conditioning is complicated and not necessarily all that effective at high temperatures. Moreover, consider room temperature at 70F. The article is discussing temperatures in the neighborhood of 120F, which is 50F above room temperature. 50F below room temperature is 20F, which is very comfortable with proper clothing.
I live in Minnesota, and have had more problems with heat-related problems (heat exhaustion) than cold-related problems.
Sorry; I was confused by the original AC claim '99.99% of "poor people" are "poor" due to irresponsible behavior.', and your reaction to the counterclaim "Quite the opposite.". My take is that most but not all poor people are poor despite reasonably responsible behavior. If anyone really wants, I suppose I could argue about the responsibility of behavior appropriate to a poor area vs. behavior appropriate for success, and whether addictions and/or mental illness constitute irresponsible behavior, or we could just leave it at that.
You were making the definite sweeping statement without bothering to google for something like "accurate climate change predictions". Here's a PDF from NOAA, which I found after a moment's search.
Michael Mann has personally made over $6 million in government funds making fake AWG alarmists crap.
Got a source for that? Are you sure it's not a matter of Mann-led research projects getting $6 million, with Mann getting paid much less out of that? Mann is an eminent scientist, and can be expected to get grant money for his research.
If you are unwilling to tell the truth about obvious facts,
I find nothing you say obviously factual. Got a cite for the Mann claim? The oil tax claim? Anything?
plenty of predictions have been made. Those among them, that were falsifiable, ended up getting falsified indeed (any attempt to rebut this post must cite counter-examples or be returned unopened)
Okay, so you can get away with making sweeping statements, but everybody else needs to provide cites? Who died and made you Donald Trump?
Just how arrogant you people are, to claim to know the dystopian future
While you obviously claim to know the non-dystopian future. Sorry, I'm going with what the smart people who've studied this hard say as the most likely possibility.
No, the fastest way is to support bad science. The reason global warming deniers aren't welcome in scientific circles is that they don't have any good science. If they can come up with their own evidence-supported theories and models, no problem.
The fastest way to make yourself a reputation is to find something everybody believes in and show that it isn't what everybody thinks. If I could come up with good science that disagreed with global warming, I could be a sensation.
Third world population growth is already going away. The population will continue to rise for a time despite fertility at or below replacement level, because of the age demographics.
Plants hold a certain amount of CO2, but unless the plant gets stored somewhere it's going to decay and release the CO2. Plant growth can be limited by all sorts of things.
There at least used to be classes of apps not available on iOS, but there were and are a tremendous variety of apps available for pretty much any sort of thing not proscribed. The App Store came along about a year after the iPhone, and has always been how apps get on an iPhone.
I'd be surprised to find that the Windows Store had anywhere near the variety and quality of apps that the App Store has, and Windows users are used to being able to install software from anywhere.
In the US, the legislature writes the law and the courts define what it is. Our legislators apparently can't be bothered to make the laws well-defined enough to get along without case law.
Slashdot Mirror
FTFY.
I have various investments, primarily in stocks and bonds. These have the advantage of representing real things. There is a company called 3M that I hold stock in. As long as 3M is around and healthy, these shares have some real worth. Somebody's going to want them enough to pay me for them, and I can collect my share of dividends issued in the meantime. I have bonds, which are basically legally enforceable promises for a company to pay me money at some future date. As long as the company stays solvent that long, these bonds have monetary value. Neither is a sure thing. I've had stocks and bonds in companies that went bust before. However, both stocks and bonds are things that will hold value as long as the companies do.
If I were to invest in some cryptocoin, I'd be betting that there would continue to be a thriving subeconomy using them. If I bought a few hundred bogocoin, and it never caught on, my money goes away, as there is no trace of inherent value in a cryptocoin. Bitcoin is doing well currently, but that's no guarantee. It's currency speculation, and I'm not touching that any more than I'm touching day trading. I'd feel too much like a wounded fish in a shark tank.
It's true that any currency that's not a promise to give me something valuable (and "valuable" is a difficult-to-define word here) has similar risks, but let's look at the US dollar. It's the main currency in one very large economy and in several small shaky ones. The most powerful government on Earth and its numerous subgovernments require that people who deal with it do so in dollars, and when it's required to show them some accounting it has to be in dollars. As long as these are true, dollars will be in demand.
Nobody's coming after him because of bitcoin. If he'd kept the bitcoin and sold it for $75K, the IRS would be very interested in his acquisition of that amount in dollars.
It may well be that bitcoin can provide international money transfer with less hassle, more security, and lower fees, but that's mostly a function of how Western Union is set up rather than the advantages of bitcoin.
Let's say I want to send the equivalent of $500 to Gunther in Austria. To do that, I pay someone to transfer the appropriate amount of bitcoin to Gunther's wallet, and Gunther transfers it to someone else to get euros. That's two relatively expensive transactions. I'm assuming here that neither Gunther nor I are active bitcoin users, since most people aren't. It doesn't matter if I am, since that's still two transfers to get Gunther his euros. If Gunther is, he's assuming the risk of currency fluctuation. Gunther, in addition, needs to know an accessible reputable bitcoin exchange, and if I don't hold my own bitcoin I need to know one too.
Western Union can presumably do a bank transfer of my money to their account, and a bank transfer of their money to Gunther's account, if they can't do it directly. That's two bank transfers which are not inherently expensive, and trusting one company rather than two.
There is scientific evidence of AGW. We know the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere affects the climate, and we have measured the rise of CO2 from about 280ppm to about 400ppm. We know what's driving global warming for the most part.
We also know about our fossil fuel use, and how much CO2 that produces. We also measure the isotopic concentration of carbon atoms in the air, and they're short on C-14 (which is going to screw up carbon dating for future archaeologists). The increase in CO2 is due to our burning of fossil fuels, and that causes the warming.
BTW, I don't know of any grant money going to AGW. There's grant money going to climate science, which is a good idea. If a climate scientist can provide a model showing that AGW isn't happening which matches the evidence currently available, that scientist is going to be famous. I really don't expect it to happen.
What I do as an individual has absolutely no measurable effect. It's lost in the noise. It's what we do collectively that matters. Driving a 50mpg car may give you a virtuous feeling, but if people are still buying sub-20mpg vehicles in quantity it won't do much good.
The most productive thing to do is to replace burning fossil carbon for energy. If we can turn more power generation over to wind, solar, and nuclear, we're doing some real good.
And one more Trump supporter is stupid enough to not realize that Trump won. The election was over seven months ago, and Hillary Clinton is largely irrelevant. You can stop running against her now, because the important stuff is what the actual winner says and does.
Did it account for the difference in what we think of as "hot" and "cold"?
Figure that comfortable temperatures are 70F. TFS refers to temperatures approaching 120F, which is considered extreme. Back before global warming took off, winters around here, in a large metro area, almost always had one dip to -20F. The range from comfortable to hot (about 20F) is smaller than the range from comfortable to cold (say 50F), and the range from comfortable to i'm-dying-but-it's-too-hot-for-the-aircraft-to-carry-me-away is about 50F, whereas I've driven in temperatures 100F below comfortable.
When it's cold out, I can wear warmer clothes and it's fairly simple to heat my immediate environment by burning things. When it's hot out, there's a hard limit to the clothes I can remove, and air conditioning is complicated and not necessarily all that effective at high temperatures. Moreover, consider room temperature at 70F. The article is discussing temperatures in the neighborhood of 120F, which is 50F above room temperature. 50F below room temperature is 20F, which is very comfortable with proper clothing.
I live in Minnesota, and have had more problems with heat-related problems (heat exhaustion) than cold-related problems.
Mine seem to be reassured by a familiar food dish, not by familiar humans. I know where I rate.
Sorry; I was confused by the original AC claim '99.99% of "poor people" are "poor" due to irresponsible behavior.', and your reaction to the counterclaim "Quite the opposite.". My take is that most but not all poor people are poor despite reasonably responsible behavior. If anyone really wants, I suppose I could argue about the responsibility of behavior appropriate to a poor area vs. behavior appropriate for success, and whether addictions and/or mental illness constitute irresponsible behavior, or we could just leave it at that.
Thank you for the clarification.
Your last paragraph reminds me of all the post-Rapture looting parties I've had to cancel.
You were making the definite sweeping statement without bothering to google for something like "accurate climate change predictions". Here's a PDF from NOAA, which I found after a moment's search.
As far as we've been able to tell, it changes much more slowly than it is now.
Got a source for that? Are you sure it's not a matter of Mann-led research projects getting $6 million, with Mann getting paid much less out of that? Mann is an eminent scientist, and can be expected to get grant money for his research.
I find nothing you say obviously factual. Got a cite for the Mann claim? The oil tax claim? Anything?
Okay, so you can get away with making sweeping statements, but everybody else needs to provide cites? Who died and made you Donald Trump?
Population growth is leveling off. Release of fossil carbon isn't.
While you obviously claim to know the non-dystopian future. Sorry, I'm going with what the smart people who've studied this hard say as the most likely possibility.
No, the fastest way is to support bad science. The reason global warming deniers aren't welcome in scientific circles is that they don't have any good science. If they can come up with their own evidence-supported theories and models, no problem.
The fastest way to make yourself a reputation is to find something everybody believes in and show that it isn't what everybody thinks. If I could come up with good science that disagreed with global warming, I could be a sensation.
Third world population growth is already going away. The population will continue to rise for a time despite fertility at or below replacement level, because of the age demographics.
Ah, so you had crappy textbooks also.
You probably also hear it from people who studied philosophy.
Plants hold a certain amount of CO2, but unless the plant gets stored somewhere it's going to decay and release the CO2. Plant growth can be limited by all sorts of things.
There at least used to be classes of apps not available on iOS, but there were and are a tremendous variety of apps available for pretty much any sort of thing not proscribed. The App Store came along about a year after the iPhone, and has always been how apps get on an iPhone.
I'd be surprised to find that the Windows Store had anywhere near the variety and quality of apps that the App Store has, and Windows users are used to being able to install software from anywhere.
In the US, the legislature writes the law and the courts define what it is. Our legislators apparently can't be bothered to make the laws well-defined enough to get along without case law.