This isn't my domain, but my understanding is that the Paris agreement falls under the process ratified in an earlier treaty, the UNFCCC. This was ratified by the US Senate in 1992. So it's all Kosher, or at least no one seems to be seriously challenging it.
A happy trend, to be sure. I'd like to get the oil from places like the mideast down to zero, though. 15% of domestic consumption is still a huge number.
Stats, please. In the US they dropped thanks to fracking, but I did not know this was a global trend and in the US it is not the result of carbon policy, but just happenstance in the relative price of gas vs. coal.
I believe the science behind AGW, but I do not think these global attempts to restrict carbon emissions are realistic.
With that said, giving up participation in these treaties is a poor choice. I don't mind the US giving up some of our leadership role in the world, but this was low-hanging fruit. It also had the secondary effect of lowering our dependence on foreign oil, which has broader strategic benefits.
Casablanca was made decades before Teletubby, so that's like comparing Surface sales to sales of the Altair. No doubt "popularity" != "quality", but there probably is a correlation. And the critique that Apple makes "garbage" flies in the face of reality - their stuff is well engineered for the most part, to the point that users consider the product "defective" when it does something that wouldn't necessarily phase a typical PC buyer.
You seem to be of the opinion that something wonderful diminishes with age. A phonograph is no less fascinating just because it's been around for 100+ years. It's still fun to marvel at a needle scraping across a groove and producing sound. A discrete transistor (or vacuum tube) is no less fascinating just because it has been around for decades and you can buy them by the billion on a single chip - it's still fun to construct circuits with discrete transistors and explore the behavior. This list is nearly infinite: people who loved to work on cars in the 1950s still love to work on those same cars for the exact same reasons. Why should old computers be any different? If you had fun in the 1980s exploring the capabilities of a limited (by today's standards) computer, why should this suddenly become un-enjoyable? Why shouldn't some of today's kids enjoy the same experience?
For the record, I do agree with you and think that Citizen's United was a mistake. But it is a rational decision and I can't be too hard on the court. The best way forward is something like Bernie Sander's Constitutional Amendment that explicitly forbids corporate or union money from entering politics. This would force a constitutional test of "the press" that I think would end up being something like the test for indecency, which while not black-and-white and satisfying to people who have trouble thinking in shades of gray, would still be acceptable.
My whole company has standardized on it. I can go to any PC in the building and find Filezilla. To be fair, they standardized on it perhaps 7 years ago. But hey, it still works.
It's almost as customizable as Firefox (though I still miss Tree Style Tabs), but it does not seem to leak memory as badly and the stability is better. I have kids and thus Chromebooks, and the profile syncs well with those as well as my Android phone. It has critical mass and so pretty much every website works with it.
We are pulling the gas and oil out of the ground. Formerly, it was not available for use by plants or trees. We burn the gas and oil, and now all of that stored carbon is available for use by plants or trees. This is a change to the equilibrium, and so our world is changing in somewhat unpredictable and rapid ways that will be traumatic to people and ecosystems.
Depends... you might be pumping shit down into the ground anyway to displace oil. Might as well use the captured CO2 - that would significantly lower the marginal "storage" cost.
Yes, well, it's a bit more complicated than that... let's say the US had the "will" to feed all of the world's hungry. Some (most?) of the world's "hunger" problems are actually political problems. Without threat of force, these political problems aren't going away. So really it comes down to a willingness to toss aside the old notions of sovereignty and actively intervene where help is needed, no matter whose jurisdiction. So yeah, you could feed the starving North Koreans, but you risk killing most of Seoul's population for that endgame.
Well, you, Mr. Archangel Michael, can say whatever you want about nutrition and health. But you, Mr. Unilever Corp, cannot. A very fine example of what I was talking about.
What are these quasi-anythings, and who is granting this status?
Corporate charters come from the government. Corporations get all sorts of special rules and benefits - perhaps the most dramatic being limited liability, where people can cause you harm and be limited in liability to just their investment in the corporation. If government were to vanish, so would corporations - they are entirely a construct of law. Compare this to older business arrangements like partnerships, which are based upon contracts between individuals, and in which the individuals bear full responsibility for the actions of the partnership.
In principle, the government can do whatever it wants with corporations as a condition of granting them a charter. This has set up very murky regions of law with regards to free speech - witness Citizen's United, which takes the "corporation as people" concept beyond the commercial realm. And while I don't like that concept, I can't really fault the court too much because what the hell do you do with the NY Times, which is both a government-created entity and the Constitutionally-protected free press?
There are much stronger protections for political speech than for commercial speech. Try selling a wedding cake that claims to cure cancer. Now create a Facebook post that claims that wedding cake cures cancer. Which one do you think the government can take action on?
Gonna be hard to "correct" it all after satellites play ping pong and destroy each other, and we've created an artificial ring of space junk around our planet.
Also going to be hard to clean all that up without cheap access to space.
I sort-of agree. Corporations are quasi-governmental... their structure is only possible because of a government-granted charter. And as a practical matter, they hold a lot of sway in government.
With that said, while Facebook has a lot of sway, so does the NY Times, Fox News, and the BBC. They certainly do not hold a monopoly on information.
On the other hand, Facebook is not a government, nor does it have a "common carrier" type status. If they don't want hate speech on their network it is their prerogative.
We humans haven't exactly done a good job at keeping Earth tidy, neat, and organized.
Actually, we seem to follow a pattern of letting shit get out of hand and then correcting. Western Europe and the US have improved their environments significantly over the last 50 years. China is just beginning to figure this out as well.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't my domain, but my understanding is that the Paris agreement falls under the process ratified in an earlier treaty, the UNFCCC. This was ratified by the US Senate in 1992. So it's all Kosher, or at least no one seems to be seriously challenging it.
A happy trend, to be sure. I'd like to get the oil from places like the mideast down to zero, though. 15% of domestic consumption is still a huge number.
Stats, please. In the US they dropped thanks to fracking, but I did not know this was a global trend and in the US it is not the result of carbon policy, but just happenstance in the relative price of gas vs. coal.
I believe the science behind AGW, but I do not think these global attempts to restrict carbon emissions are realistic.
With that said, giving up participation in these treaties is a poor choice. I don't mind the US giving up some of our leadership role in the world, but this was low-hanging fruit. It also had the secondary effect of lowering our dependence on foreign oil, which has broader strategic benefits.
Casablanca was made decades before Teletubby, so that's like comparing Surface sales to sales of the Altair. No doubt "popularity" != "quality", but there probably is a correlation. And the critique that Apple makes "garbage" flies in the face of reality - their stuff is well engineered for the most part, to the point that users consider the product "defective" when it does something that wouldn't necessarily phase a typical PC buyer.
I do understand, but in practice most of this power is not used for my purposes except for Tree Style Tabs.
In any event, that kind of customization is all going away soon as they go with the more Chrome-like model.
You seem to be of the opinion that something wonderful diminishes with age. A phonograph is no less fascinating just because it's been around for 100+ years. It's still fun to marvel at a needle scraping across a groove and producing sound. A discrete transistor (or vacuum tube) is no less fascinating just because it has been around for decades and you can buy them by the billion on a single chip - it's still fun to construct circuits with discrete transistors and explore the behavior. This list is nearly infinite: people who loved to work on cars in the 1950s still love to work on those same cars for the exact same reasons. Why should old computers be any different? If you had fun in the 1980s exploring the capabilities of a limited (by today's standards) computer, why should this suddenly become un-enjoyable? Why shouldn't some of today's kids enjoy the same experience?
For the record, I do agree with you and think that Citizen's United was a mistake. But it is a rational decision and I can't be too hard on the court. The best way forward is something like Bernie Sander's Constitutional Amendment that explicitly forbids corporate or union money from entering politics. This would force a constitutional test of "the press" that I think would end up being something like the test for indecency, which while not black-and-white and satisfying to people who have trouble thinking in shades of gray, would still be acceptable.
My whole company has standardized on it. I can go to any PC in the building and find Filezilla. To be fair, they standardized on it perhaps 7 years ago. But hey, it still works.
Thanks, I'll give it a shot - though at first glance it does not have the Google integration that makes Chrome so handy.
It's almost as customizable as Firefox (though I still miss Tree Style Tabs), but it does not seem to leak memory as badly and the stability is better. I have kids and thus Chromebooks, and the profile syncs well with those as well as my Android phone. It has critical mass and so pretty much every website works with it.
We are pulling the gas and oil out of the ground. Formerly, it was not available for use by plants or trees. We burn the gas and oil, and now all of that stored carbon is available for use by plants or trees. This is a change to the equilibrium, and so our world is changing in somewhat unpredictable and rapid ways that will be traumatic to people and ecosystems.
Depends... you might be pumping shit down into the ground anyway to displace oil. Might as well use the captured CO2 - that would significantly lower the marginal "storage" cost.
The problem is having the will to feed them.
Yes, well, it's a bit more complicated than that... let's say the US had the "will" to feed all of the world's hungry. Some (most?) of the world's "hunger" problems are actually political problems. Without threat of force, these political problems aren't going away. So really it comes down to a willingness to toss aside the old notions of sovereignty and actively intervene where help is needed, no matter whose jurisdiction. So yeah, you could feed the starving North Koreans, but you risk killing most of Seoul's population for that endgame.
Well, you, Mr. Archangel Michael, can say whatever you want about nutrition and health. But you, Mr. Unilever Corp, cannot. A very fine example of what I was talking about.
Blatantly unconstitutional laws?
OK, so YOU think they are unconstitutional. That does not make it the law of the land.
It's a Dr. Seuss quote :)
Um, no, you are wrong about that. Commercial ad regulation is the most obvious example.
What are these quasi-anythings, and who is granting this status?
Corporate charters come from the government. Corporations get all sorts of special rules and benefits - perhaps the most dramatic being limited liability, where people can cause you harm and be limited in liability to just their investment in the corporation. If government were to vanish, so would corporations - they are entirely a construct of law. Compare this to older business arrangements like partnerships, which are based upon contracts between individuals, and in which the individuals bear full responsibility for the actions of the partnership.
In principle, the government can do whatever it wants with corporations as a condition of granting them a charter. This has set up very murky regions of law with regards to free speech - witness Citizen's United, which takes the "corporation as people" concept beyond the commercial realm. And while I don't like that concept, I can't really fault the court too much because what the hell do you do with the NY Times, which is both a government-created entity and the Constitutionally-protected free press?
There are much stronger protections for political speech than for commercial speech. Try selling a wedding cake that claims to cure cancer. Now create a Facebook post that claims that wedding cake cures cancer. Which one do you think the government can take action on?
Gonna be hard to "correct" it all after satellites play ping pong and destroy each other, and we've created an artificial ring of space junk around our planet.
Also going to be hard to clean all that up without cheap access to space.
I sort-of agree. Corporations are quasi-governmental... their structure is only possible because of a government-granted charter. And as a practical matter, they hold a lot of sway in government.
With that said, while Facebook has a lot of sway, so does the NY Times, Fox News, and the BBC. They certainly do not hold a monopoly on information.
On the other hand, Facebook is not a government, nor does it have a "common carrier" type status. If they don't want hate speech on their network it is their prerogative.
And making that cheaper is somehow a good thing?
Yes.
We humans haven't exactly done a good job at keeping Earth tidy, neat, and organized.
Actually, we seem to follow a pattern of letting shit get out of hand and then correcting. Western Europe and the US have improved their environments significantly over the last 50 years. China is just beginning to figure this out as well.
Even 1960s tech could get a man into orbit with a 3000lbs. That's about the size of the biggest Mercury capsules.