As for the 'terrorist threats' since 9/11, how many have there been, apart from those made up by the FBI and other agencies in order to fatten their funding and broaden their power base? Does anyone here have access to credible stats on the real increase in terrorist activity in the developed world over the past decade?
How the fuck can this be modded insightful? Just here in the UK we had the 7/7 attacks and various thwarted attempts which have led to people being imprisoned. Never mind the Bali bombings, Mumbai shootings, etc throughout the world.
The terrorist threat may be over-exaggerated, but it is not an entirely fictitious government conspiracy.
If terrorists were as motivated, competent, and plentiful as all the security theatre seems to indicate...
If I recall correctly, a couple of airports were attacked in the 1970s. It's interesting that, that terrorism didn't increase airport security and no terrorist group has returned to it since security theatre created choke points that make passengers more vulnerable.
There were those twats in Glasgow who tried to drive a car bomb into the departure lounge. And most airports definitely have anti-vehicle barriers outside them now.
So, by making the cockpit door out of slightly thicker plywood and fitting a bolt to it - similar to the one you are familiar with from your bathroom door - we can eliminate that threat entirely, for about 20 quid a plane. Less, really, because the DIY store will give you a discount on a large order of bathroom door bolts.
I find it hard to believe that determined terrorists couldn't get through a plywood door with a bathroom door bolt on it if they really wanted to
we had Andersdotters here in India. Young politicians here are 40+, most are 60+ who can't understand tech if their lives depended on it. hence the facebook-post-arrests seen recently.
I don't see anything wrong with arresting someone for using facebook. A few more cases pour encourager les autres and with any luck we could get the whole fucking thing shut down.
Individualistic is just a nicey-nice way of saying selfish. The roots of conservatism lie in the proppping up of existing power structures, whether they're religious, economic or political.
So-called libertarians who say they are "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" are, in plain English, conservative.
By deifying freedom of the individual to do as they wish above everything else, you are simply ensuring that those in power continue to do what they want while living like parasites on the body of society as a whole.
"Deregulation and austerity" are indeed libertarian, which is to say conservative, as they sit the agenda of those in power perfectly. It is sad that all you rugged American individualists are so blind to this obvious truth.
Makes one wonder who would be out of their mind enough to spy for north korea? Though I suppose there's good odds that anyone they let loose out of their borders has their entire family at gunpoint if they decide to run.
I think the point is rather more that if you were a spy for North Korea in South Korea you wouldn't blow your cover by posting pro-NK shit on the internet.
Something that you seem to be overlooking is that there are rather more people on Earth than there were during the Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period. IN 1600AD there were about 500 million people on Earth (from a quick Google) which is about 7% of what we have now. There was an awful lot of uninhabited or very sparsely populated land on Earth for people to move into back then.
Obviously he is not robbing anybody of anything, the 'future generations' do not actually exist and they may not exist for all we know. 'Future generations' is an abstract idea that completely worthless from our perspective, we will never meet them, we will never know if they even will exist or not and it is really not our problem what challenges they will face as time progresses.
We certainly are doing our best to make our own lives better (well, not the ones that are socialists but reasonable people who understand that free market capitalism is the actual solution to the environmental challenge, since it is the free market capitalism that creates the tools necessary to solve the problem by increasing the wealth of the society in pursuit of private profits).
This is a great point. This study shows an increase in arable land by as much as 67% in some places. Overall though it sites a figure somewhere between a decrease of 1.7% to a total increase of 4.4%.
This might be a great point if Planet Earth had a single global culture and some form of worldwide communist government, which could simply re-allocate people from, say, the Netherlands to Siberia with no problems.
Meanwhile, in the real world, there will be huge problems if Europe loses something like 10% of its inhabitable land area.
So where are the extraordinary acts? Coal-fired power plants are somewhat on the wane in the US but there are still plenty of them around and they are clearly contributing in a significant way to atmospheric CO2. Here are a number of hard targets with little or zero in the way of real defenses against dedicated individuals and yet no person or group has attacked a power plant in the name of shutting it down to preserve the climate. Some dynamite in the right (wrong?) place could turn a functioning, CO2-spewing power plant into a building that is impractical to repair in a few seconds forever removing that as a source of CO2.
Why has there not been even a single such incident? Are the believers beliefs simply not strong enough when it comes down to it?
That is one of the most bizarre arguments I have ever seen. By your logic, because I haven't personally tracked down and assassinated any neo-Nazis I'm really nothing more than a fascist fellow traveller myself.
If you feel that creating a museum of what the earth used to be is more important than humanity advancing our civilization to the point where we can take the life forms on this planet and colonize others then you are a luddite. In the future global warming will be called terraforming and it will occur on mars.
I assume that the less we interfere with the economy now, the more wealth we'll have in the future for dealing with the actual problems of that future.
If in a hundred years time we have a largely uninhabitable planet, it's not going to make any difference how rich we all are. Money by itself can't just produce some technological breakthrough out of thin air which will allow us to magically transform the planet just at the moment things go really seriously wrong.
Having more sophisticated tools is only a necessity if your existing ones don't work. When we can build things like the LHC, I don't think inadequate technology is the problem.
It is, of course, theoretically possible that all the data collected with existing technology to date is wrong. It is also theoretically possible that the Sun will explode tomorrow, so we might just as well spend all our time drunk/high and not worry about the future anyway.
Well, yeah, but the climate models do include everything that scientists know about.
Including knowledge of who is paying their bills. They may well be right, but I'm going to look at actual evidence not hysterics from people who have a vested interest in scaring the crap out of me.
Look, if you and the rest of the "skeptics" can come up with convincing scientific evidence that AGW is wrong, please go ahead. There must be plenty of funding out there from the oil companies alone.
Personally, I'd much prefer it if we could just carry on as we are. I don't actually want my grandchildren to be living back in the Stone Age, bizarrely enough.
to show this is definitely not a naturally occurring cycle?
What's "enough"?
This is very close to the "but Evolution is just a theory, not a 100% accurate, infallible description of reality, so therefore we should teach Creationism as being equally valid" argument.
There are no absolute certainties or impossibilities in life. The sun may not rise tomorrow, because the whole universe has been destroyed on the toss of a die by some trans-dimensional super-being. Natalie Portman may finally realise the futility of those so-called restraining orders and agree to re-enact her Black Swan lesbian scene with Mila Kunis live in my bedroom.
...As an individual, is to reduce/eliminate the consumption of farm animals. We breed billions of cows and pigs, and feed them unnaturual diets--which greatly increases their flatulence.
Why start out your statement with a meme that makes absolutely no sense? It doesn't strengthen your argument at all, and allows you to be easily dismissed as a global warming wacko. And yes, there are global warming wackos. There are extremists on both sides.
I think the "meme" nicely reveals the stupidity of people who can't differentiate between a global climactic average and the temperature in their own fucking back yard.
How about the GP not make broad statements about local weather. As you cannot experience weather on a global scale, you only experience local weather.
It is your interpretation that he was talking about weather. Whereas, in actual fact, he was clearly talking about global climate averages.
You seem to be limiting the word "experience" to only meaning something you can directly apprehend with your five senses. In that case, I have never experienced all sorts of things, including tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes. That doesn't mean they don't exist.
I did not directly experience the recent US presidential elections, as I live in the UK, but I certainly lived through them.
P.S. it's particularly stupid to think you can for 99% of people replace airline travel with train travel. The extra time simply makes it impractical, and people can already drive shorter distances (I'll drive anywhere within ten hours rather than flying).
I think the point is that you could use trains instead of driving those "shorter distances" too. 10 hours in a car is not a short journey, whatever Americans might think, and with a proper high speed train service you could do it in a third or even a quarter of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the 'terrorist threats' since 9/11, how many have there been, apart from those made up by the FBI and other agencies in order to fatten their funding and broaden their power base? Does anyone here have access to credible stats on the real increase in terrorist activity in the developed world over the past decade?
How the fuck can this be modded insightful? Just here in the UK we had the 7/7 attacks and various thwarted attempts which have led to people being imprisoned. Never mind the Bali bombings, Mumbai shootings, etc throughout the world.
The terrorist threat may be over-exaggerated, but it is not an entirely fictitious government conspiracy.
If terrorists were as motivated, competent, and plentiful as all the security theatre seems to indicate ...
If I recall correctly, a couple of airports were attacked in the 1970s. It's interesting that, that terrorism didn't increase airport security and no terrorist group has returned to it since security theatre created choke points that make passengers more vulnerable.
There were those twats in Glasgow who tried to drive a car bomb into the departure lounge. And most airports definitely have anti-vehicle barriers outside them now.
Hijacking a plane has always been great publicity for terrorists. You get much more and prolonged coverage than if you just set off a bomb somewhere.
So, by making the cockpit door out of slightly thicker plywood and fitting a bolt to it - similar to the one you are familiar with from your bathroom door - we can eliminate that threat entirely, for about 20 quid a plane. Less, really, because the DIY store will give you a discount on a large order of bathroom door bolts.
I find it hard to believe that determined terrorists couldn't get through a plywood door with a bathroom door bolt on it if they really wanted to
El Al is the most secure airline in the world.
we had Andersdotters here in India. Young politicians here are 40+, most are 60+ who can't understand tech if their lives depended on it. hence the facebook-post-arrests seen recently.
I don't see anything wrong with arresting someone for using facebook. A few more cases pour encourager les autres and with any luck we could get the whole fucking thing shut down.
So-called libertarians who say they are "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" are, in plain English, conservative.
By deifying freedom of the individual to do as they wish above everything else, you are simply ensuring that those in power continue to do what they want while living like parasites on the body of society as a whole.
"Deregulation and austerity" are indeed libertarian, which is to say conservative, as they sit the agenda of those in power perfectly. It is sad that all you rugged American individualists are so blind to this obvious truth.
When I saw the list of names, I was positively surprised about the high number of women protecting our civil freedoms.
That'll probably be because you're a misogynistic fuckbag.
Compared to NK, they're a paradise of freedom.
Talk about setting the bar low.
Makes one wonder who would be out of their mind enough to spy for north korea? Though I suppose there's good odds that anyone they let loose out of their borders has their entire family at gunpoint if they decide to run.
I think the point is rather more that if you were a spy for North Korea in South Korea you wouldn't blow your cover by posting pro-NK shit on the internet.
I'm genuinely curious. What would happen in the US if I tweet messages praising Al-Qaeda and retweeted their propaganda and warnings about terrorism?
Nothing. You just go right ahead.
Signed, your local Secret Service Operative.
Something that you seem to be overlooking is that there are rather more people on Earth than there were during the Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period. IN 1600AD there were about 500 million people on Earth (from a quick Google) which is about 7% of what we have now. There was an awful lot of uninhabited or very sparsely populated land on Earth for people to move into back then.
Obviously he is not robbing anybody of anything, the 'future generations' do not actually exist and they may not exist for all we know. 'Future generations' is an abstract idea that completely worthless from our perspective, we will never meet them, we will never know if they even will exist or not and it is really not our problem what challenges they will face as time progresses.
Blah blah blah enlightened self interest blah blah blah Randian twat.
We certainly are doing our best to make our own lives better (well, not the ones that are socialists but reasonable people who understand that free market capitalism is the actual solution to the environmental challenge, since it is the free market capitalism that creates the tools necessary to solve the problem by increasing the wealth of the society in pursuit of private profits).
Blah blah blah free market solves everything blah blah blah Randian twat.
This is a great point. This study shows an increase in arable land by as much as 67% in some places. Overall though it sites a figure somewhere between a decrease of 1.7% to a total increase of 4.4%.
This might be a great point if Planet Earth had a single global culture and some form of worldwide communist government, which could simply re-allocate people from, say, the Netherlands to Siberia with no problems.
Meanwhile, in the real world, there will be huge problems if Europe loses something like 10% of its inhabitable land area.
So where are the extraordinary acts? Coal-fired power plants are somewhat on the wane in the US but there are still plenty of them around and they are clearly contributing in a significant way to atmospheric CO2. Here are a number of hard targets with little or zero in the way of real defenses against dedicated individuals and yet no person or group has attacked a power plant in the name of shutting it down to preserve the climate. Some dynamite in the right (wrong?) place could turn a functioning, CO2-spewing power plant into a building that is impractical to repair in a few seconds forever removing that as a source of CO2.
Why has there not been even a single such incident? Are the believers beliefs simply not strong enough when it comes down to it?
That is one of the most bizarre arguments I have ever seen. By your logic, because I haven't personally tracked down and assassinated any neo-Nazis I'm really nothing more than a fascist fellow traveller myself.
If you feel that creating a museum of what the earth used to be is more important than humanity advancing our civilization to the point where we can take the life forms on this planet and colonize others then you are a luddite. In the future global warming will be called terraforming and it will occur on mars.
Not in the next hundred years it won't.
I assume that the less we interfere with the economy now, the more wealth we'll have in the future for dealing with the actual problems of that future.
If in a hundred years time we have a largely uninhabitable planet, it's not going to make any difference how rich we all are. Money by itself can't just produce some technological breakthrough out of thin air which will allow us to magically transform the planet just at the moment things go really seriously wrong.
It is, of course, theoretically possible that all the data collected with existing technology to date is wrong. It is also theoretically possible that the Sun will explode tomorrow, so we might just as well spend all our time drunk/high and not worry about the future anyway.
Well, yeah, but the climate models do include everything that scientists know about.
Including knowledge of who is paying their bills. They may well be right, but I'm going to look at actual evidence not hysterics from people who have a vested interest in scaring the crap out of me.
Look, if you and the rest of the "skeptics" can come up with convincing scientific evidence that AGW is wrong, please go ahead. There must be plenty of funding out there from the oil companies alone.
Personally, I'd much prefer it if we could just carry on as we are. I don't actually want my grandchildren to be living back in the Stone Age, bizarrely enough.
Miaow. Good work.
to show this is definitely not a naturally occurring cycle?
What's "enough"?
This is very close to the "but Evolution is just a theory, not a 100% accurate, infallible description of reality, so therefore we should teach Creationism as being equally valid" argument.
There are no absolute certainties or impossibilities in life. The sun may not rise tomorrow, because the whole universe has been destroyed on the toss of a die by some trans-dimensional super-being. Natalie Portman may finally realise the futility of those so-called restraining orders and agree to re-enact her Black Swan lesbian scene with Mila Kunis live in my bedroom.
Who can say for certain?
...As an individual, is to reduce/eliminate the consumption of farm animals. We breed billions of cows and pigs, and feed them unnaturual diets--which greatly increases their flatulence.
Yeah... blame it on the cows.
Moo-y fuckers.
Why start out your statement with a meme that makes absolutely no sense? It doesn't strengthen your argument at all, and allows you to be easily dismissed as a global warming wacko. And yes, there are global warming wackos. There are extremists on both sides.
I think the "meme" nicely reveals the stupidity of people who can't differentiate between a global climactic average and the temperature in their own fucking back yard.
How about the GP not make broad statements about local weather. As you cannot experience weather on a global scale, you only experience local weather.
It is your interpretation that he was talking about weather. Whereas, in actual fact, he was clearly talking about global climate averages.
You seem to be limiting the word "experience" to only meaning something you can directly apprehend with your five senses. In that case, I have never experienced all sorts of things, including tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes. That doesn't mean they don't exist.
I did not directly experience the recent US presidential elections, as I live in the UK, but I certainly lived through them.
P.S. it's particularly stupid to think you can for 99% of people replace airline travel with train travel. The extra time simply makes it impractical, and people can already drive shorter distances (I'll drive anywhere within ten hours rather than flying).
I think the point is that you could use trains instead of driving those "shorter distances" too. 10 hours in a car is not a short journey, whatever Americans might think, and with a proper high speed train service you could do it in a third or even a quarter of the time.