There are many changes we can make to reduce CO2 production that wouldn't wreck our economy, such as using alcohol as a fuel and passive solar construction for new homes.
You are talking nonsense. Passive solar doesn't mean much except in temperate areas where little fossil fuel is used today for heating homes. You need to change the way electricity is generated. You need to stop adding alcohol to fuel to keep farmers producing grain - when the grain production uses more diesel fuel than is saved by the alcohol. Just eliminating the ethanol scam would save considerable amounts of oil today.
You need to start tearing up expressways and forcing people to use public transportation. Move all heavy industry that uses massive amounts of electricity outside the US. These are things that would have some impact.
You need to stop and think what the risk of "stopping now" might be.
OK, if the worst-case scenarios pan out for global warming a lot of people could die.
Let's say we implement at a bare minimum the kind of strategies required to make Kyoto a reality. Not just window-dressing, but actually enforce upon the population of North America a cutback in energy use. How many people will die? Perhaps worse, how many people end up in basically third-world living conditions with no access to health care because there isn't any transportation available?
Those are the kind of tradeoffs that need to be considered. And that is assuming that global warming is a fact.
EULAs came about for a number of reasons, probably the best known are small businesses that bought non-commercial use software and used it for commercial purposes. When it crashed, they wanted to sue the publisher for losses because it put them out of business. Why wouldn't you sue if you thought you might win?
EULA's became very, very necessary around 1985 or so because people starting doing exactly this sort of thing. It was like winning the lottery, or so they thought.
We don't have to have much sympathy for these people because what they did was pretty stupid. But, we are left with their legacy - the disclaimer in the EULA. The "no copying" parts should be obvious to everyone. The rest? I tend to agree that the rest is pretty meaningless.
Except what about the non-giant corps that are getting shafted because people "borrow" their software (with stolen credit cards) and then post it on the web? What incentive is there to buy something when you can get it for free?
End result, there are no more non-giant software companies, just the giant ones.
Why? 'Cause I'm one of the people getting raped. OK, you can say that when you copy a piece of software from a friend that now you both have it - you didn't steal anything from your friend. And, well, at that level it might be a form of advertising.
Bring it up to the level it is happening at now, and everytime someone releases a half-decent program it gets snagged onto this sort of network and passed around the world. Who but an idiot isn't going to take advantage of that? What I don't get is why *anyone* bothers to buy stuff that is available on warez sites.
And the old "make them pay for support" line. Ha. If you have anything that even half decent it better not need any "support". How often do you call for support on Microsoft Word? How about Kazaa? How about Firefox? Would you pay for support?
The dimension of time. An airline seat changes in value to the consumer as time goes on. Currently, we're told that the optimal price point changes at 14 days, but I believe it to be a little different than that in reality.
You want to fly to Los Angeles in a month and purchase the ticket then. The price you pay reflects the value of being able to make that choice then and assuring the airline of a seat being filled in a month. The value of the seat changes as time goes on such that 1 day before the plane leaves the seat is now worth a lot more to someone that has to get to Los Angeles the next day, no matter what the cost. Of course there is the other aspect as well - the seat has no value once the plane leaves.
Managing this changing value is what makes airline ticket prices incredibly complicated.
Yes. But, the way to stay in business is to remove the "illegal" parts immediately when asked. Then people don't think you're just in it for the illegal stuff.
You have no right to "free speech" using non-government controlled facilities. Yes, that means you can be told to be quiet and a private security guard can make it stick. Not a "government-employed police officer". So don't be silly.
OK, what AOL could do (which they are not doing now) is monitor a supposedly private communication using a facility which is not a "common carrier". This would be legally equivalent to someone listening to you talk on an elevator. No expectation of privacy. So, I don't think you could even say they are violating your privacy.
You better believe they are going to continue to "get away" with it. Don't be silly.
If you put all your 401K money in the company stock, you are going to get burned. No matter how good the company looks today, it is a dumb thing to do. Anyone that put all their 401K money in Enron deserved to lose it all. Sort of like taking your life savings to Las Vegas when you're 65 and hoping to win it big.
Enron investors, well gosh that's too bad. Investors invest because they get paid for taking the risk. Lying about the status of the company and defrauding investors isn't good and they deserved to lose the company over that... but wait, that already happened, didn't it? Maybe some fines, but I'd rather see them have to buy the stock back.
I'm really tired of the "Enron defense" as to how tough the employees had it losing all their 401K money they invested in a single heap in the company stock. They did it, they knew they shouldn't and should have had lots of people telling them it was a bad idea. They did it anyway and lost it all. What can you say? Should the government come and bail them out? Wait, the government is already going to bail them out - it's called Social Security.
Other than that, I agree with your about the impact warez distribution has. Not making a single copy and sharing it with your friend - putting it up on a web site and competing with the publisher.
but if you are going to use the software my company published, you are going to pay. Period. Any other way and I'm just another poor sap on welfare looking for a handout from your tax money.
What? You don't think I deserve to get paid or that you can probably find something free (and therefore better) elsewhere? Fine. Just don't call me for support on that other product. But that doesn't give you the right to buy it with a stolen credit card, put it up on a web page and make sure lots and lots of people can get a non-free product for free.
If you are a person who has more time than money, why would you ever, at any cost, pay for something you can download? Unless the purchase price (and the trip to the store) is less than the cost of time to download it, nobody is going to be paying - as soon as everyone gets the message that there is no downside to stealing.
There are a couple of deterrents to shoplifting - getting caught, people thinking it is wrong, stuff like that. A lot of people - not quite most, but it is getting there - think there is nothing wrong with downloading music and movies. Your real chance of getting caught is almost non-existent now and is likely to stay that way for a long time. So, why would anyone pay $5 for a movie when they can get it for free? Quality? Minor hiccup. When people start ripping DVDs and posting them with high-bandwidth pipes the quality will go up. Too many people on "sharing" services are on low-bandwidth DSL or even dial-up connections still.
Unfortunately, the regulation of prescription drugs is not in the hands of the FDA - it is in the hands of the individual states. There is no federal law that says you have to have a prescription to get Vicodin - there is a state law that says you have to. The DEA probably has some involvement. But, the FDA can't really do all that much.
I got this from an FDA employee that researches this stuff at a law enforcement conference. I really wanted to know why they can't stop the "prescription drugs without a prescription" spam. I'm not happy about it because with it divided by states it would require concerted action by multiple states to get anything done.
Prior restraint is somewhat of a reach here, but OK. The problem is that in the "Digital Millenium" your idea of:
Of course, the second option is to take the webmaster directly to court. If the court finds the site to be infringing, they will issue an injunction ordering the webmaster to take down all infringing material, as well as possibly awarding damages. However, this should not happen until AFTER a trial has been held, or a settlement reached.
doesn't work. It takes too long. The damage has been done already with the material being distributed in digital form. This is the reason for the existance of the DMCA and why it is set up the way it is.
OK, let's say this is wrong and your idea is how things should work. What happens when the "website owner" cannot be contacted? As in the site is owned anonymously, paid for in cash and there is no valid contact information in the domain registration. Nobody can be sued and nobody can be contacted. Does infringing content just stay up then?
I think the problem here is that (a) the guy is a doofus who can't write effectively and everyone thinks he is 12, and (b) the process got short-circuited because of some missteps. Normally, you'd have your content backed up somewhere, right? Normally, if you don't have infringing content you contact the people that think you do and show them you don't. Normally, you don't get made-up stories about interlocking companies trying to censor "the little guy".
The issue with verification and paying to register is handled with the takedown notice. If you are doing something wrong, it comes down. If you aren't you file the proper paperwork contesting it and two things happen: everyone is paying attention and the site doesn't get taken down. Period. Then comes the investigation and arguing about what constitutes violation of licenses and copyrights.
What this doofus did was mis-file the paperwork so his site got taken down. And then he wants to complain about the takedown - I guess the MPAA found out what content there was there really and dropped the whole matter.
In the DMCA world it is pretty simple - you file the C&D and the takedown notice with the ISP and (maybe) the site owner. The site owner cross-files (properly) and then everyone waits for the real lawsuit. I don't see any "real lawsuit" here. I don't think it is coming because when they found out what the real content was it got dropped.
Now maybe doofus lost his site content because it wasn't copied anywhere else and the ISP refused to back it up. So, this "put him out of business". Sounds like it was some kind of scam or bait and switch anyway.
Yes, but the effect of lot of little rocks is perhaps worse. They get hot, and the atmosphere gets got from them. Maybe they just increase the temperature a little bit, maybe they boil off a significant part of the oceans as they cool down.
No, a lot of matter getting heated up in the atmosphere is *not* a desirable situation. Maybe not as bad as one big strike, maybe a lot worse.
Piracy is taking money from my pocket. Piracy is taking money from other people's pockets, too. Piracy is all about making some poor slob work in a McDonalds instead of getting paid for their "intellectual property".
If it was just stealing from large corporations, I'm sure we could all say "they can afford it" and forget about the problems. It isn't. Look at the software available on warez web sites. OK, some of it is from Microsoft and that just hurts Microsoft, right? What about the little guys that are hoping to be able to pay their credit card bill this month?
If your sole income is from software sales, piracy hurts you and your family. Don't give me that "it should all be free - charge for support" crap. Properly-written user software better not need support much, and when it is needed it better be free.
I am pretty sure that if Google knowingly provided indexing to copyrighted materials that were illegal to distribute, they would have to pull that or be shut down.
See, there are two parts to it:
Knowingly
Illegal to distribute content
Google may have some "illegal to distribute content" in the index, but it sure isn't anything close to "knowingly". And, when confronted with pretty much any sort of demand to remove stuff in the past, they have been quite helpful.
No, I don't believe there is any special US law that covers them. The same rules pretty much apply everywhere - nothing special about the US here at all.
They are materially assisting in the distribution of the material that is in violation. They are doing this assisting in a manner that specifically makes it difficult for anyone to stop the distribution.
OK, so it isn't illegal. Why isn't it being done in the US then? Napster answered that. The "Grokster" decision will keep getting revisited until it comes out that way as well.
You can't have a copyright system and at the same time have people actively preventing it from working. Today, the only people with enough visibility to make it known are the P2P music sharing folks. The movie sharing people are starting to gain in visibility. The software stealers (and believe me, they are stealing!) will eventually make it.
After briefly looking at "the pirate bay", I can easily say that I will never purchase a product manufacturered in Sweden or a product produced by a company operating in Sweden. If Swedish law permits this - as it must - then American companies should be able to freely copy anything of value that is produced in Sweden.
I will ensure that this opinion is given to all that I do business with or have any other relationship with.
If Europe wants to freely violate US copyright, then we have no obligation to respect Swedish products and/or copyrights.
Obviously, this just hasn't gone far enough for anyone to notice.
A tasteless form of hot ceral. Also, used to refer to anything without form or substance that is foisted upon people.
Childproofing is the task of running around your house to make it "safe" for an unmonitored child so they can't start fires, can get at poisons (which they will eat) and can break things.
This is what you get when people utterly refuse to raise their children. Parents today want the schools to do it for them. And, want the government to help. And anybody else they can get - as long as they are left out of the process. So, we end up with a society that has been "childproofed". That is really what we are talking about here, isn't it?
The side effect of this is until our society is completely childproofed, we have abberations where children are incompletely raised. The result of this is rampent welfare ("The government OWES me, man!"), theft ("I want, I want NOW!") and vandalism. So, shops put in expensive theft-prevention equipment and police end up dealing with 20-year-old children that never grew up.
How many older or adult children killed their parents this year? How many killed their parents before 1960? How about adjusting this as a percentage of the population and seeing if there is any growth? This is a sure sign of parental abdication.
Understand that none of this is "spam". It is coming from a PC infected with one of 1,000s of script-kiddy worm programs that blasts out email by the thousands.
Since you can't just use the Outlook Express contacts list anymore, they scan the computer looking for email addresses. And they find them. And, anyone that ever been sent email or participated in an email discussion with that person gets a worm email.
And worse, everyone likes to get the latest information about "their account", so they open the attachments. And send more worm email around the world.
OK, so there are a bunch of papers where people are running around saying the world is coming to an end. Fine. But, let's look at what the one aricle referenced actually says:
The ice-core trends of temperature and greenhouse gases match so precisely that there has been room for doubt as to what is cause and what is effect. Thus, could the temperature changes be driving CO2/methane levels in the atmosphere (by altering patterns of global biomass production and storage, say) rather than the other way around? If this was true, then the currently increasing levels of CO2 and methane need not give rise to significant global warming: they would be a consequence, rather than a cause.
If you understand what this is saying, the meaning is clear. They don't know if CO2 is causing global warming or if it is caused by global warming. This kind of puts a different spin on the remainder of the article. If you don't know if you are treating a cause or an effect, the whole matter is kind of pointless.
Clearly, if you assume that (a) humans are the cause of increased CO2 in the atmosphere and (b) increased CO2 will doom the planet and kill millions (if not billions) of people, then some real changes need to be made right now. It is clear that the referenced article isn't thinking about individual automobiles as "the whole problem", but fixed-site industrial energy use.
This is something that most of the global warming activists seem to miss. I have yet to see a ranking that says something like:
60% Automobiles
15% Electrical generation
10% Jet Aircraft
10% Industry (all of it)
5% Everything else
Should such a chart be published, reviewed and verified this would present a clear call to action - eliminate cars, utterly and completely. However, what if the chart looked more like:
25% Farming and deforestation
25% Industry (all of it)
10% Home heating
10% CO2 released by melting ice
10% Electrical generation
8% Automobiles
5% Jet Aircraft
5% Volcanic eruptions
2% Everything else
It would be far, far different and there would be no clear-cut "call to action". Would anyone seriously propose that we give up farming?
Not having this kind of explanation of sources, it is extremely difficult to judge who to kill and who to save. Turning off the heat for North American and Europe would certainly save a lot of CO2, but it would likely kill as many people as Bangladesh being underwater. Similarly, taking away everyone's car in the USA would eliminate some CO2 (how much?), but it would surely kill some significant number of people that didn't get to a doctor or a hospital.
Do you see the point here? If the situation is as bad as some would like us to believe, then we are at the juncture of having to make the kinds of decisions along the lines of "Who do we kill?" Do you really blame the US Government for not wanting to get behind any plan that results in the deaths of thousands of people? At this point in time, no decision is the same as not killing those people because the water isn't rising yet. Until it does, it is highly unlikely that decisions are going to be made which can be clearly traced to any sort of mass death. You can make what you like of that - I'm sure some will say that it is better if the mass death occurs elsewhere than the US and it isn't old fat white people that are doing the dying. However, no matter where you live, your government is unlikely to make any decision that leads to mass death, anywhere, even when the alternative (no decision) has the potential of mass death.
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You are talking nonsense. Passive solar doesn't mean much except in temperate areas where little fossil fuel is used today for heating homes. You need to change the way electricity is generated. You need to stop adding alcohol to fuel to keep farmers producing grain - when the grain production uses more diesel fuel than is saved by the alcohol. Just eliminating the ethanol scam would save considerable amounts of oil today.
You need to start tearing up expressways and forcing people to use public transportation. Move all heavy industry that uses massive amounts of electricity outside the US. These are things that would have some impact.
OK, if the worst-case scenarios pan out for global warming a lot of people could die.
Let's say we implement at a bare minimum the kind of strategies required to make Kyoto a reality. Not just window-dressing, but actually enforce upon the population of North America a cutback in energy use. How many people will die? Perhaps worse, how many people end up in basically third-world living conditions with no access to health care because there isn't any transportation available?
Those are the kind of tradeoffs that need to be considered. And that is assuming that global warming is a fact.
organized book burnings in Tennessee. Hard to be more on the side of censorship than that.
EULA's became very, very necessary around 1985 or so because people starting doing exactly this sort of thing. It was like winning the lottery, or so they thought.
We don't have to have much sympathy for these people because what they did was pretty stupid. But, we are left with their legacy - the disclaimer in the EULA. The "no copying" parts should be obvious to everyone. The rest? I tend to agree that the rest is pretty meaningless.
End result, there are no more non-giant software companies, just the giant ones.
Bring it up to the level it is happening at now, and everytime someone releases a half-decent program it gets snagged onto this sort of network and passed around the world. Who but an idiot isn't going to take advantage of that? What I don't get is why *anyone* bothers to buy stuff that is available on warez sites.
And the old "make them pay for support" line. Ha. If you have anything that even half decent it better not need any "support". How often do you call for support on Microsoft Word? How about Kazaa? How about Firefox? Would you pay for support?
You want to fly to Los Angeles in a month and purchase the ticket then. The price you pay reflects the value of being able to make that choice then and assuring the airline of a seat being filled in a month. The value of the seat changes as time goes on such that 1 day before the plane leaves the seat is now worth a lot more to someone that has to get to Los Angeles the next day, no matter what the cost. Of course there is the other aspect as well - the seat has no value once the plane leaves.
Managing this changing value is what makes airline ticket prices incredibly complicated.
Yes. But, the way to stay in business is to remove the "illegal" parts immediately when asked. Then people don't think you're just in it for the illegal stuff.
Did anyone ask Lokitorrent to remove a link? What was the answer?
OK, what AOL could do (which they are not doing now) is monitor a supposedly private communication using a facility which is not a "common carrier". This would be legally equivalent to someone listening to you talk on an elevator. No expectation of privacy. So, I don't think you could even say they are violating your privacy.
You better believe they are going to continue to "get away" with it. Don't be silly.
- If you put all your 401K money in the company stock, you are going to get burned. No matter how good the company looks today, it is a dumb thing to do. Anyone that put all their 401K money in Enron deserved to lose it all. Sort of like taking your life savings to Las Vegas when you're 65 and hoping to win it big.
- Enron investors, well gosh that's too bad. Investors invest because they get paid for taking the risk. Lying about the status of the company and defrauding investors isn't good and they deserved to lose the company over that... but wait, that already happened, didn't it? Maybe some fines, but I'd rather see them have to buy the stock back.
I'm really tired of the "Enron defense" as to how tough the employees had it losing all their 401K money they invested in a single heap in the company stock. They did it, they knew they shouldn't and should have had lots of people telling them it was a bad idea. They did it anyway and lost it all. What can you say? Should the government come and bail them out? Wait, the government is already going to bail them out - it's called Social Security.Other than that, I agree with your about the impact warez distribution has. Not making a single copy and sharing it with your friend - putting it up on a web site and competing with the publisher.
What? You don't think I deserve to get paid or that you can probably find something free (and therefore better) elsewhere? Fine. Just don't call me for support on that other product. But that doesn't give you the right to buy it with a stolen credit card, put it up on a web page and make sure lots and lots of people can get a non-free product for free.
That is what this fight is all about.
There are a couple of deterrents to shoplifting - getting caught, people thinking it is wrong, stuff like that. A lot of people - not quite most, but it is getting there - think there is nothing wrong with downloading music and movies. Your real chance of getting caught is almost non-existent now and is likely to stay that way for a long time. So, why would anyone pay $5 for a movie when they can get it for free? Quality? Minor hiccup. When people start ripping DVDs and posting them with high-bandwidth pipes the quality will go up. Too many people on "sharing" services are on low-bandwidth DSL or even dial-up connections still.
I got this from an FDA employee that researches this stuff at a law enforcement conference. I really wanted to know why they can't stop the "prescription drugs without a prescription" spam. I'm not happy about it because with it divided by states it would require concerted action by multiple states to get anything done.
Of course, the second option is to take the webmaster directly to court. If the court finds the site to be infringing, they will issue an injunction ordering the webmaster to take down all infringing material, as well as possibly awarding damages. However, this should not happen until AFTER a trial has been held, or a settlement reached.
doesn't work. It takes too long. The damage has been done already with the material being distributed in digital form. This is the reason for the existance of the DMCA and why it is set up the way it is.
OK, let's say this is wrong and your idea is how things should work. What happens when the "website owner" cannot be contacted? As in the site is owned anonymously, paid for in cash and there is no valid contact information in the domain registration. Nobody can be sued and nobody can be contacted. Does infringing content just stay up then?
I think the problem here is that (a) the guy is a doofus who can't write effectively and everyone thinks he is 12, and (b) the process got short-circuited because of some missteps. Normally, you'd have your content backed up somewhere, right? Normally, if you don't have infringing content you contact the people that think you do and show them you don't. Normally, you don't get made-up stories about interlocking companies trying to censor "the little guy".
What this doofus did was mis-file the paperwork so his site got taken down. And then he wants to complain about the takedown - I guess the MPAA found out what content there was there really and dropped the whole matter.
In the DMCA world it is pretty simple - you file the C&D and the takedown notice with the ISP and (maybe) the site owner. The site owner cross-files (properly) and then everyone waits for the real lawsuit. I don't see any "real lawsuit" here. I don't think it is coming because when they found out what the real content was it got dropped.
Now maybe doofus lost his site content because it wasn't copied anywhere else and the ISP refused to back it up. So, this "put him out of business". Sounds like it was some kind of scam or bait and switch anyway.
No, a lot of matter getting heated up in the atmosphere is *not* a desirable situation. Maybe not as bad as one big strike, maybe a lot worse.
If it was just stealing from large corporations, I'm sure we could all say "they can afford it" and forget about the problems. It isn't. Look at the software available on warez web sites. OK, some of it is from Microsoft and that just hurts Microsoft, right? What about the little guys that are hoping to be able to pay their credit card bill this month?
If your sole income is from software sales, piracy hurts you and your family. Don't give me that "it should all be free - charge for support" crap. Properly-written user software better not need support much, and when it is needed it better be free.
See, there are two parts to it:
- Knowingly
- Illegal to distribute content
Google may have some "illegal to distribute content" in the index, but it sure isn't anything close to "knowingly". And, when confronted with pretty much any sort of demand to remove stuff in the past, they have been quite helpful.No, I don't believe there is any special US law that covers them. The same rules pretty much apply everywhere - nothing special about the US here at all.
You can put them out of business. Make their children starve. Toss them out of their home. And this isn't quite as bad, right?
They are materially assisting in the distribution of the material that is in violation. They are doing this assisting in a manner that specifically makes it difficult for anyone to stop the distribution.
OK, so it isn't illegal. Why isn't it being done in the US then? Napster answered that. The "Grokster" decision will keep getting revisited until it comes out that way as well.
You can't have a copyright system and at the same time have people actively preventing it from working. Today, the only people with enough visibility to make it known are the P2P music sharing folks. The movie sharing people are starting to gain in visibility. The software stealers (and believe me, they are stealing!) will eventually make it.
After briefly looking at "the pirate bay", I can easily say that I will never purchase a product manufacturered in Sweden or a product produced by a company operating in Sweden. If Swedish law permits this - as it must - then American companies should be able to freely copy anything of value that is produced in Sweden.
I will ensure that this opinion is given to all that I do business with or have any other relationship with.
If Europe wants to freely violate US copyright, then we have no obligation to respect Swedish products and/or copyrights.
Obviously, this just hasn't gone far enough for anyone to notice.
A tasteless form of hot ceral. Also, used to refer to anything without form or substance that is foisted upon people.
Childproofing is the task of running around your house to make it "safe" for an unmonitored child so they can't start fires, can get at poisons (which they will eat) and can break things.
This is what you get when people utterly refuse to raise their children. Parents today want the schools to do it for them. And, want the government to help. And anybody else they can get - as long as they are left out of the process. So, we end up with a society that has been "childproofed". That is really what we are talking about here, isn't it?
The side effect of this is until our society is completely childproofed, we have abberations where children are incompletely raised. The result of this is rampent welfare ("The government OWES me, man!"), theft ("I want, I want NOW!") and vandalism. So, shops put in expensive theft-prevention equipment and police end up dealing with 20-year-old children that never grew up.
How many older or adult children killed their parents this year? How many killed their parents before 1960? How about adjusting this as a percentage of the population and seeing if there is any growth? This is a sure sign of parental abdication.
Understand that none of this is "spam". It is coming from a PC infected with one of 1,000s of script-kiddy worm programs that blasts out email by the thousands.
Since you can't just use the Outlook Express contacts list anymore, they scan the computer looking for email addresses. And they find them. And, anyone that ever been sent email or participated in an email discussion with that person gets a worm email.
And worse, everyone likes to get the latest information about "their account", so they open the attachments. And send more worm email around the world.
The ice-core trends of temperature and greenhouse gases match so precisely that there has been room for doubt as to what is cause and what is effect. Thus, could the temperature changes be driving CO2/methane levels in the atmosphere (by altering patterns of global biomass production and storage, say) rather than the other way around? If this was true, then the currently increasing levels of CO2 and methane need not give rise to significant global warming: they would be a consequence, rather than a cause.
If you understand what this is saying, the meaning is clear. They don't know if CO2 is causing global warming or if it is caused by global warming. This kind of puts a different spin on the remainder of the article. If you don't know if you are treating a cause or an effect, the whole matter is kind of pointless.
Clearly, if you assume that (a) humans are the cause of increased CO2 in the atmosphere and (b) increased CO2 will doom the planet and kill millions (if not billions) of people, then some real changes need to be made right now. It is clear that the referenced article isn't thinking about individual automobiles as "the whole problem", but fixed-site industrial energy use.
This is something that most of the global warming activists seem to miss. I have yet to see a ranking that says something like:
Should such a chart be published, reviewed and verified this would present a clear call to action - eliminate cars, utterly and completely. However, what if the chart looked more like:
It would be far, far different and there would be no clear-cut "call to action". Would anyone seriously propose that we give up farming?
Not having this kind of explanation of sources, it is extremely difficult to judge who to kill and who to save. Turning off the heat for North American and Europe would certainly save a lot of CO2, but it would likely kill as many people as Bangladesh being underwater. Similarly, taking away everyone's car in the USA would eliminate some CO2 (how much?), but it would surely kill some significant number of people that didn't get to a doctor or a hospital.
Do you see the point here? If the situation is as bad as some would like us to believe, then we are at the juncture of having to make the kinds of decisions along the lines of "Who do we kill?" Do you really blame the US Government for not wanting to get behind any plan that results in the deaths of thousands of people? At this point in time, no decision is the same as not killing those people because the water isn't rising yet. Until it does, it is highly unlikely that decisions are going to be made which can be clearly traced to any sort of mass death. You can make what you like of that - I'm sure some will say that it is better if the mass death occurs elsewhere than the US and it isn't old fat white people that are doing the dying. However, no matter where you live, your government is unlikely to make any decision that leads to mass death, anywhere, even when the alternative (no decision) has the potential of mass death.