Yes, it is true the US produces a hell of a lot of CO2 per capita. It is also true that the US has the good fortune, climate wise, to be an overall net absorber of CO2.
Actually, the claim is wrong and the article you link to is either incompetent or a lie. The author carefully (or carelessly) picked the net emission map from July 2009. Spring and summer is the main growing season for yearly plants, and for deciduous forests. That's why the plants in the Northern hemisphere pick up a lot of CO2 in the summer. Of course, they release most of it again in fall and winter, when leaves and other plant matter decompose. A meaningful comparison can be only made for a full seasonal cycle. The original report by JAXA shows emission estimate maps for all four seasons (scroll down to near the end, Figure 3), and it also shows the impact of seasonal patterns (Figure 2). Interestingly enough, 3 of the 4 maps show the US as net emitters, and 2 of the 4 show Europe as net emitters.
Of course, we also know that these seasonal fluxes are much larger than human emissions. But they balance out over time, while humans just keep adding CO2. If you check the Keeling Curve of CO2 measured in Hawai, you can see the seasonal effect as small, very regular wiggles in the overall increase. The difference between summer and winter does not balance out, since most land (and hence most seasonal growth) by far is in the Northern hemisphere. The size of the seasonal variation is about comparable to the secular increase of 5-10 years, depending on the point in time you pick. We are releasing CO2 now a lot faster than 1960.
If you do not allow society to lay the cost of externalities onto the perpetrators, you invariably produce a tragedy of the commons. You can, in principle, use Ron Paul's approach and simply make people pay for polluting private property - i.e. if you produce CO2 that turns up in the air over my property, you are trespassing and need to pay damages. But that is technically implausible for shared resources like air, water, and the ecosystem as a whole. Thus, using taxes to approximate the externalities is a reasonable approach. Of course we can only approximate the cost, but that is no different than with any other financial planning, wether by government or in the private sector. Very very few projects end up exactly on budget. That's not a reason not to plan, nor is it a reason not to act.
Are you suggesting that they dont know which model is best, or likely best? Seriously?
Yes. Indeed, I'll even argue that there is no single linear ordering from better to worse. What's better, a 747 or an Ohio class submarine? A garden chair or a Harley Davidson? A C64 or a Sinclair spectrum? It depends on what you want or need to do (a C64 is a lousy computer, but a great door stop - no, I'm not biased, why?). A model that simplifies surface details but has better ocean mixing will make better global results than a model that takes more topographical features into account but uses a slab ocean model. On the other hand, the more topographical model is better able to predict local effects like rain shadows. Both in computing resources and in actual modelling, you have to make a trade-off, and you concentrate on the set of features you think are most important or most relevant for a particular set of questions.
Why are they using multiple models?
Surely one is better than the others??
Every model has to abstract from certain things - the only thing that is a perfect model of a system is an exact copy of the system, and we don't have a second Earth stashed away in the backyard. Different models made different simplifying assumptions (use different cell size for the simulation, incorporate different feedbacks, use simpler couplings between ocean and atmosphere, and so on). By using a range of different models, we get an idea of how much these simplifications affect the results. So we get a range of results, which hopefully bracket the behaviour of the real system. It's a bit like a shotgun - only a few pellets hit a bird, so why fire a full load?
I am pretty sure most things we do (short of actually building a bomb to blow ourselves up along with the planet) will not bother the planet at all. It has been here for over 4 billion years. It has seen dinosaurs come and go. I am sure we will be long gone before the planet becomes sick or dead in some way.
Two planets meet in space. The first asks "How are you?" The second replies "Not too good, I caught a bad infection with humans". The first, comforting: "Don't worry, those never last long..."
Please reconcile the notion of water vapor being a positive feedback as the justification for CO2 producing more heating than it's direct effects with the claim that since the Sun couldn't produce sufficient direct heating it can't be the source. If water vapor acts as a positive feedback on additional heating, then it does so for all sources.
Yes, that IS the reasoning given for why the Sun can't be the driver, at least on message boards.
Well, then the message boards are wrong. The water vapor feedback and the ice-albedo feedback do indeed operate for all causes of warming. We can measure solar well enough to know that even with all known feedbacks taken into account it cannot explain most of the 20th century warming. It's not as if this is a well-kept secret - it's essentially in every published climate modelling paper.
And remember: Gore just recently purchased oceanfront property. If he were that concerned about rising ocean levels, you would think he might've invested in property farther inland...
Not that the opinion of Al Gore matters significantly, but if you take a look at the images of his new acquisition, it's quite clear the "ocean view" is a far cry from "down at the beach". Given that Gore is 63, at best he can hope to live maybe another 50 years. That's about half a meter of projected sea level rise. I'm sure he will be safe.
But you should wonder who made this subtle shift from "ocean view" to "beach front" and why they made it in this context.
Perhaps you should. CO2 is only a greenhouse gas (in that it has a higher heat capacity than the average of the remaining atmospheric components) in the absence of water vapor, and then only very, VERY slight. It only makes a BIG difference when it is the ONLY component of the atmosphere. Add in water vapor, and you get a little surprise--CO2 actually DECREASES the weighted heat capacity of the atmosphere.
The first part is wrong, the second irrelevant. It's not the heat capacity that makes CO2 into a greenhouse gas, it's the combination of being transparent for visible light (where most of the energy of Sun light is transmitted) and being opaque in the infrared, where Earth is emitting most of its heat. In other word, the sun, at 6000K, is shining visible light on Earth. This heats the ground. Of course, Earth needs some way to get rid of the incident Energy (otherwise it would keep getting hotter and hotter). So, following the Stefan–Boltzmann law, the Earth also starts to glow. Since its temperature is only about a few K on average, it mostly glows in the infrared. This radiation is absorbed by the CO2 (and other greenhouse gases), and re-radiated - part of it up into the higher atmosphere and ultimately to space, but part of it back down to the ground. As a result, it takes longer for the energy to finally escape into space. More energy (=heat) is retained, hence it is warmer.
In reality, it is more likely that any warming we are seeing actually comes from higher levels of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor emissions are strongly correlated with CO2 emissions, after all. Not only that, but water vapor is a lot easier to get out of the atmosphere than CO2, and can be scrubbed for if desired. Even if my physical analysis is wrong, scrubbing water out of the atmosphere will have a much more rapid remediation effect than carbon credits or any other such money grubbing scheme.
And that also is misleading. Water vapor is very nearly in a dynamic equilibrium in the atmosphere. As long as we can observe it, the relative humidity of the atmosphere as a whole has been about constant. Excess water quickly is lost in the form of precipitation. And a lack of water vapor is quickly made up via evaporation, given that 70% of the Earth surface is water. Water vapor enters into the equation, because the absolute humidity, which is relevant for the greenhouse effect of water vapor, increases with temperature. Thus, when CO2 initiates some warming, this will lead to more water vapor and more warming in turn. It's a positive feedback increasing the climate sensitivity of the planet. It isn't a total runaway effect because the emissions of the Earth increase with the 4th power of the temperature, so the series describing the feedback loop converges.
The french have a long and consistent history of being fucking pussies who don't stand up for themselves.
Lafayette called and said that you can say that again when you ever fought a modern war in which 70% of a generation became casualties, with about a quarter of these dead and another permanently maimed.
The difference between "them" (e.g. Al-Quaeda, and apparently you) and "us" is that we believe in due process even if it is inconvenient, and even if the other person is not believing in it. Nobody ever said freedom and justice are easy. It's just sad that too many seem to have given up the effort.
You do realize plants and animals require a minimum of 220 ppm to survive, and the more the better they grow.
While plants do, of course, need CO2, things are not as easy as you claim. CO2 concentrations dropped to about 180 ppm several times during the ice ages in the last 800000 years, and plant life as a whole survived pretty well. So 220 ppm is not a hard limit. Also, while increased CO2 can benefit plants, it's not universally good. On the one hand, many plants are not limited by carbon availability, but by other nutrients, like phosphorus, usable nitrogen, or trace metals. And secondly, different plants cope differently with varying CO2 levels. So a change in CO2 can change the competitive advantage from one plant type to another, potentially disrupting ecosystems.
Also, the warming of the oceans will expand the water.
Water is odd about being heated or cooled compared to most other materials. Water actually expands when it is cooled, which makes it less dense as it cools, which is the reason why ice floats. This is also why freezing pop cans is a bad idea.
It is BAD SCIENCE like this that makes the anti-GW people challenge the GW adherents. Fudge factors in the computer programs are the least of it.
Water is densest at about 4 degrees C. It expands either way. Since water is densest at 4 degrees C, cold water sinks to the ground - and in fact, much of deep water is more or less at that temperature, and most surface water is much warmer. Thermal expansion of sea water is indeed a major cause of sea level rise, and if somebody told you otherwise, they either don't know shit, or they are trying to deceive you.
Nuclear is a cheap, easy, simple method to provide lots of power.
Nuclear energy has never been produced at market price anywhere in the world. Development has been done nearly exclusively in government labs or based on government subsidies. No nuclear plant can get sufficient insurance to cover accidents on the free marktet. Governments guarantee nuclear waste disposal at subsidised prices.
And I'm sure looking forward to a world where Nigeria, Belize, Tuvalu, and Iran produce their power from nuclear plants...
My 5 year old FRITZ!Box keeps traffic statistics for the current day, last day, last week, and current and previous months, with the stock firmware. It did so when it ran as a DSL modem, and it does so now it's configured as a WLAN router connected to the cable modem. I kinda assumed that level of features was standard...
I picked up a new Nook Color for $199 last week. I had to root it and hack the volume buttons to act as the back/menu buttons, but it makes a helluva Android tablet. Screen is as good as an iPad's (just smaller), and the 800 MHz CPU overclocks easily. It's missing GPS, a mic, and camera, but those are relatively cheap electronic components. So a quality tablet can definitely be built for less than $200.
I think you overlook that B&N most probably subsidises the Nook. Overclocking also is fine for the hobbyist, but not for the mainstream user. It also would cut into batterie life. And adding the "relatively cheap" extra components well into the small spaces of a tablet is not trivial either. So it may be possible, but I wouldn't bet on the "definitely", unless you assume extreme volumes.
BTW, a conference publication isn't considered a "journal" publication, and doesn't confer the same status. Conferences are where the work gets done: people present developing ideas and get feedback on them.
This is true in most fields, but not in computer science. In CS, good conferences are the primary venue, and are heavily references and prestigious. In my field these are conferences like IJCAI, ECAI, IJCAR, CADE. Conferences have full peer-review and proceedings are archived as part of the literature. The more informal exchanges go by the name of "Workshop". Of course, just as in the case of journals, there are more and less prestigious conferences. I haven't heard of CSCS, so it sounds like something on the "less" side of things.
Still, if someone wants to become a researcher, going is well worth it. Two tips: Don't sit through all the talks - you will go mad. Pick and choose the interesting ones. Don't be a dick barging in and out all the time, either;-). And secondly, recognise that a lot of the value, both scientific and personal, is in the side discussions during breaks and dinner.
I also think you'll find that our soldiers are fairly thinking. It was a strength vs the Germans in WW2 (large numbers of German soldiers could be immobilized by taking out an officer or two).
Sorry to disagree, but historically it was exactly the other way round. Germany was the first nations to introduce small, independent units on a large scale, with the Sturmtruppen in WWI. It has been one of the more decentralised militaries ever since, trusting independently operating groups to achieve their objectives without micromanagement. You may have a point very late in the war, when completely untrained Volkssturm groups were lead just one trained person, but by then, there was not much of an advantage to be had.
Yeah and when life was the most abundant on earth, it was between 4-7C warmer and the CO2 was in the 20 times as much as today.
You welcome your new tyrannosauroid overloards, I suspect? Sure, "life" will do fine in 5 million years (unless we put on other pressures). The main problem for humans is the rapid change from a relatively stable state that has persisted through most of human history.
...to keep our production from simply being offshored to third world countries that won't play our little carbon games...
In another universe, this has already happened. The US is not doing much industrial production anymore, and Europe is not much behind. My Apple came from Shanghai...
If you are on call 24/7 I hope you charge them 168 hours per week. Seriously. If not, find a reasonable schedule. Being on call a day a week is ok, but being on 24/7 is only acceptable if you are on the C-level and get paid accordingly - and then you need to be able to fully control your own working hours.
Otherwise, remember, it's not your company. If the server is down, its down. If it cannot be fixed quickly, the company is losing money. Too bad. They should have bought a better server solution and paid an additional IT guy. The people in charge need to live with their decisions. It's not your responsibility unless you are in charge.
...in other words, the Democrats are neither liberal in any proper sense of the word, not "left" except in relation to the Republicans. From a European perspective, both big US parties used to be barely distinguishable, far off in the mist on the the right. Of course, the NeoCons and the Tea Parties have dragged the Republicans even further away, and the Democrats have followed more slowly, thus widening the distance. But that does not make the Democrats "left".
"But Pojut, our enemies will use this information against us!"
Well then maybe we shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Doy.
I'm more or less with you in principle, but that argument is just another version of "If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide".
The big difference is, of course, that people have an expectation of and right to privacy. States do not, and democracies in particular cannot function if large amounts of important information is not available to the demos.
Slashdot Mirror
When blaming the US for CO2 production, it's also worth considering this lil' thingy I ran into a while ago (googled for it again)
http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/41060.html
Yes, it is true the US produces a hell of a lot of CO2 per capita. It is also true that the US has the good fortune, climate wise, to be an overall net absorber of CO2.
Actually, the claim is wrong and the article you link to is either incompetent or a lie. The author carefully (or carelessly) picked the net emission map from July 2009. Spring and summer is the main growing season for yearly plants, and for deciduous forests. That's why the plants in the Northern hemisphere pick up a lot of CO2 in the summer. Of course, they release most of it again in fall and winter, when leaves and other plant matter decompose. A meaningful comparison can be only made for a full seasonal cycle. The original report by JAXA shows emission estimate maps for all four seasons (scroll down to near the end, Figure 3), and it also shows the impact of seasonal patterns (Figure 2). Interestingly enough, 3 of the 4 maps show the US as net emitters, and 2 of the 4 show Europe as net emitters.
Of course, we also know that these seasonal fluxes are much larger than human emissions. But they balance out over time, while humans just keep adding CO2. If you check the Keeling Curve of CO2 measured in Hawai, you can see the seasonal effect as small, very regular wiggles in the overall increase. The difference between summer and winter does not balance out, since most land (and hence most seasonal growth) by far is in the Northern hemisphere. The size of the seasonal variation is about comparable to the secular increase of 5-10 years, depending on the point in time you pick. We are releasing CO2 now a lot faster than 1960.
If you do not allow society to lay the cost of externalities onto the perpetrators, you invariably produce a tragedy of the commons. You can, in principle, use Ron Paul's approach and simply make people pay for polluting private property - i.e. if you produce CO2 that turns up in the air over my property, you are trespassing and need to pay damages. But that is technically implausible for shared resources like air, water, and the ecosystem as a whole. Thus, using taxes to approximate the externalities is a reasonable approach. Of course we can only approximate the cost, but that is no different than with any other financial planning, wether by government or in the private sector. Very very few projects end up exactly on budget. That's not a reason not to plan, nor is it a reason not to act.
Are you suggesting that they dont know which model is best, or likely best? Seriously?
Yes. Indeed, I'll even argue that there is no single linear ordering from better to worse. What's better, a 747 or an Ohio class submarine? A garden chair or a Harley Davidson? A C64 or a Sinclair spectrum? It depends on what you want or need to do (a C64 is a lousy computer, but a great door stop - no, I'm not biased, why?). A model that simplifies surface details but has better ocean mixing will make better global results than a model that takes more topographical features into account but uses a slab ocean model. On the other hand, the more topographical model is better able to predict local effects like rain shadows. Both in computing resources and in actual modelling, you have to make a trade-off, and you concentrate on the set of features you think are most important or most relevant for a particular set of questions.
Why are they using multiple models? Surely one is better than the others??
Every model has to abstract from certain things - the only thing that is a perfect model of a system is an exact copy of the system, and we don't have a second Earth stashed away in the backyard. Different models made different simplifying assumptions (use different cell size for the simulation, incorporate different feedbacks, use simpler couplings between ocean and atmosphere, and so on). By using a range of different models, we get an idea of how much these simplifications affect the results. So we get a range of results, which hopefully bracket the behaviour of the real system. It's a bit like a shotgun - only a few pellets hit a bird, so why fire a full load?
I am pretty sure most things we do (short of actually building a bomb to blow ourselves up along with the planet) will not bother the planet at all. It has been here for over 4 billion years. It has seen dinosaurs come and go. I am sure we will be long gone before the planet becomes sick or dead in some way.
Two planets meet in space. The first asks "How are you?" The second replies "Not too good, I caught a bad infection with humans". The first, comforting: "Don't worry, those never last long..."
Please reconcile the notion of water vapor being a positive feedback as the justification for CO2 producing more heating than it's direct effects with the claim that since the Sun couldn't produce sufficient direct heating it can't be the source. If water vapor acts as a positive feedback on additional heating, then it does so for all sources. Yes, that IS the reasoning given for why the Sun can't be the driver, at least on message boards.
Well, then the message boards are wrong. The water vapor feedback and the ice-albedo feedback do indeed operate for all causes of warming. We can measure solar well enough to know that even with all known feedbacks taken into account it cannot explain most of the 20th century warming. It's not as if this is a well-kept secret - it's essentially in every published climate modelling paper.
And remember: Gore just recently purchased oceanfront property. If he were that concerned about rising ocean levels, you would think he might've invested in property farther inland...
Not that the opinion of Al Gore matters significantly, but if you take a look at the images of his new acquisition, it's quite clear the "ocean view" is a far cry from "down at the beach". Given that Gore is 63, at best he can hope to live maybe another 50 years. That's about half a meter of projected sea level rise. I'm sure he will be safe.
But you should wonder who made this subtle shift from "ocean view" to "beach front" and why they made it in this context.
Perhaps you should. CO2 is only a greenhouse gas (in that it has a higher heat capacity than the average of the remaining atmospheric components) in the absence of water vapor, and then only very, VERY slight. It only makes a BIG difference when it is the ONLY component of the atmosphere. Add in water vapor, and you get a little surprise--CO2 actually DECREASES the weighted heat capacity of the atmosphere.
The first part is wrong, the second irrelevant. It's not the heat capacity that makes CO2 into a greenhouse gas, it's the combination of being transparent for visible light (where most of the energy of Sun light is transmitted) and being opaque in the infrared, where Earth is emitting most of its heat. In other word, the sun, at 6000K, is shining visible light on Earth. This heats the ground. Of course, Earth needs some way to get rid of the incident Energy (otherwise it would keep getting hotter and hotter). So, following the Stefan–Boltzmann law, the Earth also starts to glow. Since its temperature is only about a few K on average, it mostly glows in the infrared. This radiation is absorbed by the CO2 (and other greenhouse gases), and re-radiated - part of it up into the higher atmosphere and ultimately to space, but part of it back down to the ground. As a result, it takes longer for the energy to finally escape into space. More energy (=heat) is retained, hence it is warmer.
In reality, it is more likely that any warming we are seeing actually comes from higher levels of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor emissions are strongly correlated with CO2 emissions, after all. Not only that, but water vapor is a lot easier to get out of the atmosphere than CO2, and can be scrubbed for if desired. Even if my physical analysis is wrong, scrubbing water out of the atmosphere will have a much more rapid remediation effect than carbon credits or any other such money grubbing scheme.
And that also is misleading. Water vapor is very nearly in a dynamic equilibrium in the atmosphere. As long as we can observe it, the relative humidity of the atmosphere as a whole has been about constant. Excess water quickly is lost in the form of precipitation. And a lack of water vapor is quickly made up via evaporation, given that 70% of the Earth surface is water. Water vapor enters into the equation, because the absolute humidity, which is relevant for the greenhouse effect of water vapor, increases with temperature. Thus, when CO2 initiates some warming, this will lead to more water vapor and more warming in turn. It's a positive feedback increasing the climate sensitivity of the planet. It isn't a total runaway effect because the emissions of the Earth increase with the 4th power of the temperature, so the series describing the feedback loop converges.
The french have a long and consistent history of being fucking pussies who don't stand up for themselves.
Lafayette called and said that you can say that again when you ever fought a modern war in which 70% of a generation became casualties, with about a quarter of these dead and another permanently maimed.
The difference between "them" (e.g. Al-Quaeda, and apparently you) and "us" is that we believe in due process even if it is inconvenient, and even if the other person is not believing in it. Nobody ever said freedom and justice are easy. It's just sad that too many seem to have given up the effort.
When your religion (Islam) calls for you to kill another human being just because they don't agree with Islam, you deserve to be killed.
Well, since Islam doesn't do that, your comment is just noise. It's also a stupid non-sequitur, of course.
You do realize plants and animals require a minimum of 220 ppm to survive, and the more the better they grow.
While plants do, of course, need CO2, things are not as easy as you claim. CO2 concentrations dropped to about 180 ppm several times during the ice ages in the last 800000 years, and plant life as a whole survived pretty well. So 220 ppm is not a hard limit. Also, while increased CO2 can benefit plants, it's not universally good. On the one hand, many plants are not limited by carbon availability, but by other nutrients, like phosphorus, usable nitrogen, or trace metals. And secondly, different plants cope differently with varying CO2 levels. So a change in CO2 can change the competitive advantage from one plant type to another, potentially disrupting ecosystems.
Also, the warming of the oceans will expand the water.
Water is odd about being heated or cooled compared to most other materials. Water actually expands when it is cooled, which makes it less dense as it cools, which is the reason why ice floats. This is also why freezing pop cans is a bad idea.
It is BAD SCIENCE like this that makes the anti-GW people challenge the GW adherents. Fudge factors in the computer programs are the least of it.
Water is densest at about 4 degrees C. It expands either way. Since water is densest at 4 degrees C, cold water sinks to the ground - and in fact, much of deep water is more or less at that temperature, and most surface water is much warmer. Thermal expansion of sea water is indeed a major cause of sea level rise, and if somebody told you otherwise, they either don't know shit, or they are trying to deceive you.
Nuclear is a cheap, easy, simple method to provide lots of power.
Nuclear energy has never been produced at market price anywhere in the world. Development has been done nearly exclusively in government labs or based on government subsidies. No nuclear plant can get sufficient insurance to cover accidents on the free marktet. Governments guarantee nuclear waste disposal at subsidised prices.
And I'm sure looking forward to a world where Nigeria, Belize, Tuvalu, and Iran produce their power from nuclear plants...
My 5 year old FRITZ!Box keeps traffic statistics for the current day, last day, last week, and current and previous months, with the stock firmware. It did so when it ran as a DSL modem, and it does so now it's configured as a WLAN router connected to the cable modem. I kinda assumed that level of features was standard...
Newton is a unit of force, not a unit of mass. "Weight" refers to mass, hence it's expressed in kilogramm.
I picked up a new Nook Color for $199 last week. I had to root it and hack the volume buttons to act as the back/menu buttons, but it makes a helluva Android tablet. Screen is as good as an iPad's (just smaller), and the 800 MHz CPU overclocks easily. It's missing GPS, a mic, and camera, but those are relatively cheap electronic components. So a quality tablet can definitely be built for less than $200.
I think you overlook that B&N most probably subsidises the Nook. Overclocking also is fine for the hobbyist, but not for the mainstream user. It also would cut into batterie life. And adding the "relatively cheap" extra components well into the small spaces of a tablet is not trivial either. So it may be possible, but I wouldn't bet on the "definitely", unless you assume extreme volumes.
This is true in most fields, but not in computer science. In CS, good conferences are the primary venue, and are heavily references and prestigious. In my field these are conferences like IJCAI, ECAI, IJCAR, CADE. Conferences have full peer-review and proceedings are archived as part of the literature. The more informal exchanges go by the name of "Workshop". Of course, just as in the case of journals, there are more and less prestigious conferences. I haven't heard of CSCS, so it sounds like something on the "less" side of things.
Still, if someone wants to become a researcher, going is well worth it. Two tips: Don't sit through all the talks - you will go mad. Pick and choose the interesting ones. Don't be a dick barging in and out all the time, either ;-). And secondly, recognise that a lot of the value, both scientific and personal, is in the side discussions during breaks and dinner.
Sorry to disagree, but historically it was exactly the other way round. Germany was the first nations to introduce small, independent units on a large scale, with the Sturmtruppen in WWI. It has been one of the more decentralised militaries ever since, trusting independently operating groups to achieve their objectives without micromanagement. You may have a point very late in the war, when completely untrained Volkssturm groups were lead just one trained person, but by then, there was not much of an advantage to be had.
Yeah and when life was the most abundant on earth, it was between 4-7C warmer and the CO2 was in the 20 times as much as today.
You welcome your new tyrannosauroid overloards, I suspect? Sure, "life" will do fine in 5 million years (unless we put on other pressures). The main problem for humans is the rapid change from a relatively stable state that has persisted through most of human history.
In another universe, this has already happened. The US is not doing much industrial production anymore, and Europe is not much behind. My Apple came from Shanghai...
If you are on call 24/7 I hope you charge them 168 hours per week. Seriously. If not, find a reasonable schedule. Being on call a day a week is ok, but being on 24/7 is only acceptable if you are on the C-level and get paid accordingly - and then you need to be able to fully control your own working hours.
Otherwise, remember, it's not your company. If the server is down, its down. If it cannot be fixed quickly, the company is losing money. Too bad. They should have bought a better server solution and paid an additional IT guy. The people in charge need to live with their decisions. It's not your responsibility unless you are in charge.
...in other words, the Democrats are neither liberal in any proper sense of the word, not "left" except in relation to the Republicans. From a European perspective, both big US parties used to be barely distinguishable, far off in the mist on the the right. Of course, the NeoCons and the Tea Parties have dragged the Republicans even further away, and the Democrats have followed more slowly, thus widening the distance. But that does not make the Democrats "left".
I'm more or less with you in principle, but that argument is just another version of "If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide".
The big difference is, of course, that people have an expectation of and right to privacy. States do not, and democracies in particular cannot function if large amounts of important information is not available to the demos.
It's not only ice on land, but also and significantly the thermal expansion of sea water as oceans warm up.