Yes exactly. You're analogy is kind of like the American voter who consistently votes for candidates who don't believe in government and then complain when the government doesn't work. Yes, a lot like putting your head into the cog of a giant machine and having it crushed. Admittedly, one does hear the screams of anguish.
Too bad that as the heads explode, they fail to recognize that the guy they were counting on to turn the crushing machine off, was really busy speeding it up to benefit the guy who owns the crushing machine and is eager to profit by selling more crushing machines.
Ironic that with all that freedom, so many choose to use it to be stupid.
Having experienced Katrina I can assure you that insurance companies will simply ignore the law with relative impunity. Remember, it's a lot cheaper to simply buy yourself a few politicians, prosecutors, judges, and regulators than actually pay out massive claims during a major storm event.
The interesting aspect of this is that so far buyers don't seem to recognize that what each successive buyer will be both accepting more risk, hence paying more and more for insurance, on a property that will be worth less when it comes time to sell. Coastal property is very much now like milk and other perishable items. It has a sell by date stamped on it. Its just that the dates are of relatively longer duration, on the order of a few generations.
Given human nature, this musical chairs nature of the coastal property business won't make itself evident to most for another 25-50 years or so. By then with higher temperatures and hence more energy and moisture in the air and consequently more violent and more frequent storms this risks will be apparent to most. However, given that the wealthy are the primary buyers of coastal real estate, form them it's more a question of disposable income. Also for them, it is likely that much if not nearly all of these costs will be passed on to taxpayers and consumers generally, as the buy politicians to shift the tax burden from the wealthy onto the poor and the dwindling middle class and they simply pass the costs on in the form of higher prices in the businesses that they own and control.
The biggest impact will be in cities like Miami and parts of New Jersey, and large stretches of the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf of Mexico, where the elevations are so uniformly low over considerable expanses. There all properties will be effected and both rich and poor will be forced to migrate elsewhere. The rich should be ok as they may already have property elsewhere or resources that they can use to purchase other properties even as their seaside properties become worthless. The poor on the other hand will be forced to face conditions similar to those now faced by indigents in Bangladesh, too poor to stay and too poor to move. This will probably be the big unexpected aspect of sea level rise, the political and economic instability that it creates by making so many to lose it all, with little political or economic recourse. Subsequent generations will suffer disproportionately on the individual level as families that might once have had property that could be passed onto subsequent generations in the form of inheritance will be left with greatly diminished inheritance.
What few recognize is that given free energy considerations and the consequent fact that once a carbon dioxide molecule is generated from fossil fuels, it stays essentially as a permanent fixture in the atmosphere for on average about 100 years. Given the fact that it thus accumulates, the process is exponential, but the consequences time-lagged so that we have yet to experience the effect of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere over the past 50 years, an amount far greater than the previous 50. If one extrapolates from previous geological periods and looks at rates of sea-level rise at various locations, one sees spurts of rising over very short time periods, several meter rises over a hundred year period in some cases (remember that 5+ inches/100 year is a global average). Consequently, there is far more "coastal property" than most people recognize.
Unfortunately for those on in the US living on the Western Atlantic, the effects of Greenland ice melt on sea level rise will be greatest there rather than immediately adjacent to Greenland because of the fact that the oceans are in motion and the differential between isostatic adjustment and water mass position forces the maximum peaks southward, but primarily over the Western rather than Eastern Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, those rising tides will be flooding Wall Street within the next few hundred years with near certainty. That's a lot of expensive real estate that will need to be liquidated (in more ways than one) in a relatively short period of time.
For those who can't think for themselves. George Orwell couldn't have predicted it better. You know it's coming and Donald Trump's face will be on the big screen everywhere. It's a done deal, with those who don't like it fired permanently.
You seem to be operating under the delusion that global warming isn't already "fucking up" our economy.
Do you have any idea how much more the US now spend on fighting forest fires than it did 100 years ago?
Do you have any idea how much more frequent and more devastating storms are costing? Perhaps you don't but your insurance company has and they have built in global warming into their pricing models. You are paying for global warming, whether you want to believe in it or not.
"It will take future analysis and records. If the trends continue, it's not an anomaly."
So how long do you propose we wait?
Until car tires spontaneously combust? With asphalt now melting during periods of intense heat in many parts of the world, it looks like more and more like we won't have to wait long.
" but there a quite a few other other causes that "may" be factors up to and including the the relative albedo of a much cleaner atmosphere than previous generations had, rotational swing on the galaxy, the suns output, ocean currents etc.."
The obvious problem with this line of reasoning is that there is NO evidence that anything other than the accumulation of carbon dioxide can explain the cause of global warming, despite the wishes of those invested in the fossil fuels industry.
Zero evidence that the atmosphere as a whole is "cleaner", in fact satellite observations strongly indicate that in most parts of the world the opposite is true. You don't have to go to Beijing to see this, you can simply observe that about 20% of the atmospheric pollution in Washington State comes from China.
Zero evidence that "rotational swings" of the Milky Way are involved, since the gravitational effects of movements of extra-solar mass are far too small and have changed far too slowly to account for the rapid rise in global temperatures over the past 200 years.
Zero evidence that changes in solar activity play a role, because the magnitude of the variation of change of insolation over the past 200 years is far too small to account for the large change in global mean temperatures.
To make matters worse for deniers, the change in isotopic composition of carbon dioxide is entirely consistent with the preponderance of all new carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past 200 years since global-climate warming has been observed is consistent with an origin from fossil fuels (not to mention entirely consistent with the amount of oil and coal produced during this same period).
The probability that there "MAY" be an alternate explanation for global warming other than as a result of the accumulation of carbon dioxide that is greater than zero is very close to 0.00000000000001.
Exactly, the question comes down to whether or not we can make "adjustments" fast enough to keep up with global climate change as it begins to express its exponential character. Remember, it is exponential because temperature rise is a function of the accumulation of carbon dioxide. We particularly need to concern ourselves with changes that WILL come if temperatures rise too high (loss of reflectance in the Arctic, increase of carbon from the disappearance of permafrost, peat bogs, and rain forests, and sublimation of marine methane clathrates). We don't want to get to these threshold levels of heating, because once we do, no amount of "adjustment" will be sufficient.
The critical issue is what are the biological effects. As far as the atoms in inorganic molecules, they can handle extremes rather well without any complaints. For organic molecules in living systems the situation is quite different and different living systems have a very wide diversity of responses as is evidenced by what survived the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Survival is not only a function of the amount of change that can be "adapted to", it is also a function of how fast organisms can evolve to reach new higher levels of adaptation in the presence of events that exceed the ability to adapt, except for brief periods. Too fast and we don't see evolution. Rather we see extinction.
If one looks at the fossil record in North America before and after the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. Several things stand out. What were once broad redwood forests throughout much of Western North America before the maximum, rapidly became palm and palmetto forests afterward until Pleistocene glaciation. About 80% of the North American mammal fauna that preceded the maximum was replaced (ie went extinct).
Now keeping in mind that even though the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum was but a brief spike in geological times, it nonetheless lasted at a minimum of 6,000 to 10,000 years. Consequently, it was rather of long duration relative to the Anthropocene global-warming, which has occurred with the past 200 years. Importantly, the rate of heating at present is about 36 time more rapid than the rate of heating that occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum.
Given that we are mammals, we might reasonably ask, how we expect to fare. Clearly, there are many ecological dimensions associated with such an answer, as the range of climate that we depend upon for our particular survival, has many components. One major component will be the availability of water. In a globally warmed world, we can expect two extremes to intensify. More evaporation over a planet whose surface is 2/3 water will mean far more water in the atmosphere, and so relatively coastal regions will see much greater rainfall, in many cases torrential during brief periods of time that can dramatically impact agriculture that depends on relatively stable periods for plant growth. Too much rain can wash away topsoil and the plants themselves or bury the plants in mud. In relatively terrestrial regions, we will see much higher soil temperatures that will tend to enforce regional high pressures leading to relatively less rain. Indeed, much of Central South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are steadily drying out. Presently, the data suggest that this latter aspect has great potential to dramatically reduce world populations in these areas. A recent study suggests that humans are at considerable risk in the very near future, even in this very early stage of Anthropocene warming. Once montane glaciers that make it possible for rivers to flow during summer months are gone, this risk will rise dramatically, so much agriculture as it now exists will not be possible in areas like the Great Plains and parts of China and India that are currently regarded as "breadbaskets".
The irony is that in relatively coastal areas, where the bulk of the population lives, these regions are highly dependent upon oceanic productivity. About 50% of all protein consumed by humans is from the oceans. Unfortunately, with Anthropocene global-warming tightly coupled with high levels of carbon dioxide and the propensity of carbon dioxide to dissolve readily in seawater, the pH of the oceans is dramatically decreasing. In a few hundred years, the oceans will reach the threshold where calcium carbonate production will be virtually impossible. This is already true in many relatively shallow areas of the North Pacific under certain oceanographic conditions, where wind driven upwelling can effectively end oyster production by killing all spat. Since the vast majority of marine
Hate to break it to you, but the Flint River drainage encompasses more than 2% of Michigan. In time, the groundwater of a lot of Michigan is going to be as toxic as that in Flint. But don't worry, the State of Michigan with the help of Rick Snyder and the GOP legislature is moving to change the reporting requirements for well water so not to worry you should you look at the tests.
"The reason our nuclear "waste" is dangerous on the order of tens of thousands of years is entirely political. "
Actually, the danger is not in the half-life of the isotopic decay. The danger is in the biological effects. Even a single atom of radioactive material has the potential to generate a cancer. There is no lower threshold to cancer risk. Having more than one atom around only multiplies the risk as it multiplies the probability of cancer.
Yeah, I'm sure the folks living next to Fukushima and Chernobyl all feel the same way. I say scrap fission power that has no future because of the costs of the screwups (both in lives and in currency) and put any subsidies for nuclear into research into fusion power. It looks as if the Chinese, at least, have the sense enough to take this approach. In the meantime tax fossil fuels to death and use the money to implement alternative energy solutions (solar, wind, tidal), which are far more cost effective and far less politically destabilizing when total costs are considered.
Since the science is settled, now we can look to see the Australian government start slashing spending on fossil fuels, getting rid of bureaucracies and governmental subsidies that enable and support the mining, production, distribution, and sale of fossil fuels and taxing the fossil fuels industry to death. It is a glorious day in Australia, unless of course they plan on ignoring the settled aspect of the science for all but the fired scientists and continue on with business as usual.
One can't help but wonder with so many questions still remaining in climate science as to how hot, how fast, where and who will be first to affected, by how much, etc., whether this is just a shameless ploy to limit the visibility these scientists and the science they pursue so that business as usual can simply continue without adverse publicity. Then again, perhaps it's just an effort to make sure that Australian science lags behind that of other nations and to encourage their best scientists to leave for positions abroad.
Why not? Too much education leading to too productive a work force and too much productivity leading to too much surplus?
Education is an investment in the future. Not to obtain an education is to assure that one will not have a future. The same is true for individuals as it is for groups of individuals (AKA countries).
"But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering."
Wrong. Our environment defines our reality. We simply define how we choose to live in it. Whether we are miserable or suffering in the process is hardly relevant. If we make choices that ultimately degrade that environment, like the Danish and Finnish governments are doing now, it will only constrain options later.
The reason for the massive cutbacks in education funding isn't simply a result of the "lack of money", it's rather a conscious decision to protect others from a similar fate. A cynic might venture a guess that it is largely the salaries of politicians and their patrons that will be spared the budgetary knife. Whether that decision is a good one will be determined by whether or not whatever it is the others who have been spared are offering proves more useful and desirable than what might have come from what so many academics might have achieved. Clearly, only time will tell.
It seems that all of a sudden being "politically correct" has become a bad thing that must be prevented at all costs. The reason for this is evident for all who take the trouble to notice.
The anxiety and worry that stems from "political correctness" is that "political correctness" establishes a culture in which people who prey on others, who cause disruption through racism, sexism, hate mongering, sowing class or social divisiveness etc. are deemed inappropriate can themselves be castigated and ostracized. Political correctness creates a culture in which, if you have a distasteful idea or socially unworkable idea, you should keep it to yourself.
This anxiety and worry is rooted in the fact that humans do not resolve their differences and social norms in a purely rational fashion, but rely heavily on an emotional filtering of rational thoughts in order to preserve one's concept of oneself. This filtering may be more or less extreme in various circumstances, environments or contexts, even to the point of filtering out rational thought entirely. Consequently, humans have evolved to be particularly acutely tuned to the emotional states of others around them.
Consequently, it's not surprising that those with particularly odious ideas or "radical/extreme/deviant" ideas that they can't otherwise "sell" to their fellow humans will be loathe to see the development of such a culture. Being against "political correctness" means being fundamentally against the notion of strict social consensus, where one's bad ideas have equal footing with other's good ideas and where bad ideas can be still used to leverage selection against those who can be discriminated against for whatever reason in order to preserve perceptions of self-identity.
If that is the case, then shouldn't it be possible to create a program that pre-cashes all outgoing streams prior to their being sent and then inject meaningless random signals into the stream so that the receiving end simply gets garbled data?
This way one could conceivably "randomize" data except that you specifically wish to transmit. Presumably, such an algorithm would intercept all interrupts, trace their source, and randomize as required. No doubt it would greatly slow the system, but would it not in theory work?
So what is the calculation of when the Earth's core will freeze over or is there enough radioactivity to last until the Sun finally expands and consumes Earth?
Actually, he would only be stealing if the apartment complex owner decides to press charges. However, the owner may think that having a customer, who is paying say $1000 per month for his or her rental unit, is actually more of a benefit to his bottom line than few bucks of electricity he could save, while he repaints and repairs the place and the cost of advertising to get a new tenant.
This is one of the reasons that many of the more upscale rental complexes now provide free charging stations. Its like an extra perk for the customer that makes good business sense. It makes customers happy and the owner gets to keep his customers for relatively longer and makes more money than the rental owner, who thinks its better to kick people out for minor infractions.
You might be better off if rather than complaining about your neighbor, suggesting to your rental unit owner of the benefit of putting in a few charging stations for those who want/need them. You would benefit by paying about 1/11 th less for miles driven and he would be happily pocketing the money from satisfied customers, while making his rental properties more attractive.
Relative to the cost of petrol, the cost of charging (even if you have to pay for it) is cheap. In the US, it's about 1/11th the cost of using fossil fuels, not including all the hidden costs to the consumer, who gets to breath carcingogenic hydrocarbons, pay for oil spills, and the cost of global warming, which the fossil fuels industry passes on to consumers and every other living thing on the planet. I suspect, in the UK its even more cost effective to go electric, especially since you folks are now having to pay BP's massive fines for more or less permanently mucking up the Gulf of Mexico.
Costs are relative, at least for those of us who don't use the free teletransportaion services that beams us to and from the planet of our choice.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes exactly. You're analogy is kind of like the American voter who consistently votes for candidates who don't believe in government and then complain when the government doesn't work. Yes, a lot like putting your head into the cog of a giant machine and having it crushed. Admittedly, one does hear the screams of anguish.
Too bad that as the heads explode, they fail to recognize that the guy they were counting on to turn the crushing machine off, was really busy speeding it up to benefit the guy who owns the crushing machine and is eager to profit by selling more crushing machines.
Ironic that with all that freedom, so many choose to use it to be stupid.
Having experienced Katrina I can assure you that insurance companies will simply ignore the law with relative impunity. Remember, it's a lot cheaper to simply buy yourself a few politicians, prosecutors, judges, and regulators than actually pay out massive claims during a major storm event.
The interesting aspect of this is that so far buyers don't seem to recognize that what each successive buyer will be both accepting more risk, hence paying more and more for insurance, on a property that will be worth less when it comes time to sell. Coastal property is very much now like milk and other perishable items. It has a sell by date stamped on it. Its just that the dates are of relatively longer duration, on the order of a few generations.
Given human nature, this musical chairs nature of the coastal property business won't make itself evident to most for another 25-50 years or so. By then with higher temperatures and hence more energy and moisture in the air and consequently more violent and more frequent storms this risks will be apparent to most. However, given that the wealthy are the primary buyers of coastal real estate, form them it's more a question of disposable income. Also for them, it is likely that much if not nearly all of these costs will be passed on to taxpayers and consumers generally, as the buy politicians to shift the tax burden from the wealthy onto the poor and the dwindling middle class and they simply pass the costs on in the form of higher prices in the businesses that they own and control.
The biggest impact will be in cities like Miami and parts of New Jersey, and large stretches of the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf of Mexico, where the elevations are so uniformly low over considerable expanses. There all properties will be effected and both rich and poor will be forced to migrate elsewhere. The rich should be ok as they may already have property elsewhere or resources that they can use to purchase other properties even as their seaside properties become worthless. The poor on the other hand will be forced to face conditions similar to those now faced by indigents in Bangladesh, too poor to stay and too poor to move. This will probably be the big unexpected aspect of sea level rise, the political and economic instability that it creates by making so many to lose it all, with little political or economic recourse. Subsequent generations will suffer disproportionately on the individual level as families that might once have had property that could be passed onto subsequent generations in the form of inheritance will be left with greatly diminished inheritance.
What few recognize is that given free energy considerations and the consequent fact that once a carbon dioxide molecule is generated from fossil fuels, it stays essentially as a permanent fixture in the atmosphere for on average about 100 years. Given the fact that it thus accumulates, the process is exponential, but the consequences time-lagged so that we have yet to experience the effect of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere over the past 50 years, an amount far greater than the previous 50. If one extrapolates from previous geological periods and looks at rates of sea-level rise at various locations, one sees spurts of rising over very short time periods, several meter rises over a hundred year period in some cases (remember that 5+ inches/100 year is a global average). Consequently, there is far more "coastal property" than most people recognize.
Unfortunately for those on in the US living on the Western Atlantic, the effects of Greenland ice melt on sea level rise will be greatest there rather than immediately adjacent to Greenland because of the fact that the oceans are in motion and the differential between isostatic adjustment and water mass position forces the maximum peaks southward, but primarily over the Western rather than Eastern Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, those rising tides will be flooding Wall Street within the next few hundred years with near certainty. That's a lot of expensive real estate that will need to be liquidated (in more ways than one) in a relatively short period of time.
For those who can't think for themselves. George Orwell couldn't have predicted it better. You know it's coming and Donald Trump's face will be on the big screen everywhere. It's a done deal, with those who don't like it fired permanently.
You seem to be operating under the delusion that global warming isn't already "fucking up" our economy.
Do you have any idea how much more the US now spend on fighting forest fires than it did 100 years ago?
Do you have any idea how much more frequent and more devastating storms are costing? Perhaps you don't but your insurance company has and they have built in global warming into their pricing models. You are paying for global warming, whether you want to believe in it or not.
"It will take future analysis and records. If the trends continue, it's not an anomaly."
So how long do you propose we wait?
Until car tires spontaneously combust? With asphalt now melting during periods of intense heat in many parts of the world, it looks like more and more like we won't have to wait long.
Perhaps, Its heartening to hear that all the political problems caused by and in Florida will over the next 75-100 years solve themselves.
" but there a quite a few other other causes that "may" be factors up to and including the the relative albedo of a much cleaner atmosphere than previous generations had, rotational swing on the galaxy, the suns output, ocean currents etc.."
The obvious problem with this line of reasoning is that there is NO evidence that anything other than the accumulation of carbon dioxide can explain the cause of global warming, despite the wishes of those invested in the fossil fuels industry.
Zero evidence that the atmosphere as a whole is "cleaner", in fact satellite observations strongly indicate that in most parts of the world the opposite is true. You don't have to go to Beijing to see this, you can simply observe that about 20% of the atmospheric pollution in Washington State comes from China.
Zero evidence that "rotational swings" of the Milky Way are involved, since the gravitational effects of movements of extra-solar mass are far too small and have changed far too slowly to account for the rapid rise in global temperatures over the past 200 years.
Zero evidence that changes in solar activity play a role, because the magnitude of the variation of change of insolation over the past 200 years is far too small to account for the large change in global mean temperatures.
To make matters worse for deniers, the change in isotopic composition of carbon dioxide is entirely consistent with the preponderance of all new carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past 200 years since global-climate warming has been observed is consistent with an origin from fossil fuels (not to mention entirely consistent with the amount of oil and coal produced during this same period).
The probability that there "MAY" be an alternate explanation for global warming other than as a result of the accumulation of carbon dioxide that is greater than zero is very close to 0.00000000000001.
Exactly, the question comes down to whether or not we can make "adjustments" fast enough to keep up with global climate change as it begins to express its exponential character. Remember, it is exponential because temperature rise is a function of the accumulation of carbon dioxide. We particularly need to concern ourselves with changes that WILL come if temperatures rise too high (loss of reflectance in the Arctic, increase of carbon from the disappearance of permafrost, peat bogs, and rain forests, and sublimation of marine methane clathrates). We don't want to get to these threshold levels of heating, because once we do, no amount of "adjustment" will be sufficient.
The critical issue is what are the biological effects. As far as the atoms in inorganic molecules, they can handle extremes rather well without any complaints. For organic molecules in living systems the situation is quite different and different living systems have a very wide diversity of responses as is evidenced by what survived the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Survival is not only a function of the amount of change that can be "adapted to", it is also a function of how fast organisms can evolve to reach new higher levels of adaptation in the presence of events that exceed the ability to adapt, except for brief periods. Too fast and we don't see evolution. Rather we see extinction.
If one looks at the fossil record in North America before and after the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. Several things stand out. What were once broad redwood forests throughout much of Western North America before the maximum, rapidly became palm and palmetto forests afterward until Pleistocene glaciation. About 80% of the North American mammal fauna that preceded the maximum was replaced (ie went extinct).
Now keeping in mind that even though the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum was but a brief spike in geological times, it nonetheless lasted at a minimum of 6,000 to 10,000 years. Consequently, it was rather of long duration relative to the Anthropocene global-warming, which has occurred with the past 200 years. Importantly, the rate of heating at present is about 36 time more rapid than the rate of heating that occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum.
Given that we are mammals, we might reasonably ask, how we expect to fare. Clearly, there are many ecological dimensions associated with such an answer, as the range of climate that we depend upon for our particular survival, has many components. One major component will be the availability of water. In a globally warmed world, we can expect two extremes to intensify. More evaporation over a planet whose surface is 2/3 water will mean far more water in the atmosphere, and so relatively coastal regions will see much greater rainfall, in many cases torrential during brief periods of time that can dramatically impact agriculture that depends on relatively stable periods for plant growth. Too much rain can wash away topsoil and the plants themselves or bury the plants in mud. In relatively terrestrial regions, we will see much higher soil temperatures that will tend to enforce regional high pressures leading to relatively less rain. Indeed, much of Central South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are steadily drying out. Presently, the data suggest that this latter aspect has great potential to dramatically reduce world populations in these areas. A recent study suggests that humans are at considerable risk in the very near future, even in this very early stage of Anthropocene warming. Once montane glaciers that make it possible for rivers to flow during summer months are gone, this risk will rise dramatically, so much agriculture as it now exists will not be possible in areas like the Great Plains and parts of China and India that are currently regarded as "breadbaskets".
The irony is that in relatively coastal areas, where the bulk of the population lives, these regions are highly dependent upon oceanic productivity. About 50% of all protein consumed by humans is from the oceans. Unfortunately, with Anthropocene global-warming tightly coupled with high levels of carbon dioxide and the propensity of carbon dioxide to dissolve readily in seawater, the pH of the oceans is dramatically decreasing. In a few hundred years, the oceans will reach the threshold where calcium carbonate production will be virtually impossible. This is already true in many relatively shallow areas of the North Pacific under certain oceanographic conditions, where wind driven upwelling can effectively end oyster production by killing all spat. Since the vast majority of marine
Hate to break it to you, but the Flint River drainage encompasses more than 2% of Michigan. In time, the groundwater of a lot of Michigan is going to be as toxic as that in Flint. But don't worry, the State of Michigan with the help of Rick Snyder and the GOP legislature is moving to change the reporting requirements for well water so not to worry you should you look at the tests.
"The reason our nuclear "waste" is dangerous on the order of tens of thousands of years is entirely political. "
Actually, the danger is not in the half-life of the isotopic decay. The danger is in the biological effects. Even a single atom of radioactive material has the potential to generate a cancer. There is no lower threshold to cancer risk. Having more than one atom around only multiplies the risk as it multiplies the probability of cancer.
Yeah, so that when the "plug" design breaks and you stop pressing it, it will just keep on going. Exactly, what one would need for a nuclear reactor?
Would this contract have been awarded had Scotland voted for independence?
Anyone want to wager this facility will be put anywhere else?
"and smallest impact on our daily lives"
Yeah, I'm sure the folks living next to Fukushima and Chernobyl all feel the same way. I say scrap fission power that has no future because of the costs of the screwups (both in lives and in currency) and put any subsidies for nuclear into research into fusion power. It looks as if the Chinese, at least, have the sense enough to take this approach. In the meantime tax fossil fuels to death and use the money to implement alternative energy solutions (solar, wind, tidal), which are far more cost effective and far less politically destabilizing when total costs are considered.
Since the science is settled, now we can look to see the Australian government start slashing spending on fossil fuels, getting rid of bureaucracies and governmental subsidies that enable and support the mining, production, distribution, and sale of fossil fuels and taxing the fossil fuels industry to death. It is a glorious day in Australia, unless of course they plan on ignoring the settled aspect of the science for all but the fired scientists and continue on with business as usual.
One can't help but wonder with so many questions still remaining in climate science as to how hot, how fast, where and who will be first to affected, by how much, etc., whether this is just a shameless ploy to limit the visibility these scientists and the science they pursue so that business as usual can simply continue without adverse publicity. Then again, perhaps it's just an effort to make sure that Australian science lags behind that of other nations and to encourage their best scientists to leave for positions abroad.
Why not? Too much education leading to too productive a work force and too much productivity leading to too much surplus?
Education is an investment in the future. Not to obtain an education is to assure that one will not have a future. The same is true for individuals as it is for groups of individuals (AKA countries).
Your motto seems to be penny wise, pound foolish.
"But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering."
Wrong. Our environment defines our reality. We simply define how we choose to live in it. Whether we are miserable or suffering in the process is hardly relevant. If we make choices that ultimately degrade that environment, like the Danish and Finnish governments are doing now, it will only constrain options later.
The reason for the massive cutbacks in education funding isn't simply a result of the "lack of money", it's rather a conscious decision to protect others from a similar fate. A cynic might venture a guess that it is largely the salaries of politicians and their patrons that will be spared the budgetary knife. Whether that decision is a good one will be determined by whether or not whatever it is the others who have been spared are offering proves more useful and desirable than what might have come from what so many academics might have achieved. Clearly, only time will tell.
It seems that all of a sudden being "politically correct" has become a bad thing that must be prevented at all costs. The reason for this is evident for all who take the trouble to notice.
The anxiety and worry that stems from "political correctness" is that "political correctness" establishes a culture in which people who prey on others, who cause disruption through racism, sexism, hate mongering, sowing class or social divisiveness etc. are deemed inappropriate can themselves be castigated and ostracized. Political correctness creates a culture in which, if you have a distasteful idea or socially unworkable idea, you should keep it to yourself.
This anxiety and worry is rooted in the fact that humans do not resolve their differences and social norms in a purely rational fashion, but rely heavily on an emotional filtering of rational thoughts in order to preserve one's concept of oneself. This filtering may be more or less extreme in various circumstances, environments or contexts, even to the point of filtering out rational thought entirely. Consequently, humans have evolved to be particularly acutely tuned to the emotional states of others around them.
Consequently, it's not surprising that those with particularly odious ideas or "radical/extreme/deviant" ideas that they can't otherwise "sell" to their fellow humans will be loathe to see the development of such a culture. Being against "political correctness" means being fundamentally against the notion of strict social consensus, where one's bad ideas have equal footing with other's good ideas and where bad ideas can be still used to leverage selection against those who can be discriminated against for whatever reason in order to preserve perceptions of self-identity.
If that is the case, then shouldn't it be possible to create a program that pre-cashes all outgoing streams prior to their being sent and then inject meaningless random signals into the stream so that the receiving end simply gets garbled data?
This way one could conceivably "randomize" data except that you specifically wish to transmit. Presumably, such an algorithm would intercept all interrupts, trace their source, and randomize as required. No doubt it would greatly slow the system, but would it not in theory work?
Perhaps, but it is more likely that we will have our hands full just surviving global warming here on Earth caused by the collective will of humanity.
So what is the calculation of when the Earth's core will freeze over or is there enough radioactivity to last until the Sun finally expands and consumes Earth?
So does this mean that all one has to do to obtain all of a corporation's most valued secrets is to steal the CEO's phone?
Actually, he would only be stealing if the apartment complex owner decides to press charges. However, the owner may think that having a customer, who is paying say $1000 per month for his or her rental unit, is actually more of a benefit to his bottom line than few bucks of electricity he could save, while he repaints and repairs the place and the cost of advertising to get a new tenant.
This is one of the reasons that many of the more upscale rental complexes now provide free charging stations. Its like an extra perk for the customer that makes good business sense. It makes customers happy and the owner gets to keep his customers for relatively longer and makes more money than the rental owner, who thinks its better to kick people out for minor infractions.
You might be better off if rather than complaining about your neighbor, suggesting to your rental unit owner of the benefit of putting in a few charging stations for those who want/need them. You would benefit by paying about 1/11 th less for miles driven and he would be happily pocketing the money from satisfied customers, while making his rental properties more attractive.
Relative to the cost of petrol, the cost of charging (even if you have to pay for it) is cheap. In the US, it's about 1/11th the cost of using fossil fuels, not including all the hidden costs to the consumer, who gets to breath carcingogenic hydrocarbons, pay for oil spills, and the cost of global warming, which the fossil fuels industry passes on to consumers and every other living thing on the planet. I suspect, in the UK its even more cost effective to go electric, especially since you folks are now having to pay BP's massive fines for more or less permanently mucking up the Gulf of Mexico.
Costs are relative, at least for those of us who don't use the free teletransportaion services that beams us to and from the planet of our choice.