The plants that are already built are the problem. There are many passive-safety measures that have been devised since these plants were constructed, but since the old reactor designs are already there, people keep using them to be cheap. The difference is in when something goes wrong you can either have a reaction that halts right away or a situation like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or Fukushima.

Thorium reactors are pretty interesting in concept. I'd rather have a few of those around over the 35+ year old reactors we have running now. The science there is good. It's better than what we have and would be progress. That said, I understand the position against nuclear. Any time radioactive substances are being produced, there is a nonzero chance of them being spread out over the landscape.

From what I can tell, the Green party seems to be against gambling with worst-case scenarios, even if the odds of the worst-case scenario happening are remote. Let's think of a list of the worst case scenarios of things!
* Photovoltaics -- take up farmland?
* Turbines -- kill birds/fish
* Fossil Fuels -- Turn Earth into Venus
* Nuclear Reactors -- Godzilla
* GMOs -- Monsanto finishes the transition to Weyland-Yutani. Also the death of bees.
* Water Fluoridation -- Mind control!

Maybe they're referring to Noah's flood?

The obvious way around that is to stop calling everyone who breathes a "terrorist".

Technically I think Roy is right in this case. I looked through it for a bit and it looks like that graph is showing a spike around `97 or so. They usually factor out volcanic, solar, and other activities to get an overall trend. This is the raw data that still has all that. If you're *just* looking for the hottest year on record, regardless of trends, then it looks like that spike is probably it.

That's not to say that the trend isn't still terrifying though. If the same conditions arose today that caused that spike in `97, then the new spike would probably be much much higher. Knowing that anomalies like that can happen is actually even scarier than the claim that we set a record. :c

Malwarebytes has caught a number of things for me, including blocking things like OpenCandy from installing alongside certain programs I like. I've seen far less gain from installing different AV programs to work with it. Mostly they just slow down or break certain programs. Meh.

This is the study:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748...

"Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming."

I appreciate your summary of statistics. I was unfamiliar with some of those and they make me feel a little better. Not much, but a little.

You're correct about the 97% being an estimate of the number of scientists who believe in AGW. That's based on percentage of papers about climate change in general that expressed on opinion on it. A more accurate analogy would have been to multiply the 97% by the 67% who think it could lead to catastrophic damage in the next 50 years that you mentioned.

Mitigation and adaptation would both require investment to pull off. Going back to my annoying analogy of a military invasion, you could say this is like trying to decide if you should focus on offense or defense, respectively. A little of both might be the best solution.

The point I was trying to drive home was that, in 2014, the US federal budget had $21.4B going into climate change programs and activities. This only 0.1% of the $16.8T going into the military. It just seems odd to me that one threat gets so much more funding than another.

Suppose 97% of your military commanders came forward and told you they believed that a country would invade. They show you satellite images of how the enemy forces are building up. They can't tell you for sure what would happen. The infrastructure, economy, and way of life could be entirely ruined. The country may never recover. Or maybe the invaders will just walk through and not do a thing.

Let's assume you have a VERY small military, just a token gesture really to make your citizens happy. Would you want the country to:

a) Decrease defense spending.
b) Maintain defense spending.
c) Increase defense spending.

That's the real tough part about it... By the time we know for sure what will happen, it'd be too late. The risk is just SO HIGH that most scientists recommend playing it safe. Humanity could have a tough time surviving if we get into the "runaway climate change" scenario. Will that happen if the global temperature goes up 1 degree C? 10?

Aside from all that though, poison ivy grows faster with more CO2. Eeks. Just another reason to stay in my basement.

Quick, everyone! Let's invade... *spins a globe* Zimbabwe!

Here are some fun graphs: http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs11...

Looks like a fairly linear increase when I hold a straight-edge up to the screen starting around 1970. No new surprises I guess?

Aside from all that though, a climate change religion doesn't sound so bad. Give a little money to the "church" and in return you get an insurance policy. The population is getting close to the estimated carrying capacity of the Earth. Once we get there, any major crop die-off would lead to starvation problems. Why should coffee drinkers spend money on bombing tea drinkers when we could instead invest that money to ensure that both coffee and tea keep growing?

That might be enough to hold Star Citizen. I hope they can get it out in time.

Every time there's a local initiative to get people to turn in their guns, I wonder why they don't offer to give each person a stun gun in its place. That would be far more enticing to me. It seems like a reasonable compromise on the debate of gun control would be to have strict regulations on lethal arms while non-lethal may be purchased by all.

Maybe someone better informed on statistics can weigh in on this?

People have definitely been arrested for lamer reasons. Growing gardens in the US is sometimes an offense, depending on if you have the licenses required to do so. It seems to be much more about money than safety.

You do realize that a scientist who actually disproves anthropogenic climate change would become filthy rich from the oil companies, right?