I noticed that too, did anti-science spammers get a pay rise recently?

Burning coal is "doing something" and it is negatively impacting everyone..

You just described WinRT aka Metro.

Deep sea vents were discovered when I was in my 20's before that we used to think abiogenesis had something to do with lightning hitting a mud puddle. The evidence that life formed around such vets on Earth is strong but inconclusive. Fatty acids from clay in the vent spontaneously form primitive cell membranes (in vents and mud puddles). Sulphur provides chemical energy, porous rock around the vent provides a sponge like scaffold for life to take root and extract passing nutrients. Most importantly the vents are predictable, the deep, still water stabilizes the temperature gradient. Convection currents cycle the fatty cells through the gradient allowing different chemical reactions within the membrane to synchronize themselves to the thermal cycle (much the same as plants match the cycle of night and day). If that really is how life got started then it's likely that primitive cells are still being spontaneously created near these vents today, the practical problem for scientists researching this idea is finding them before evolved life such as shrimp eat them.

Europa has all these conditions and like Earth it's ocean is also oxygenated at the top. Oxygen is vital for multicellular life on Earth, collagen (the stuff that holds individual cells together as multicellular critters) cannot form in an oxygen poor environment. Oxygen in Europa's ocean is replenished differently than it is on Earth. On Europa's surface strong radiation from Jupiter knocks the H2 off the ice and out into space, the free oxygen is returned to the ocean via plate tectonics. Personally I would think it very odd if we didn't find single celled life in Europa's ocean, at the very least it would force Science to radically rethink the conditions that lead to abiogenesis on Earth. What I'm interested to find out is whether life on Europa uses the same self-replicating molecules used by life on Earth, but I doubt I will be around to hear the answer..

Harvard have large investments in coal companies, the obvious answer is to stop burning coal and use something else, but that would leave some of their richest alumni holding "stranded assets". If we use deliberate geoengineering to balance the unintentional geoengineering of the coal industry, who will pay for it? - You can bet it won't be the coal industry, it will be the consumer and taxpayer.

Harvard could make a significant contribution by divesting from coal and telling everybody why, but it has declined to do so. This press release is just a timely distraction.

We all know Monsanto are pricks in their dealings with small farmers who refuse to buy their seed, but what "damage" has been done to human health or the environment by GMO plants of any kind? - Resistance to roundup and cabbages that glow in the dark is not "damage".

Aside from that, scientific claims cannot be "proven in court" and your well known non-belief in AGW has nothing to do with science.

Agreed, geoengineering the climate is not a popular idea among scientists.

The purpose of the ISS was to spread the cost of a space station among many different countries, so that no one of them had to foot the bill for their own. One of the reasons the USSR went bankrupt is because they could not keep up with US cold war expenditures, including the space race.

Which makes it truly bizarre that Russia would be thinking of going into space alone again. Putin doesn't appear to remember any history at all.

Maybe we'll get to see pop-ups with pixelated messages of thanks!

In Victoria this would probably be enforced under the "civic compliance" court or the sheriffs office, for example private entities such a toll roads can issue infringement notices for such trivial offences as a late payment of a toll. It looks like the UNSW is using contract law, fines are a common feature of contracts, more so in business to business contracts.

Yep, that's exactly the point Lovelock makes in the quote, and it's why I make the distinction. You do realise that the founders of greenpeace were respected scientists, right? Lovelock was one of them, by the mid-90's every single one of the founders had left the organisation they founded in disgust. GP did mankind a great service in the 70's/80's by almost single handedly stopping atmospheric testing in my backyard. However during the late 80's political types had well and truly taken over the organisation and the founding scientists wanted nothing to do with their pseudo-science.

The original scientific evidence that plutonium from atmospheric tests was making it's way into the bones of Aussie children and sheep came from a CSIRO scientist in the late 50's, early 60's, he won his (national security) battle with the Australian authorities and published his findings long before the green movement got started.

Wow! That's mean. As a 40 year old myself, I've learnt a lot from my and other kids. I wonder whether you, Anonymous Coward, have enough life experience to back up your claims?

Correct, it's the indestructible requirement that doesn't scale well. A heavy "package" (AKA indestructible armour) for 5kg or 5g is pretty much the same thing.

Back up a bit, who's the "we"?

I recall seeing testing footage for the RTG in the Cassini probe, among other things the tests involved a large artillery gun and a steel wall a few feet thick. Cassini was particularly controversial because it made a 'sling shot' flyby of earth at a much greater speed than escape velocity. From the tests I saw in the doco decades ago the worst thing that could possibly happen with an RTG is that it falls from the sky directly onto someone's head. Far from being anti-nuke, I'm actually interested the idea of "pebble bed" reactors (materials research is what's needed there). I'm also in favour of "full life cycle" nuclear power as practised in some parts of the EU. I don't know of a -science based- environmentalist/hippie/greenie who thinks otherwise. I've held these views since the early 90's, I'm not alone either, James Lovelock and some other influential greenies expressed similar opinions in the early 2000's

I speak to you today as a scientist and as the originator of Gaia Theory, the earth's system science which describes a self regulating planet which keeps its temperature and its chemical composition always favourable for life. I care deeply about the natural world, but as a scientist I consider that the earth has now reached a state profoundly dangerous to all of us and to our civilisation. And this view is shared by scientists around the world. Unfortunately, governments, especially in Europe, appear to listen less to scientists than they do to Green political parties and to Green lobbies. Now, I am a green myself, so I know that these greens are well intentioned, but they understand people a lot better than they understand the earth, and consequently they recommend inappropriate remedies and action. Lovelock 2005.

Disclaimer: According to my parents I became a Hippie back in 1976. Like any other social group, "Hippies" in general are reasonable people if you stop insulting them and feeding them on bullshit.

I don't think you realise just how indestructible a nuclear battery is, the one on Cassini was designed to withstand a crash that might have occurred on it's slingshot flyby of earth (fortunately we didn't get to test that claim). Testing is done by firing the battery from an artillery gun directly into a solid steel wall several feet thick. What happened to Antares would have merely burnt the paint off the outside a nuclear battery. Basically the only way to get hurt by one of them is to be unlucky enough to be hit on the head with it.