What you suggest is true now. However, it would take some research to determine if that would have been true before this regulation was put in place.

Putting a regulation like this in place increases the demand for the replacement product, which in turn increases the production of the replacement and results in all the usual economies of scale and production.

I remember when led light bulbs were in the USD $30-40 dollar range per bulb, now they are less than one USD per bulb for a variety of reasons, but in no small part to the increased market and resulting increase in production capacity to meet the demand.

Yes, now you can remove the regulation and "natural" economics will probably keep the adoption trend going, but that does not mean the regulation did not have a great impact on adoption and resulting reductions in energy use.

"Free shit" like the home mortgage interest deduction, one of the largest giveaways in the history of the US?

I do NOT buy into this, but since you asked, as I have asked nutty folks with "wifi allergies", here is their response:

"Voltage gated calcium channels are affected by non-ionizing radiation"

And this is the researcher and paper most cited related to the relationship:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

BitCoin was never intended to be anonymous I do not think. Just the opposite, the giant spreadsheet of every transaction is more than public, it is required that it be shared.

Only through creative use of the bitcoin protocol, through dozens of different wallets, can you hope to hide your transactions, and even that is not possible any longer as ledger analysis can now easily sort through and find the wallet relationships.

It is security through obscurity at best and we all know how reliable that is.

if you are using bitcoin because you think it is anonymous, you might be in for a big surprise if you catch the attention of the wrong folks.

The most effective population control is making sure women have equal rights and an education. Fertility naturally decreases as woman get more autonomy, opportunity and education.

And raising the living standards of women is a lot easier, less expensive and civilized than culling a population.

Childish and simplistic arguments like "You would be a smoking hole and a slave state" are not "evidence".

If you consider that evidence, it explains a lot.

Just a minor clarification on:

Well, they don't vote, so it is no wonder the politicians ignore this issue.

It is more accurate to say: Well, republicans close down polling places in poor areas, reduce early voting, put up barriers like ID for people who don't drive, and generally purge voter rolls in a variety of ways so fewer poor folks vote, there by allowing the politicians to be unaccountable to the working class and working poor in general.

We have been over this study, an article I submitted about it last year was discussed at length and the general conclusion was the study really showed that generally it was safe, but if they generated enough end points, you could get some statistically significant effects.

1. That is known as p-hacking and is recognized as not a best practice.

2. The effects that did appear, were not dose dependent so likely the result of p-hacking.

I think in a few of their end points, the exposure was shown to be protective, that is how you know the p-hacking basically identified some randomness, but the cohort was so small, it had statistical significance.

I think you have a mistyped statement in your OP and this other commentor was discussing it without realizing it was probably just a mistyped statement.

You wrote unions take money from the middle class, but they clearly do not, they build the middle class.

I assumed you meant, unions take money from the capitalist class or factory owners, etc.

This is actually what most scientists who study the issue suggest. The boom idea in the open ocean has been tried and found seriously lacking for almost 30 years at this point.

Prevention or collection near shore is much more cost effective with a lot fewer of the negative impacts on sea life. The mid ocean gyres will dissipate on their own if the source of more plastics is reduced or eliminated.

This revived idea has been criticized since the kid first proposed it 5 years ago and he does not seemed to have learned anything and is much more concerned with promoting himself than actually having a real impact on the problem.

http://www.deepseanews.com/201...
http://www.deepseanews.com/201...
http://www.deepseanews.com/201...

And actual research on where the best place to make an impact is:

http://iopscience.iop.org/arti...

Also, aside from the fact you failed to notice it was a different paper linked to above, capedgirardeau had a totally different headline and summary than what /. posted. One much more skeptical.

Further, I know for a fact this capedgirardeau person submitted it and hoped it was accepted, precisely because he thought the study to be bullsh*t and hoped the /. community, with many more scientifically literate folks than himself, would thoughtfully and thoroughly tear it apart so when we all hear it cited in the future, we can intelligently say why it is BS.

He did not have the chops to recognize the p-hacking, nor the non-real world exposure levels used in the study.

I totally agree. Where I live in Switzerland, there are no shoulders and bikes ride in the road and are not allowed on sidewalks.

This seems like a category error to me.

"Hey, cars have wheels, bikes have wheels, therefore bikes and cars should use the same space"

Instead the categorization in my mind could be:

"Hey, pedestrians and bikes are almost the same mass, almost the same size, and much closer in speed, maybe they should share infrastructure instead."

Unintended collision of bikes and pedestrians are much much less likely to result in death than of bikes and cars (and trucks).

If the problem is that sidewalk infrastructure is not good for bikes, fix the infrastructure, it will benefit people in wheelchairs, ECVs and people pushing strollers.