80%.

Yes, except of course for the 99% of humanity that can't afford to buy any shares. One can't presume that somehow they will sit idly by, while corporations ask them to go extinct.

Better yet, establish the same rate on capital gains as salaried income worldwide and tax all stock transactions at 1% per share without exception. Admittedly, it might require some ancillary laws that make it legal to burn at the stake, politicians, donors, and judges who think political kick-backs in return for tax breaks are acceptable, but perhaps a little alteration of current tax laws would do much to solve many of humanity's problems. With accelerating global warming that will make Earth uninhabitable for humans within 200 years, we don't have a lot of time to find solutions to come up with the money to address the problem, so some creativity will clearly be needed.

Why should Mitt Romney and his ilk only have to pay a 13% tax rate on his income, often for selling "good-will", while the vast majority of Americans pay 28%?

"Those invitations are akin to subpoenas, so yes they were forced to appear and answer questions."

Yes, and its about time. With global warming soon to make planet Earth uninhabitable for humans in as little as 200 years, massive amounts of money will be needed to radically change the infrastructure associated with energy production and delivery and transportation and manufacturing. Since only a tiny fraction of the world's population really has any money, humanity will be forced to get it from the tiny fraction of the world's population who do have money.

The question is will the ultra-wealthy be a willing part of the process to save Earth for humans or will it ultimately be necessary to take it from them by any means necessary? I would suggest that at the present rate of warming, there is perhaps only a 10-35 year window in which the tiny fraction of the population that has all the wealth will get decide whether they will cooperate or conditions will determine their fate, after that it will be everyone for themselves. One thing is for sure, as the crunch to survive becomes far more brutal than it is now, those with the money are going to have an even more difficult time trying to find a place to hide it or even hide themselves. Unless the ultra-wealthy are prepared to nuke entire populations, there simply won't be enough soldiers for hire to save themselves and as we all now know, the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.

In the meantime, the rest of us can try to figure out what side we will likely be on. Of course, soon if we have not already made our choice, it will be made for us. The impact of global climate change in an 8+deg C world will pretty much dictate the limited choices the humans that remain will have.

"Though why anyone thinks the world will be a better place if governments have yet more billions of dollars to waste is beyond me."

The answer is obvious: so governments can waste their money on little, average guys like me and you, instead of always wasting it on a few already incredible rich people, who get every break they desire by corrupting governance by making it fundamentally unfair.

You aren't really that stupid are you?

"Though why anyone thinks the world will be a better place if governments have yet more billions of dollars to waste is beyond me."

Of course, we shouldn't let governments have extra money to feed the poor, educate citizenry, provide health care, protect the environment, make streets safer, or let the citizenry vote to decide how to spend it, for after all, we should simply let corporations establish tax policy through an army of lawyers armed with political kickbacks so that the already ultra wealthy can get tax breaks denied to everyone else, so they can waste it instead.

At least Carly Fiorina has made it clear she's no hypocrite by throwing her hat into the ring for the presidency, of Algeria.

No point worrying too much about Saudi Arabia as its about to become progressive. With global warming continuing at its current pace, the entire Arabian subcontinent will be completely unlivable in 50-100 years. The social changes there will be massive as the unstoppable momentum of global warming will dictate it soon enough.

It is incredible how so many in the evangelical right are so susceptible to homosexuality.

Well, it is now that they changed it.

Me? I'm just glad to hear that Carly Fiorina has decided to run for the presidency of Algeria so as not to appear as a hypocrite.

From a strictly theoretical perspective the answer would be yes. However, for an experimental and physical indication of reality of how carbon dioxide acts to produce its effects is now so thoroughly understood that it would be foolish to deny the easily computable results of any model that seriously attempts to predict system behaviors and defy the highly probable and extremely harmful outcomes of failing to understand the basics of atmospheric physics or its immediate biological consequences.

Eradicating plagues is hardly artificial or unnatural. One only has to look to the evolution of the ascomycetous genus Pencillum and use of this fact by Homo sapiens to see that. At least you are free to argue in the face of mathematical absurdity of assuming a false premise and being able to conclude both truth and falsity, without knowledge of either. Clearly, you need another premise.

is whether we can figure out a way to avoid it as we go about destroying it through lack of knowledge about biology and planetary science on the part of the average citizen.

Yet at a time, we need even more scientists, republicans are slashing funds for education at all levels from pre-K on the Mississippi Delta to graduate study at the world's most prestigious universities. However, people shouldn't look to the media to educate themselves. After all, whats the point, if you've just enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks.

Do you think if we save some of our own DNA, the robots of the future will even want us back?

Jogging to the left at times, particularly when you may be stepping of a cliff on your right, can be great for survival, assuming of course that survival is even any longer an option for any of us for long. A couple of hundred years as a species, if we are lucky?

From the perspective of a professional biologist, let us only hope we can soon find our wits rather than our glaringly obvious limits.

There has been so much to the degradation of the natural world by humanity, that there can be little doubt in anyone's mind that the relative fragile and brittle, biotic skin of life that we depend on for own own sustenance and that of our families has been greatly diminished over the age of human presence.

We like to think of passing on our genes to the next generation, perpetuating our own mortality as it were. Although this will be the closest we can ever get to immortality, the unfortunate answer to the question we must now ponder, thanks to our collective thoughtless, is whether those of our children be even able to survive in the future. Of course, we will be gone before we find out. That seems like such a hollow epitaph for humanity.

So are you saying that carbon dioxide does not absorb energy in the infrared of the spectrum in the form of vibrate causing a general warming of the atmosphere by accelerating the speed of molecular collisions as a result of Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics?

Because if you are, either you will find it impossible to explain yourself or will soon be awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for predicting something that all physicists are in complete agreement on.