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Comment why do we care (Score 1) 708

obviously, because global warming may lead to something very bad and very $$; if it doesn't lead to these things, not a lot of people will care.
How do we know global warming might lead to something bad , at least in a quantitative sense ?
All (all) of our detailed knowledge is from computer programs (climate models) which simulate changes in the future

However, It is an observed fact (fyfe) that over the last ten years, the surface temp of the earth has not increased as much as predicted by models; the models fail.
The models also can't reconstruct the last few thousand years (Liu), where we Know what happened.

This anomaly is the main current argument of denialists (those who think global warming is not occurring, or is not manmade, or is not important) and cause for concern among climate scientists.

Several attempts have been made to find the missing heat without great acceptance, eg Cowtan (who are not, afaik, climatologists) say that the missing heat is in the Arctic, which is not well measured by instruments.
It appears that Chen and Tung have found the answer: the earth is warming, but the heat is going into the ocean instead of the atmosphere.

SO: the models are clearly not accurate even on a 10year time scale.
so why should we take seriously alarmist views about the future ?
I guess it is probability: if there is even a X% chance that something really bad could happen, is it worth spending ~ 0.5% of global GDP (~ 850 billion dollars a year) to prevent this possible catastrophre ?

Me personally, my house is about 5 miles and 200 feet up from the Atlantic Ocean, so global warming is good for me: I get beachfront property......

Fyfe
http://hypergeometric.wordpres...

liu
http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

cowtan
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

chen and tung
http://www.washington.edu/news...

Comment Re: There's more to EU transport than cheapness (Score 2) 341

No. Standard insurance does not cover commercial drivers. They'd have to get a different kind of insurance. AFAIK if someone with standard insurance caused an accident, the insurance would pay the victims and then demand its money back from the insured person.

Uber would certainly need to verify that its drivers are covered appropriately.

Comment Re: There's more to EU transport than cheapness (Score 1) 341

1, 2, 3. Insurance, inspections and drivers licenses are strictly controlled in Germany and violations are rare. Furthermore, I'd expect Uber to demand copies of the relevant documents.
1. Uber seems to provide additional insurance to its customers.
2. I think the standards for roadworthy cars are high enough in Germany. If someone wants even higher standards, he can simply not choose to use Uber.
3. With current navigational systems, local geographic knowledge is not very important anymore.
6. The app provides users with knowledge of the drivers behavior towards his customers. That's good enough for me. Giving former criminals an option to earn a living legally seems like a good thing.

I assume that customers of Uber are aware of the compromises they're taking. The rating system in addition to the legal requirements for normal drivers should ensure a high enough safety and quality of service. People who are not content with that can make use of other, more tightly controlled services.

Comment Re: There's more to EU transport than cheapness (Score 1) 341

1. In Germany, insurance that covers passengers is mandatory for anyone driving a car.
2. All cars have pass inspection every two years.
3. The tests to get a drivers license are quite stringent and you have to take driving lessons at a licensed school.
4. A drivers license will be revoked quickly if you rack up penalty points.
5. The Uber app should be able to warn users if the driver takes a longer route than necessary.
6. AFAIK, the Uber app provides ratings for drivers and customers and both drivers and customers can be rejected beforehand by the other party.

Comment Re:Yes. Defenitely. (Score 1) 190

The German supreme court ruled that any election mechanism must provide accountability in a form that is verifiable without special knowledge. The voting machines in use did not provide this feature. Other implementations combine electronic voting with a paper trail and would be acceptable. In fact we've been using paper ballots in combination with a barcode scanner to count complex elections. We can't verify the software (which is a glorified Excel sheet that allows for manual corrections anyway), but we can look over each others shoulders and we do still have a paper trail that can be verified.

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