When I say "corrupt" when referring to a body of government I usually mean systemically corrupt and not just the paper bag full of money under the table kind of corruption or the laundered campaign contributions or jobs for friends and family kind of corruption which corrupts individuals.

In the systemically corrupt sense the FCC itself is a corruption of a representative form of government in that it is a complete abdication of lawmaking authority by Congress and the President to a commission made up of people who have made big money in the industry they supposedly regulate and to which they undoubtedly expect to return to make big money especially when they are rewarded by the industry for the regulations they craft. So it is both systemically corrupt in that it is a corruption of lawmaking authority which should be held by Congress and the president and not delegated to an unelected commission, but it is also clearly individually corrupt with most of the commissioners deep in the pocket and beholden to the industry they regulate.

I think it is fair to say that the FCC is one of the most corrupt institutions in the US government.

Nobody thinks that this law does anything to curtail mass surveillance. They just added some language to make it appear to restrict phone call record collection, but since everyone calls the phone company and even terrorists can order pizza or call any one of a million phone numbers that are common to everyone, then restricting the number of hops to anything more than one "hop" means they can still collect every single phone record. This law is about distraction and plausible deniability for Congress people.

Bingo. A change to the law gets the courts off the hook to declare mass surveilance unconstitutional. The current laws EXPIRE SOON, so any new law is a cynical attempt to extend mass surveillance. Anyone supporting a new Patriot Act extension now should be shamed publicly as an enemy of Liberty.

The fourth amendment doesn't need to be "extended" by laws. The fourth amendment is a limitation on what laws and government action are constitutional. The current and proposed mass surveillance laws are a blatant violation of the 4th amendment and so are the actions of the Obama administration.

Yes, at this point I have no illusions that CO2 emissions will be reduced by concerted government actions. Best chance is that technology will help reduce CO2 enough to mitigate the worst potential effects.

Easily... meaning after another 50 to 100 years of large scale fossil fuel emissions? Because even for developed economies with plenty of resources it is looking like 20, 30 or even 40 years to get to 100% renewables. Even if you believe that that would be a good thing for the environment, which I think that really 100% renewables would be a bigger negative impact on the environment than keeping a large percentage of nuclear is. That still means that developing economies are going to have to also have to stay away from coal, oil and natural gas for their own economic development.

Could have just left it at "people don't understand"... The PR problem is that nuclear is economically disruptive to the fossil fuel industry so there is a lot of money at stake in spreading fear uncertainty and doubt about nuclear. The industry doesn't really fear solar or wind, because it isn't a large scale or near term threat for fossil fuel dominance. Compared with even a single new nuclear power plant which can power a large part of an entire region with consistent electricity and combined with an affordable and economically viable electric car that combination could almost completely replace fossil fuels.

Okay then... I propose a tax on solar panels which can be used to subsidize solar panels.

We can stop 80% of today's CO2 emissions (at least here in the US) in 15 to 20 years with a concerted large scale government subsidized build-out of capacity at existing nuclear power plants. That is the radical action that we need now.

Totally agree, but when people cite Germany as being well on their way to using 100% renewables they are missing the facts that Germany has increased its CO2 emissions in the last several years with its shift away from nuclear and they are increasing use of cheap dirty coal to balance the higher costs of renewables.

Renewables alone are going to be insufficient for the world's energy needs. And industrial scale renewables have their own very negative effects on habitats and the environment. Just as shifting food production to biofuels caused food shortages and food riots, there are going to be negative effects if we have to blanket large areas of the planet with solar panels and wind "farms". Just as we found that the downstream effects of hydro-electric dams are often very negative to fisheries, estuaries and sometimes to agriculture.

And I've said it once and I will say it a million times, nuclear is a far better option with far less negative consequences and with even far less risk than even renewables.

How do you emit less CO2 burning more coal? Most or all of these new coal plants are not intended to do underground sequestration as far as I can tell. And the reporting indicates that they expect to increase net coal consumption not just replace older plants. I think cleaner means fewer particulate emissions, which is good for lung diseases and quality of life, but still the plan is to burn more coal and therefore more CO2 which is bad for Global Climate Change.

Yes, that was good for them back in the 90s, but now coal usage is going up.

And all it takes is a simple search to find Germany is building new coal power plants. Which is my point. By eliminating nuclear and moving more production to coal then they are offsetting all the gains they have made in renewables when they should be keeping nuclear and reducing coal and oil instead.

If you don't believe Bloomberg News, then Try the BBC

And on Japan how can you claim that Japan lacks coal plants? Japan has 18 Coal fired power plants and according to that other article they are planning more.

That is not what I am reading about Germany. Despite the much hyped gains in renewables, those gains have been offset by the reduction in nuclear and the rise of coal use

And that is not what I am reading about in Japan either where there are "Plans by Japanese companies to spend billions of dollars on new coal-fired plants"

So, we have increases in coal in Japan and Germany. China is still using coal like gang busters to power the largest industrial economy in the world, but to their credit they are also making a big investments in nuclear, solar, hydro and wind. The US is basically shifting to more natural gas which is better than coal, but nuclear is pretty much stalled and solar and wind are growing at a fast pace relative to their relatively low percentage of the energy mix, but isn't going to make a real dent in CO2 anytime soon unless those renewable growth rates are sustainable... but those growth rates aren't sustainable because all the easier locations for solar and wind are being built out first which should result in a slowdown in the adoption curve in future years unless solar panel prices really plummet and then the economics of it really changes.

Also, I noticed in one of those articles that Japan was promoting coal for developing economies, which would put us even further into a CO2 hole and undermine progress being made elsewhere as developing economies embrace coal as the lowest cost alternative. If the highly stable and developed economies are embracing coal, the developing world is embracing coal, then the current efforts for renewables look like little more than window dressing on the fact that Global Climate change is really being considered as a fait accompli by the world's decision makers.

I take Climate change seriously. I would rather not have the world experience the worst case scenarios, but I think that if we are going to avoid that worst case scenarios, then most environmentalists need to stop opposing nuclear or we might as well just do nothing now and pray for a technological miracle sometime before it is too late. Personally I would rather put forward a viable plan now that includes government subsidies and incentives for big increases in solar and wind, big increases in nuclear and maybe natural gas for the remaining 20% of the mix. I think that moving away from oil and coal and eventually most natural gas is doable. But not if you think that solar panels and wind turbines are going to provide for all our energy needs alone, not at anywhere near these population levels they won't.