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Comment LOL; What a fucking bozo you are (Score 1) 268

People like you LOVE to point fingers at America as being the main one here causing this.
1) back in 1992 when we found out about this, Europe's yearly total emissions were actually MORE than America's and had been for a LONG TIME. Europe's gas tax is what brought down Europe's emissions, not the poltics.
2) During the time of W, America did NOT cut back, however, for the last 6 years, we have cut back because of 3 reasons:
a) cheap nat gas here, combined with cheap wind. Both of these are much cheaper to do than coal.
b) W delayed regulations on mercury until 2017. Now it is taking effect and many coal plants have shut down, with more to come.
c) O's regulations are taking hold and is preventing future coal plants, as well as some nat gas plants, and leading towards more AE, along with nukes.
3) America's emission are today BELOW 15%, and dropping. China's emission are estimated at around 33% of global emissions, rising, and that is without data from OCO2.
4) OCO2's emissions PROVE that China's emissions are much higher than anybody elses.
5) Not only is China's yearly emissions double of America's, but as of THIS YEAR, their TOTALED emission from 1850, is greater than America's.
6) And in terms of total emission for the last millennium, China's is greaters than Europes, but both are MUCH MUCH greater's than all of the America's COMBINED.

Yet, idiots like you will focus on 1 nation, rather than focusing on the nation that accounts for more than 40% (OCO2's date is going to prove that China has lied about their real emissions), or the fact that Europe's total emissions is much much higher than America.

Comment Not so sure (Score 1) 236

It's very trendy to say "When it comes to risk assessment, there's one type that humans are notoriously bad at: the very low-frequency but high-consequence risks and rewards" but I'm not so sure that's true?

These kind of talks seemingly always look at risk/reward calculations as symmetric, which they very abundantly aren't.

The fact is that people are extraordinarily conservative when it comes to the rare-risk, high-cost cases, but rather daring when it comes to rare-but-high-reward cases because, well, we're alive and we'd rather stay that way. A 0.000001% chance that you and everyone dies *should* be regarded far more seriously than a similar chance you win a big pile of cash because one of those situations you survive either way.

Nota Bene: I don't play the lottery; well, I did play it ONCE, recognizing that my odds of winning were the highest possible with that one play, and only decrease from there.

Comment Re:When will their price be on par with ICE cars? (Score 1) 107

Even in California where we're paying $0.15 - $0.20 per kWh of electricity, electric vehicles save so much gas that they almost pay for themselves.

Only because you're getting ass-raped on gasoline as well. When I topped off the gas tank here in Vegas before driving down to LA last weekend to visit my nieces, I paid $3.04. I pulled over in Baker for a snack. The gas station next to the jerky place wanted somewhere around $4.50! Granted, Baker's never been the cheapest, but gas in Barstow was still around $3.70. I think it was $4.something around LA, and by the time I was running on fumes Sunday morning (driving down to San Diego to make everything worse), I ended up paying right at $4 per gallon ($3.999, if you want to be pedantic) for a full tank in Carlsbad.

Gasoline is sent to Las Vegas from California by pipeline, so how is it we're paying considerably less for the same fuel after it's been pumped through ~300 miles of pipe?

Comment Re:Android. The "PC" of mobile devices (Score 1) 92

You are generally safe with Nexus devices, since you have the best chance of upgrading to the latest OS.

A device with an unlocked bootloader is also more likely to be more future-proof. I have a newer version of KitKat running on my Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (4.4.4) than on my considerably newer Moto X (4.4). The tablet's running Cyanogenmod...have no idea if Samsung ever got around to spinning a KitKat build for it, and don't particularly care at this point as the only thing that doesn't work under Cyanogenmod is the IR blaster. My phone, OTOH? Motorola has pushed newer versions (maybe even Lollipop now), but the bootloader is locked and you can't even root newer firmware versions (rooting 4.4.4 requires an unlocked bootloader first).

That new phone that Asus introduced earlier this week sounds interesting, and there's already an unlock for it. The only downside is the ginormous, almost tablet-sized screen. The Moto X is barely larger than the iPhone 4 it replaced, but it seems hardly anybody wants to build a full-powered phone that'll still fit in your pocket anymore.

Comment Re:Ha ha ha ha..... (Score 1) 837

And to believe that "The purpose of a cigarette tax is to either impose a penalty or to pay for public treatment for the resulting negative externalities " speaks of a naivete of government in general.

The more people want/need something, the more the government recognizes that is a revenue proposition; and in the US if you can make it a "sin" tax with just a whiff of punitivity, all the better.

Comment The watch (Score 5, Informative) 74

Since a lot of your folks are too young to remember...

The watch Jobs is wearing appears to be an LED digital watch. Because LED displays drained the battery a lot quicker than LCD watches (which came later), you had to press a button to see the time. In retrospect, this is kind of a feature, because when the display was off the face was completely dark and mysterious. It was like Darth Vader's watch.

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