Probably true but like you said, there is already a huge power industry that uses offshore infrastructure ubiquitously. The 12B pounds probably takes at least some of those costs into consideration.

I'd even go so far as to say entirely fictional. Don't forget that even the slightest damage to the extremely delicate bones, blood vessels and nerve bundles that make up our senses would make them first thing to rot away. Oh, and then there's the laws of thermodynamics.

I for one am willing to put that all aside for a fun story. But the thing is, its easy to fantasize how you'd survive. I guess a main draw of zombie stories is its easy for anyone to picture themselves a hero.

Right, because when their average temperature suddenly jumps up to 25C, those northern frozen wastelands will instantly become a tropical paradise/breadbasket of the earth. Nevermind that since nothing has grown taller than a foot in 100s (1000s?) of thousands of years there are no nutrients in the soil and its much more likely to turn into a desert (much like rainforests do after deforestation). The effort to turn our newly thawed tundra into the fertile paradise all you "AGW aint so bad" crowd like to spout all the time could well be greater than eliminating all CO2 emissions within 5 years.

Look around yourself! This failed system has harnessed quantum mechanics to preserve your apathy in a massive disaster proof building somewhere on the micron scale yet makes it available for most of society to see in an instant! We've come so far and may well be on the verge of taking the next great leap in understanding the universe (or finding out if the universe even allows that leap to be taken) and you just want to throw it all away because there are a bunch of jerks mixed in.

Nice nickname btw. There is a hell of a lot more opportunity today than after your societal collapse when you're spending all your time scrounging for roots to eat.

I wonder about that. If you believe (for lack of a better word) in evolution then you'd think that a trait shared by the overwhelming majority of a species serves some roll in increasing their survival in a given environment. Something like 90% of humans believe in a god so following that logic, it seems religion served some evolutionary advantage.

Or maybe the religious humanoids just happened to band together first to burn all the heretics.

Why? Its already at the point of use. Retail isn't the $0.11/kwh everyone pays, that includes distribution (my generation rate is more like $0.05/kwh). Take out distribution and electrons are electrons.

Whoa cowboy. With net metering we have an additional source of resources for the monopoly that controls electricity in a given region. And its generated at the point of use, reducing distribution cost. If they're too stupid to figure out how to use new technology and load balance, they should be obligated to figure it out or rescind their monopoly.

"Its well known" that you make shit up. There are many different scenarios and some are not conducive to solar. However in my state (high coal usage), my rooftop solar panels are currently cheaper today than coal generated electricity. They'll generate back the power that it took to make them within a year or two and over 20 years I'm looking at an 8-10% ROI. How is eliminating coal power to a house for less money not cost effective?

I'm with you that insulation and LEDs are the way to go but even I think 10x is optimistic (back to: you're making shit up). I also agree contraception should be ubiquitous and lower population is an excellent way to fix most of the problems in the world today, but start in the US. A lower class american consumes orders of magnitude more resources than most Africans, Indians, and rural Chinese.

I have yet to see an example of "the XXXXX industry" acting in the interests of anyone but themselves. Benefits to outside parties are pretty much always coincidence.

Do you mean states that provide the highest percentage of a country's food and send more money to the federal government than they receive? Or states that run a deficit...which is about half of them, red and blue alike?

It was a good thing...until 2-3 entities gained control of 80-90% of the gates to it. Its a really good thing that said entities finally have to answer to someone.

Not sure whats going on here....do you happen to have two heads?

You mean like how you're ignoring the First amendment? Assuming this actually is Fedex taking a political stance on your worst nightmare and not just risk aversion, where in the second amendment does if force private businesses to ship equipment designed for firearms manufacture?

In a related story, rest easy with that 45 under your pillow because you've won the war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

Now can we focus on real problems?

Is part of the whole "X was bad then good then bad" attributable to not understanding percentages? Say food X increases your diabetes risk by 20%. If your risk was 5% to begin with, your new risk is only 6%, with the increase essentially in the noise or the rest of your life. Then it gets picked up by the news with the headline "food X causes diabetes", which ignores the rates entirely and makes it into public common knowledge. Add to that, research usually pumps mice full of far greater quantities of food X than humans are capable of ingesting.

If we saw the research ourselves would the majority of "the scientists don't know what they're doing" myths be put to rest?

Its almost seems like problems arise no matter which type of extremist you are. If only there were some other way....

Which is surprising considering that one of the main reasons reality tv is so pervasive is that its so cheap to make. I expect the tv execs are only in it for the 100 down to 40 competition with all the associated teams and challenge bullshit. No way are they going to front the money to actually build a spacecraft.

Yeah but you do it all the time anyway (see any similar story on /.). Plenty of prominent scientists are not shouting 10m sea level rise etc but they are not the boss of "the MEDIA" who make their own decisions on what to report based on how fired up it will make people.

Indeed. You just flat out state it as "truth". I think most of us are in agreement that humans are releasing a lot of CO2 and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. You all just say its not a problem because...well I'm not really sure anyone has really finished that sentence without invoking junk science.

Wow that seems like a lot. Speaking of numbers, 4 of the US Fortune 10 are oil companies. That doesn't count the state owned oil companies. Theres $trillions in assets buried in the ground still that they "own". Who has more skin in the game? Those warning of unintened consequenses of the status quo or those who currently have all the power and stand to have $trillions of assets rendered worthless.

For all your bitching about the economy I'm sure you've calculated exactly how much of your personal tax dollars are being "wasted" on "climate change nonsense". Even if it was $200B over the past 10 years, most of the DOE loans have been repaid. Its the $1.5T we've spent in the middle east thats causing the problem. When will we get repaid for that?

Also, nice work throwing in that "bankers" comment at the end. I don't see how all the job growth in renewables (which is not subject to the whims of saudi arabia like north dakota currently is) means we are giving our money to the UN. WTF man? You want to play that way, you know where ISIS gets its money? Oil.

They are available today. My power company (XCEL, mainly coal plants) is lobbying against them.

But you're right, if things get real bad the earth can recover to our present mild climate conducive to a stable advanced society. It will only take a few thousand years which I'm sure we all have the patience for.

Sidenote: I used to worry that humanity is blowing our chance to get to the stars which may be just a couple physics revelations away (or not). We are wasting this ideal temperate, global disaster free planet by bickering about oil. But the longer this drags on the more I think humanity just isn't good enough to take any more giant leaps. We peaked in high school.