But that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "climate change". Indeed, the whole thesis is complete tripe given the steady decrease in global poverty and world hunger over the last 25 years. I needn't bother saying there's been no statistically significant warming for 18 years either, need I?

I would define life as a "unit of selection". But that would imply certain minerals are also units of selection. I mean minerals evolve don't they, from basic refractories (about 60 varieties) that appear when stars explode to the more complex varieties that evolve through geological processes on planets like ours. I suppose in a way this is an example of the "tyranny of the discontinuous mind"; where for convenience and because our brains are effectively machines for classifying things, we see joins where there really aren't any.

This is an excellent point. Of course replicators existed on Earth before cells had DNA. According to Nick Lane DNA would have been rather late to the party and is more a useful technological advance that gives cells a more independent existence than they would otherwise have.

And the US is building gas terminals to export their glut overseas. Europe hasn't even started with shale yet either, for political reasons. There's absolutely no excuse, If it does happen it will be entirely down to retarded policies of the European Union, which committed to "decarbonisation" at massive cost, whilst at the same time cosying up to the Mafia regime in Moscow for its energy supplies.

$710 trillion. Now unwind all of those trades and tell me how much it actually is. Also stop watching Prison Planet.

They aren't straw men.

I totally destroyed your reply didn't I.

It used to be about equality of opportunity. But now we have equality of opportunity it has morphed into equality of outcome. This is a very different thing indeed.

"social justice" is based on the extremely faulty assertion that everybody is the same and that absolutely every trait or preference you may have is culturally constructed. Once you take on board the basic concept that men and women are different and that on average their college major and career preferences reflect this difference, it's not hard to understand why there's less "diversity" in technology businesses.

Straw Man indeed.

According to current social justice theory being a white male, especially a heterosexual white male, is a privilege you need to be ashamed of.

It's more likely they were looking to get their money back in any case, but now they've got a possible legal angle to invalidate the contracts. I wonder what the smallprint says.

People don't care about "professional dignity", they care about feeding their children and paying their mortgages.

Probably these guys didn't get into this industry just to waste money

People go into business to make money. If they can do it providing a bullshit product that's fucking useless to government for huge skips full of cash, they will.

What do they care? They're getting tax payers money to design it, tax payers money to build it and they'll get tax payers money to run and maintain it. They'll even get a subsidy for the pathetic amounts of electricity they do finally manage to generate. Funded by bill payers (also tax payers). The whole project is a massive waste of money. But we should not be surprised. The first thing the Scottish Executive did when it was created, was spend £500,000,000 building itself some offices.

No, they want something called equality of outcome. That is to say, I should not be discriminated against because I'm a complete fucking retard and I've just been denied the job Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. Unless I'm a white male, in which case discriminate away.

The climate is not something that you can wait for particle physics style 5-sigma certainty on

Yes, yes it is. The most relevant observation so far is that there's been no statistically significant warming for the past 18 years. The reason it's the only observation you should concern yourself with is because the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere has continued to climb. This does tend to falsify the hypothesis that CO2 is a significant driver of climate.

There's a considerable opportunity cost to spending trillions of dollars on a problem that you have no control over anyway (natural variation).