I have not. I suspect though that they will be phased in over several years for existing facilities, as is the norm for most any new regulation. And if it stops new coal plants from being constructed, so much the better - INCREASING our dependency on coal by building even more obsolete power plants is exactly the wrong thing to be doing - those resources should be spent on making new renewable or nuclear power plants that actually have a future.

Correction - stopping all energy-producing sources would be the end of civilization. Sure, if we're talking about doing this tomorrow we've got a problem - but if we got serious we could do it in a decade without trouble for a lot less than we're spending on the military, (and probably with a much better effect on geopolitical stability) - we already have plenty of alternatives. Complementary renewables wherever possible, and nuclear elsewhere. If we'd just return to reprocessing spent fuel like we did before advances in uranium mining made it economically inviable the waste would be anon-issue. Safely storing waste for a century or two is a bit of a challenge, but nothing like trying to store it for tens of millenia as is required with the current lunacy of burying fertile fuel alongside the waste so that fresh waste will continue to be produced almost indefinitely.

Well, if they're the ones creating those expenses exist then it seems only reasonable that they should be the ones to pay for them. Or are you honestly advocating on behalf of any asshole who can figure out how to make himself rich by forcing someone else to pay the costs of his business?

Actually, most deserts seem to largely be a human creation - we can watch them spreading from cities today, and most of the big ones are centered on historic population centers - the Middle East was after all once the fertile birthplace of modern civilization. Once we kill off the large, inconvenient animals trying to live around alongside us the ecosystem goes into a tailspin.

Even disregarding that, shade actually tends to be a valuable commodity in the desert - just about everything thrives better with a place to get out of the midday sun, even those species who have evolved to survive it.

We could change that - it's just a pollution tax away.

Well, the fact that CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas is well established and easily tested. And fact that humans are responsible for the increasing atmospheric CO2 levels is likewise pretty thoroughly established: levels are increasing at a rate of about 60% of human CO2 emissions, and carbon isotope ratios are shifting to more closely match those in fossil carbon reserves at a similar rate.

Meanwhile alternate sources of warming have pretty thoroughly been ruled out where the current crisis is concerned. There are several theories as to causes for global thermal fluctuations, some more firmly supported by evidence than others, but NONE of them can explain the anomalous heating of the last several decades - solar output has not increased. Nor has cosmic ray incidence, nor any other explanations. Many of those theories seem solid and greatly improve our models of historic climate shifts, they just can't explain the recent sudden surge in global temperatures, because the forcing factors they postulate haven't actually changed recently.

There's still some debate as to *how* screwed we are though. Global climate is changing, but if we stopped emitting CO2 within the next couple decades there's still a chance that the change would be short-lived and once the excess carbon has been absorbed, in a century or so, things will be back to "normal" without any further effort on our part. The problem is that the system is bistable, and once we cross the tipping point the positive feedback loops will dump the massive ecological stores of CO2 into the atmosphere, completely dwarfing our own small contributions. Just as has happened in all the previous major warm spells in the planet's history when unrelated events caused warming beyond the tipping point. Once we cross that tipping point then trying to reduce our own CO2 emissions is pointless - the only options are to simply adapt to a much warmer world, or engage in massive, risky geoengineering projects. Getting off fossil fuels would still be a good idea for reasons of pollution and geopolitics, but wouldn't amount to a fart in a hurricane where global warming is concerned.

Maybe becasue the people calling the shots are heavily invested in the military-industrial complex and/or the fossil fuel industry? Meanwhile investing in disruptive technologies is far less profitable - you always run the risk of some upstart with an even better idea stealing the market out from under you. Just becasue the threat of anthropogenic climate change is unqustionably real doesn't mean those in power won't just use it as an excuse to further consolidate power. In fact that's one of the biggest problems we're facing in actually fixing the problem - the folks we hired to deal with national-level problems are instead simply using it to jockey for political power without any real attempts to fix it.

It's not like a realistic fix to climate change is technically difficult. Possibly the simplest solution would be to simply implement a carbon tax charged to anyone selling fossil fuels, the procededs of which would be regularly redistributed equally to the population. Most people see no net change in their expenses, and everyone has a financial incentive to move away from carbon energy. (obviously we'd also need carbon tarrifs on imported goods if we don't want to just export the problem along with out remaining industry)

So who wants to bet against the powers that be choosing to increase military spending rather than spend a fraction as much actually breaking our addiction to fossil fuels? Anybody? Aww, come on, I've got all this money just burning a hole in my pocket, I'll give you good odds..

Would you prefer "measurable with current instruments"?

>the brain creates the thought, not the other way around.
I beg to differ - there's a definite feedback loop in action, changes on either front can modify the other.
Consider how long-term meditation practitioners have been shown to have anomalous brain structures apparently related to attention and compassion, and randomly selected experimental subjects who have participated in extended meditation practice begun to form similar anomalies.

We are animals, but more than any other animal on the planet we have the ability to remake ourselves. We are each of us Pavlov as well as his dogs.

But it's not "may be going kaboom" - it's "the dendrites that start growing in every battery the moment it's put into use have finally reached our intermediate warning layer. There's no actual danger until they finish growing the rest of the way between the electrodes, which could potentially take months, but we're now aware that this battery is one of the unlucky few whose dendrites are growing fast enough that they may become a danger before the battery has lost enough capacity that it needs to be replaced anyway."

I wish I could say your cynicism was undeserved, but I'm inclined to agree. There's a simple fix though - refuse to buy any electronics with tightly integrated batteries. We all know that the battery is almost certainly going to be the first thing to fail by an incredibly wide margin - therefore any attempt to tightly integrate it is a transparent attempt at planned obsolescence. If you decide the perks of a slightly sleeker non-user-servicable device is worth the trade off that's your call, but don't try to put the blame on anyone else.

Okay, but only if you include the "software" and "data" as well, which presumably has some physiological component that should be weighted far in excess of the direct physical alterations. I give you the anecdote of the African student in America who was at long last informed that women here consider strong body odor to be unpleasant rather than attractive. Overnight his bathing behavior changes dramatically in response to the minute physiological change associated with learning of a cultural difference (and much to the relief of his classmates).

Meanwhile there's plenty of people who have suffered traumatic brain trauma with no apparent change in behavior - the brain does a lot more than just regulate behavior after all. So: significant physiological changes do not imply significant behavioral changes, nor do significant behavioral changes imply significant physiological changes. Nor do the presence of environmental contaminates necessarily imply changes in either.

Neurobiology is complicated. And as such any claims of a specific relationship should be accompanied by evidence - if you can't even muster anecdotal evidence to support your claim then it rightfully deserves to be discarded as a "pet theory", even if it seems superficially obvious that a connection "should" exist.

>I'm surprised that the rejection rate isn't higher than 58%

As am I. I suspect "whether the requestor can make our lives difficult" is a significant consideration. Or contrariwise "whether a generous donation to the corporate lounge room fund was included". At the extreme end I doubt any request from Google executives would be rejected, regardless of how invalid it may be. Of course having the courts make the call isn't necessarily a guarantee against such abuses, but if we're asking someone to make judgement calls on socially relevant secrecy requests it seems like it would make sense to have it done by somebody at least titularly hired becasue of their ability to Judge potentially complicated questions of social justice.

Alternately, in a society where nothing is ever forgotten perhaps we can finally relearn to forgive on a social level, and/or simply ignore that which is not relevant. How is a 20-yo public handjob relevant to anything today?

Absolutely. However, it's an extremely complicated and poorly understood relationship, and a change in physiology does not necessarily imply a change in behavior, nor vice versa. Nor does a change in hormone levels necessarily imply either. I'm merely asking for some evidence for Livius' claims.

Livius: Human males are behaving feminized, even though females are not selecting for that trait.
Jason: As for human males "behaving feminized", I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you referring to...
Livius: I'm referring to hormone biochemistry. You've gone off topic.
Me: (paraphrased) No he hasn't. You've claimed a behavioral change - what change? Where's your evidence? Waving your hands and saying "hormones" just makes it look like you've got no actual argument.