First, come back when you know the difference between herbicide and pesticide.

Secondly, this isn't 1815, it's 2015. In America, we don't clear a 100 acre farm by picking weeds by hand. Maybe at one organic granola farm in the People's Republic of California, but not in the bread basket midwest, or here in Texas.

> So tell my why addressing CO2 emissions is a bad idea (not that you explicitly stated as much in your comments)

Indeed, I've said the opposite, right here in this thread. In the thread last week I said it over and over and over, while the alarmists in the thread just couldn't hear that. To them, it has to be either believe everything you hear and panic, or complete denial. No room for thought, for considering the veracity of the claims, or considering past claims the source has made. Odd.

There are, however, a lot of ways of "addressing the problem" that are REALLY bad ideas. I don't know if you are clear that there is a lot of hype an gross exaggeration, along with some reason for concern. If that's not a point we can readily agree on, I'll refer you to post also in this thread:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

I think that post pretty well establishes that there are definitely plenty of people making wacko claims who have "respectable" titles - that there's plenty of extreme alarmist BS mixed in with more reasonable analysis.

We spent around $100 million per year to reduce drunk driving, and that saved 10,000 lives per year. So by that example, when spending wisely, saving lives costs about $10,000 per life. In other words, if you spend $1 million on the right things, you can expect to save 1,000 people. Maybe you spend it on stop-smoking initiatives, CPR training, driver training, whatever is shown to work best.

Based on the mix of science and alarmism, we're spending up to* $360 billion dollars per year, several thousand dollars per family in the US. I say "up to" because it's from source that will tend to count high. Let's guesstimate that source quadrupled the real amount, and the real cost that we should be using is only around $100 billion. We know that a $100 million drunk-driving campaign saved 10,000 people, so $100 BILLION spent wisely could save about 10,000,000 people. Ten million lives saved. Per year. That's the opportunity cost of devoting those resources to climate change related initiatives rather than health initiatives, or cancer research, or wherever they would make the most difference. That's why I think we should be very careful not to allocate huge amounts of resources based on alarmist, political, and clearly biased studies - because by doing so we're choosing to NOT use those resources on things proven to save many lives. To put it very bluntly, people are dying as a result of poor decisions made by politicians, based on exploiting and manipulating the emotions of their constituents.

What if I'm wrong, and not just a little bit wrong, but wrong by an order of magnitude. If I'm really, really wrong, only 1 million people would be saved each year by using these resources more wisely. When you're talking about major US government initiatives, hundreds of billions of dollars, the consequences are enormous. Putting $100,000,000,000 toward the wrong program means a lot of people die needlessly, because that $100,000,000,000 spent wisely could save a lot of people.

> What "leading climate researchers" said this?

Here are a few examples. You can of course easily find more. Just Google for "global warming" and set it to show results from whatever time you desire. I wanted to see predictions for 2000-2015, so I Google "global warming" for resources published in 1995 or earlier.

  Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"

United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."

    Cristina Tirado (University of California) again made the claim of 50 million climate refugees, changing it to "by 2020" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by a journalist how the greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said.

UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."

Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
        "The entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).

United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000

We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.

I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work.

> Rising CO2 levels and climate change are politically controversial only because the fossil carbon industry hired a bunch of PR firms to sow public doubt. Who needs science, when industry PR is gospel?

Indeed, who needs this "science" from NASA, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, and the UN, when Comedy Central is gospel?

Here are a few names for you. Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"

United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."

  Cristina Tirado (University of California) again made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. ÃoeThe West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under waterà , Hansen said.

UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."

Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
    "The entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).

United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000

We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.

I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?

Oh, some of them have updated it. Not long ago the Obama administration was circulating a piece with just such predictions, after having done a SEARCH AND REPLACE update to change "2010" to "2050". I kid you not.

There is some sound research out there, but it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff because there's a lot more propaganda than there is solid science.

Try to take a breath and have a little intellectual honesty. As you know, in these institutions updated there materials in the 1970s to early 1980s, from "OMG panic man-made ice age" to "OMG panic global warming" WITHOUT passing through any period of
"gee, maybe we were wrong, maybe there's nothing to panic about". It's ALWAYS panic about something. If you're at all honest with yourself, you'll recognize that going from one extreme theory to the other without passing through the middle shows many people have a need to be alarmist - it doesn't matter about what, they just need to be alarmist.

      Experience indicates that sky is not in fact falling.

>. A lot of this really just boils down to 60s ideas of environmentalism and reducing pollution. It's just that the modern spin ads an extra level of extreme hysterics to the situation that are likely to alienate people and trigger skepticism. ...
>. Someone thinks they need to generate a sense of urgency by any means necessary.

Exactly. That strategy DOES get some people hyped up, but it also makes a lot of tune you out. They then miss the message that's actually potentially accurate. The other day I posted a bunch of examples of leading climate researchers from Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Yale making statements like "by 2010, New York City will be underwater". Well, 2010 has come and gone and NYC is still there. With so much of that crap out there, it gets old hearing about it.

Somewhere, there is probably a reliable source for objective information. Since Stanford, Berkeley and Yale are provably spreading hyperbole (in the extreme), I don't know where to look for trustworthy information.

That was amusing, thanks.

Come back when you know the difference between pesticide and herbicide.

So in other words, you complete faith in the scientists working for Phillip Morris, and the scientists working for Monsanto, and Exxon? I have something you might be interested in. It's a toll bridge, scientifically proven to make money for it's owner. Care to buy I

Oh, you think the scientists working for Monsanto are human, and therefore biased, but the guys working for Climate.org are superhuman, with no bias? I have this nice tower available in Paris you might like too.

Spraying 100 acres box crop with pesticide is expensive. So Farmer Joe hasba choice:

Buy brand X seed and $10,000 of pesticide.
Buy brand M seed and pocket the $10,000.

Which will he do? Now you know why companies like Monsanto produce varieties that need far LESS pesticide, not more.

>. Politicians push fear, and then lord their position and power over the people who they nominally serve.

Which one should keep in mind when looking at science. Scientists being paid by a grant from Phillip Morris (tobacco) or All Gore tend to publish conclusions that are likely to get the grant renewed. A lot of people I work with are top experts
in their field, whose jobs are dependant on a federal grant getting renewed. Guess how many of them published information that makes the grantor unhappy last year. Hint - it's a round number.

The 2007 action put some limits on local (but not state) franchising practices. It did NOT eliminate them. In fact, most of the US population still lives in areas with restricted franchises. The FCC said that local franchising authorities could not be "unreasonable" in their demands. More info:

https://www.wilmerhale.com/pag...

You have a point there. On the other hand, generally one of the best deterrents to crime is a loud alarm siren. Crooks don't like to attract attention. If your solution to making it "more secure" means they can get in silently, rather than having to set off an explosion, many bad guys will very much appreciate your improvement.

I don't understand why everybody is guessing. This doesn't have anything to do with advertising or any of that. The FCC by law is required to count which rural areas have internet access that is unable for:

High quality voice
Data
Images
Video

Those are the four elements specified by Congress. With this change, the ability to watch Netflix at 1080p with a 5Mbps connection will no longer qualify. So the FCC will now report that 19% of people don't have internet that is usable for the four items listed above.

What Congress and the ISPs will do with that information is unknown. One thing we know is that ISPs won't get "credit" for rolling out internet access on their legacy coax networks. Instead, they'd have to spend several thousand dollars per mile on upgrades before it's recognized as high speed, so in suburban areas new upgrades should support 25Mbps, but in rural areas they'll likely not happen at all. Why would an ISP spend $15,000 to run fiber or new coax to one farmer, then another $12,000 to get to the next farm? They won't, unless someone else is forced to pay for it.

It is possible that lawmakers will decide they want to upgrade rural areas from 5Mbps to "broadband", in which case we'll all pay the $15,000 cost to upgrade farmer Bob from 5Mbps to 25Mbps.

>. service calls are expensive. Perhaps a company has a 4 hour response time -

Service calls are expensive BECAUSE it's an emergency. If you have four spares, plus the two parity drives, you're still six drives away from a problem. With a few spares, you can easily replace one by sending it UPS ground, rather than having a tech run out there immediately.