Or two. And a job chairing a new oversight committee for the intelligence services.

Ssssh! You'll just confuse him with numbers and science!

Joking aside, I think PV has great potential in the sunnier parts of the world. Possibly not for energy intensive businesses like welding, but lighting (hugely important!), internet access, computing are easier to supply via PV. And even relatively (for a small business) projects can be financed via microfinance lenders - e.g. kiva.org. Go and check it out!

Of course, the most effective short tern effort would be to slap a 200% tax on gas in the US, and add a huge carbon levy on electricity and natural gas.

You could make it budget neutral by subsidising fuel-efficient cars, public transport, and home insulation.

Sadly, that's never going to happen.

Dude, if you call it "gas", the cost of it is ludicrously low where you live. Move somewhere where they call it "petrol" for a while, and wince at what high prices really mean.

And cold showers help you suppress those dirty, dirty thoughts!! You shouldn't care about anyone but mother earth! :)

Seriously, though, there are lots of ways of saving energy without forsaking hot showers forever. And solar hot water panels are such basic technology that I'd be very surprised if their energy footprint outweighed their benefits.

If the offsets don't do what they advertise, it isn't Al Gore's fault that they don't.

a) citation please
b) that seems unlikely, since dividends or capital gains would be more tax efficient
c) Climate change deniers wouldn't recognize logic if it spat them in the face.

It's all beneficial, but asking someone in the third world to burn less wood to cook their food while you happily burn gallons of gas to drive yourself to the mall is ever so slightly hypocritical.

I'm all for cool long term research projects, but they're expensive and the outcome is uncertain. Otherwise it wouldn't be research.

Wouldn't it be more practical to start with things that we know work and are cheap to do?
* Stop wasting electricity on AC. Long term, you want to build self-cooling houses; short term, paint roofs white.
* photovoltaics. Proven. Works.
* Traffic.
    ** Stop using 2+ tonne hunks of metal to transport one person a few miles each day
    ** If you insist on using hunks of metal, #ffs at least make them more efficient. US cars are a disgrace. In lots of ways, but fuel efficiency is most relevant here.
    ** Seriously encourage cycling. It is way more practical for most journeys than you think, and e-bikes make it accessible to practically everyone.

Now that's a remarkably asinine response from a self-proclaimed scholar of philosophy.

If you think that Ayn Rand is philosophy, and that having read Ms Rand makes you "very well read in philosophy", we can only hope for your sake that you're only 15 and you'll grow up in a few years time.

In the meantime, you seem to be using an awful lot of words that don't mean what you think they mean. "Liberal", "censoring", the aforementioned "philosophy", and "fuck". Oh, and "statist".

You may want to politely enquire with your English teacher about the possibility of borrowing a dictionary; if it's not to "statist" or "liberal" for you, your local library may have one.

Now get the hell off my lawn!

If you think 2 or 3 trees on an American-sized plot of land makes a forest? Have you ever seen a forest?

Positive in the negative sense ;)

Having better cooking facilities can improve the lot of people in poor countries in lots of other ways. More efficiency => less time spent gathering fuel. Less smoke and soot => fewer health problems. Etc. etc.

Python only forces you to indent in the way any sane person would indent anyway. That's not evil.

That's an easy process.

1. Buy a pig
2. Feed it broccoli (& other stuff)
3. Slaughter pig
4. Salt & cure bacon.