To the stars through asteroids... we need to bring them close enough from here to move manufacturing to the space. It will take quite a bit of investment, but once we get there we can go to mars and the rest of the solar system way far cheaper, and probably will bring more than enough benefits down here, both for the developed technologies to make it viable, and the things and materials that could be manufactured/acquired that way. It is just an investment, just the kind of things that make the banks live.

Of course, bringing asteroids large enough (i.e. of the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs) to be profitable close enough to earth could trouble a lot of people.

Surely there is a branch of al-quaeda there to have that kind of surveillance. When they will start to send the killer drones?

It is not focusing on how wildfires start (that may had been by people or not, by accident or intentionally) but how bigger are the consequences now. Changing rain patterns means that big areas with plenty of trees could get little water for months, it will turn to be very vulnerable to small fires (even unintentional ones, like caused by throwing a smoke or a broken bottle), and that won't be rain to give it a rest. Over the last months there had been very extensive wildfires in Australia, Spain, California and other places because that very reason.

The problem of changes is when you depend on things that requires stability, like, i.e. agriculture. Farming requires that for a lot of time (i.e. a whole year) you won't have floods, drizzles, hailstorms, droughts and so on. And if well we can cope with losing isolated crops, if that becomes widespread a lot of people will die, and in a not pleasant way exactly.

But yes, could be upsides from that changes. Eventually we will reach a new balance. Life will prevail in a way or another. And one of the most destructive species that ever existed in this planet could vanish. Maybe even that would lead to really intelligent beings in this planet at last.

Climate change is consequence of global warming. And that "warming" is not one that you would easily notice (a few tenths of degrees in the average global temperature each year), but still have effects everywhere, including (and changing) the climate. And if you want, that warming is caused in a good degree by human activity, incrementing the percent of some greenhouse gases (like CO2) in the atmosphere. And it have more consequences than just incrementing temperature, like ocean acidification.

How you make people aware of slow, hard to notice small changes in global trends? Pointing out some of the most visible consequences as they are being discovered/correlated etc. If i tell you that CO2 in atmosphere increased a 100% and you see the air around you normal, you won't worry about it. If i tell you that the average global temperature increased 1-2 C, you see local weather events, see that nothing really big changed (or worse, that in some regions were colder than in other years) and still won't care/do anything about it. So the effort is showing you that there are visible things that hits you that are consequences of those otherwise hard to see (in a short time span, in a narrow geographical sense) trends.

Even if computers manage to develop a conciousness, and that conciousness have anything in common with human ones, in particular regarding motivations (2 wishful thinking hypothesis with probably little ground behind), what will be its perception of time? Is not just a cpu cycle, our individual synapses goes far faster than our perception of time, and if well computer cycles are faster, their emulation layer toward building a neural network as complex as human one may be far less efficient.

Just violate a basic human right of most humans in the planet, including foreing governments and normal citizens, and you will have a lot less friends. And that will be your fault, your actions, not theirs or Snowden's.

Not taking into account interaction between random changes in different species. Change is random, but natural selection is not, if your random changes make you survive and breed, they may remain enough time to become evolution of your species. But if a random change in a prey (or a predator) turns into viable a random change in a predator (or viceversa) then you could get something new, same for environmental changes. Is not a butterfly effect, but is enough to not make very predictable the course of evolution.

And with that security measures, they could happily anounce and promise that they will be well behaved, stop spying and so on, and keep doing the same or even far worse things. What stops you from lying if you won't get caught anyway?

The killer app for linux has been finally released. This will be the year of the linux desktop, or at least the one when it will take off.

At least if the story looks like 1984, Brave New World, or The Hunger Games

All those terms means different things

Global warming means the observable increase in the average global temperature, that has been is objectively measured and there is no opinion or local weather that can deny it. Is in the orders of a few tenths of degrees each year, but it has been increasing.

The explanation of why it is happening goes around the increase of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and it was linked to use of fuel, industrial pollution, deforestation and so on. As is linked to human activities it is called also Anthropogenic Global Warming. That increase impacts more than just the global climate system, ocean acidification and its influence in one of the most crucial ecosystems of the planet matters a lot too. It targets the cause, but as it is a complex system involving sun, earth orbit and tilt, volcanic activities, and a lot more, is always the main target of denialists.

Climate change goes around the changes that causes that extra global temperature to the climate systems. Our civilization depends on a more or less stable and predictable climate system, as extensive agriculture is very sensible to extreme or unexpected weather.

Climate disruption seem to be another layer of dilution of the visibility of the core problem, focused only in extreme weather events. It targets the most visible consequences for our narrow vision of events in time, we can see a big storm but not a gradual over the years events, like slow desertification of big areas or reduction of some core component of the ocean food chain. And if that average temperature keeps increasing, we will have a lot more to worry about than just about weather.

Actually seems that waste from coal plants is even more radioactive than the ones from nuclear plants, and that waste goes to the environment instead of being restricted in small areas.

Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?

Morpheus: No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.

The freedom that could gives 3d printers, virtual currency, and internet is not about printing bullets or guns, but about not needing them. Is a extreme proof of concept to be able to do even that, the key part is being able to do anything.