First, try not to panic.

This is a stressful time for all of us, but we will get through this.

Racist

If these guys go it alone, we will learn that the rest of the people in the teams they left behind can make good games without them. I think the main benefit of having a big name in charge is that you need a creative authority figure to keep the corporate types from messing up the end product.

It's a cliche in context -- like posting the Ben Franklin security quote and thinking you're clever or insightful.

Is that Slashdot's target audience?

Yes, but it's less annoying because you seem to be able to communicate an idea without it.

About every third article on the internet that features the loss of privacy contains the word "panopticon". And whenever the article doesn't, someone will use it in the comments, thinking they're clever. If you don't see it an annoying number of times (it's especially annoying because it's a silly exaggeration when applied to any non-fictional place or situation), then you don't read many internet articles on privacy.

If you use the word "panopticon", the message you've succeeded in communicating is "I learned a new word!". It not a very compelling message.

without always using cliches like "panopticon". We'll take you more seriously, we'll assume you can think for yourself rather than just parroting something someone else said, and we might even read the article you linked to. Thanks.

There's no such thing as evidence regarding the future. When the future becomes the present, we can measure it. Until then, we can only predict. Absolutely everyone knows this.

If the models underestimate the feedback, then, short of a holocaust (which I presume you aren't openly advocating) there's no significant action anyone could take. We could do insignificant things for the sake of "doing something", but the benefits would be tiny, even if the costs were huge.

If the models are right, for example, Germany's pioneering $110 Billion energy program will delay the expected temperature increase in the year 2100 by 37 hours.

Compared to a climate that gets disrupted a little by some warming event or some additional carbon in the atmosphere, then the strong positive feedback makes it warmer and warmer and warmer until it's too hot to live. If this had happened, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. The Earth's climate is more stable, relatively, than this.

If the feedback were mildly negative instead of strongly positive, the climate would tend toward temperatures within a range -- like the climate we have here on Earth. Disruptions would raise or lower the temperature sometimes, but temperatures would stabilize.

Where's your evidence?

I, for one, welcome our new Foxconn overlords.

Average temperatures will probably rise a very small amount. CO2 causes a small increase. The computer models presume this small amount will be multiplied several times over by strong positive feedback. But the feedback amount and direction has yet to be empirically proven.

The relative stability of the climate, despite numerous past disruptions, argues against strong positive feedback. If there were strong positive feedback, past disruptions would have caused the climate to get apocalyptically hot, like the alarmists claim the current disruption will do. Warm-climate-doomsday didn't happen then, why will it happen now?

No one can prove temperatures will rise in the future. Nothing about the future can be proven until it happens and you measure it. Proof isn't the standard for discussions about predictions from computer models.

It's not whether it's happening, it's whether it's beneficial, neutral, a small problem, or a large problem. If it's not a large problem, why should we do anything?

And even if they had not, we still couldn't do anything very significant because we're only one country out of more than 200, with less than 5% of the world's population. And the US per capita carbon emissions have been dropping while per capita carbon emissions in India and China, countries which together have about 8x our population, have been rising fast.

We could definitely have a real discussion if it weren't always "We hate oil companies. We're all going to die!!!" vs. "It's 100% phony.". But that still wouldn't lead to any significant action, because all significant actions are extremely severe, and any action that is even remotely affordable is insignificant.

So what if humans impact the environment? Environmental righteousness is not science.

Alarmism is not fact. Alarmism is not science.

Familiarity with "the greenhouse effect" does not mean you have to believe the results of climate models or the doomsday predictions of political activists.

Rich farmers and ranchers already get huge government subsidies. Why should we pay them any more at all?

If farmers need honeybees, they will pay bee keepers for them. If there's a shortage of bees, farmers will pay more. Seeking profit, bee keepers will expand their hives to produce more bees.

No government meddling and no government money is needed. Let some rich guys pay their own money to solve their own problems for once.

Meanwhile, in third-world countries, poor people still cook meals. Even isolated jungle tribes can cook a meal. I guess no one taught them it's easier to be a victim and make excuses.

Also cheap: eggs, whole chickens, flour, other basic ingredients. If you cook, you can eat lots of healthy mostly-unprocessed food for very little money. And exercise is free.