If you are wondering about the impact of carbon dioxide on say, forests, this type of question is easy to research with a quick Google search. In 30 seconds, I found this NSF study by Harvard researchers, for example, not exactly normally a hotbed of pro-GHG folks.

It's actually quite well-established that increased carbon dioxide levels are very good for plant growth. As it turns out, it also enables them to grow while needing less water, for example.

Ballmer's grandstanding. I'm pretty sure he understands the numbers in Amazon's 10-K filings.

Amazon made $745 million in income from $74 billion in sales last year, for a net income of $274 million.

That even seems understated, because they're obviously spending way more to expand their capacity than they need for just supporting their current operations. Last year, they have a net cash flow of $5.5 billion from operations, then spent $ 3.4 billion on purchases of property, equipment and software. Even after spending that much geared towards growth, that still leaves $2 billion in free cash flow to spend.

Let me put it another way, Amazon's net worth (assets minus liabilities) has gone from $17 Billion in 2010, to $23 Billion, then $27 Billion, now $33 Billion end of 2013. You don't do that without being profitable each year along the way, regardless of what they decide to do with the profit, which is clearly currently to reinvest the cash in order to expand quickly and grab as much market share as they can.

Ballmer's just jealous that no matter what Microsoft does or who they purchase, they can't convert their windows/office cash cows into a worthy reinvestment, because they're essentially out of new ideas, having mostly missed the ground floor of the Internet revolutions. So Microsoft's best bet is to act like a mature company and pay dividends so their stockholders can use that money to invest in something like Amazon.

Nice try, but feeding people (or even draft animals) calories to perform manual labor produces more GHG than using more efficient methods like coal power plants. :)

Not that there's anything wrong with more GHG production, but broken window fallacy and all that as well...

Because you're assuming the conclusion.

Have you considered the possibility that increased carbon dioxide emissions are good for the environment, because it encourages more plant growth? That it's good for people, because it enables them to live a better lifestyle? Even the possibility that a few fractions of a degree of warming would be a net benefit? I'm not suggesting you accept those positions based on a /. post, but have you actually looked into it yourself, maybe talked to an economist or a agricultural biologist about the tradeoffs? From your post, it seems your assumption is that both sides agree on what would be "better", but they don't.

The "leaders" who supposedly agree that carbon dioxide emissions are bad show by their actions that they really don't think so. If you look at what the global warming/climate change/climate disruption/whatever environmentalists actually advocate for and do personally, it's obvious that their goals have more to do with the means of controlling emissions more than the actual emissions themselves.

Why would anyone who disagrees with them take the position that they should empower that crowd to control their lives, when they don't even agree reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a good goal, let alone agree with the proposed means for reaching the goal?

You should have started at the top of the thread.

The FDA ordered Zmapp to stop testing back in July and ordered TMK-Ebola research suspended in January.

These were private companies trying to create treatments and vaccines who were literally stopped by the government.

As the government was actively preventing Ebola treatments, before having them "do this vital task", perhaps we should look at their record on the issue?

You apparently didn't read the whole article:
"On Tuesday, Health and Human Services (HHS) had to outsource efforts at an Ebola vaccine to the Baltimore-based Profectus BioSciences Inc. The company will receive $8.6 million to research and test their vaccine, a fraction of NIH funding that went to the above projects."

NIH is part of HHS. It is "the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research".

Are you attempting to disagree with me, or agree with me? It's not very clear...

What is your statement about the CDC in reference to? I don't see anyone here suggesting the CDC is the NIH. Was this meant sarcastically, like, "Well the NIH is no CDC", to imply that despite how screwed up the NIH is, at least they aren't as screwed up as the CDC has demonstrated itself to be recently?

The NIH is the government agency responsible for funding an Ebola vaccine research project (which they've recently assigned a budget of $9 million), which is why wasting $39 Million on other things instead of Ebola in the recent past is relevant.

In terms of the DOD, yeah, I agree that they waste tons (literally) of money, along with pretty much every other government agency, but unless you're trying to make that general point, the relevance to this discussion escapes me... The NIH obviously has the money for funding researching related to Ebola, they just chose not to spend it on that until very recently, previously having "higher priorities", like discovering why fat women go on fewer dates than skinnier women. I mean, hey, these are apparently deep mysteries to everyone in the government which require serious academics to delve into...

Pretty sure if you have the money to spend $39 million on researching why obese girls have a tough time getting dates, developing origami condoms, etc... the problem with not starting a $9 million research effort earlier isn't related to overall funding levels so much as to incompetent administration and politics driven priorities.

Let's test this by trying them all. Can you resist clicking the below to see what it is?

You'll never BELIEVE what your doctors don't want you to know about this One Weird Trick which will cause your Head To Explode because you'll be SHOCKED at what happens next when this woman's breast does WHAT to a hitchhiking killer?

Why do we have no good Ebola treatments already right now? Regulations. The FDA ordered Zmapp to stop testing back in July and ordered TMK-Ebola research suspended in January.

How much sense does it make to send a bunch of troops to Africa to build isolation camps (yeah, yeah,call them hospitals) for them? Zero. I mean, to your point, it's not like we couldn't save money by just paying local contractors to put up some buildings. Why do we want the military in the African construction business? Is it because that's the only tool available and the only semi-useful thing they could think of for them to do? Ideally, we wouldn't send anyone near other people with Ebola. It's called quarantine...

Why should I (and others) trust your price determination about various people's value and wages over the preferences of billions of people as expressed in the prices actually paid?

It's all well and good for you to think you know more than everyone else combined about what people's efforts and contributions should cost, but you'll perhaps understand my skepticism of that when you provide no empirical basis for your valuations other than it happens to be your personal opinion.

Is it possible that the markets for CEO/lawyer/engineer/scientist do a better job of pricing those occupations than you would? I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union (and others) have rediscovered the hard way that you can't just get rid of markets and prices for things and believe that some elite knows how to set all the relative needs and values.

Our current system, although distorted via government regulations, import/export restrictions and licensing, is still the product of literally thousands of years of continuous development and trials in the real world. It effectively results from billions of people's individual choices and the preferences they express through those choices about what to buy and who to buy it from (including labor).

Perhaps you could consider an economics class from someone who isn't a Marxist?

The Internet has already descended into Anarchy.

That's why we like it. The rules are made by the people who own/run/create/manage it, by mutual agreement, not enforced from the top down. If people don't agree, they go their separate ways, because you can't be forced to allow someone on your network if they violate your network's rules.

The Internet is fine. We like it how it is. No need for more government regulation to ruin it on behalf of those with influence with government officials/politicians/bureaucrats.

a real mess that he inherited from the Bush administration

And someday (perhaps after he's out of office?), Obama will start being held responsible for his own actions by those who supported him. It's what, only been almost 6 years now? That's longer than many presidents serve in office. Obama's off to a really fast start, isn't he?

Did Obama end us being at war in Iraq? Apparently not...

Giving up and removing U.S. forces isn't the same thing as ending a war. The other guys were still in the neighborhood waiting for our announced removal.

Who looks really stupid now? The Iraqis who trusted the U.S. after we took down Saddam's government. They have a pretty good gripe about our government making promises to them and then not supporting them.

We ended the war against Germany and Japan in such a way that it didn't start back up again a few years later. That took time and leaving troops behind to maintain security and help rebuild the countries in a self-sustainable way so they're good friends of ours now and positive influences on the rest of the world.

Iraq? Not so much...

Are you talking about the War in Iraq, which Obama boasted continuously about ending, despite loud criticism at the time that he was creating the conditions for what's going on right now with ISIS?

I wouldn't be boasting about that anymore, his related words are now one of those things his opponents publish on Twitter so as to illustrate how incompetent he is.