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Comment Re:Seems he has more of a clue (Score 1) 703

True enough- IF you can prove it was a murder and not an accident.
 
Can you prove intent with global climate change? If you ignore the utterly non-scientific process of "scientific consensus", do you even have enough data left to prove the murder weapon?
 
And in the long run, does it matter? We're still left with the decision to either adapt or die; we're far too late for any mitigation attempt to work. Blame the culprit is a waste of time in this case.

Comment Re:Seems he has more of a clue (Score 1) 703

Species that are unable to adapt have been going extinct without mankind's help for 9/10ths of the planet's history. For the remaining 1/10th, we've been a major motivator of evolution, that's true- Dodos and wooly mammoths and the like. But we are also to the point with GMO research that we can be a major cause of increased adaptation- we can speed up evolution, and likely will, because beef is tasty (among many other species that are directly useful to us, such as bees). Speaking of that last, just saw a report on OPB about a pair of beekeepers with a unique solution to colony collapse disorder- they're breeding stronger queen bees that can live through Oregon winters.

If mankind wants to survive, food needs to be our top priority. Luckily, as I mentioned someplace above I think, food production is also an answer to excess atmospheric carbon. Especially if we keep locking our own carbon up in airtight containers buried in concrete when we die.

Comment Re:Seems he has more of a clue (Score 1) 703

California has been in drought for 9000 of the last 12000 years. It's the normal state there. Switch from avacado to chia, and you'll be fine.

The Midwest is another story. We've been planting our favorite foods there so long that we've destroyed the ecology of the place. Thus the "Dust Bowl" phenomenon.

But there is one way to deal with this- bunch grass grazing. It's working well in the Eastern Oregon Desert; but it's hard to manage.

Adapt, work with the ecology, not against it, with climate change, not against it. The earth will survive, human beings are not guaranteed to; but we do have one advantage- invention.

Submission + - UMG v Grooveshark settled, no money judgment against individuals

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: UMG's case against Grooveshark, which was scheduled to go to trial Monday, has been settled. Under the terms of the settlement (PDF), (a) a $50 million judgment is being entered against Grooveshark, (b) the company is shutting down operations, and (c) no money judgment at all is being entered against the individual defendants.

Comment Re:Seems he has more of a clue (Score 1) 703

I know of only one desert on earth that is entirely life free, and it's prevented from having rainfall by elevation (it's higher than most clouds, and in the rain shadow of the Andes which are even higher and prevent weather patterns from reaching there- hasn't had rainfall in 10,000 years).

Global climatic climate change droughts are different, they're more of the flash flood once in a blue moon variety, more like Death Valley in California- where the Native Americans have been agricultural for centuries, just on foods you won't eat.

And that is the real key. We have to get *real local* to survive this.

Comment Re:Seems he has more of a clue (Score 1) 703

Cost? Responses to global climate change have nothing to do with cost.

You also misunderstand the main use of urban farming: increasing vegetable biomass is the point, not eliminating agricultural chemicals. Increase the vegetable biomass and you *will* remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and replace it with oxygen, that's how plants breathe.

http://www.towergarden.com/ is usable on household scale in high density urban areas.

Poor Japanese fishermen have been seasteading for centuries, using bamboo as their primary construction material. And yes, barnacles do get on everything, but once again, plant mass is the answer- when your mooring post grows faster than the barnacles attack.....

Comment Re:It changes when the 'wrong' people do it. (Score 1) 26

I'm glad you haven't met such a sorry man, I have a couple of times. They strive to be, but priests and monks fail like the rest of us, sometimes spectacularly.

Having said that, the group I'm thinking of is now long gone; they volunteered in 1991 to be a control group for an AIDS infection study. They're all dead now, but their generous donation of their lives is why we have HIV drugs today.

User Journal

Journal Journal: When did Net Neutrality change? 26

As late as last year, I remember Net Neutrality being a libertarian free market concept- preventing a crony corporate takeover of the Internet. Now that it is being implemented by the FCC, it has suddenly become a crony corporate (Democrat Brand) takeover of the Internet, that all good libertarians should oppose.

Comment Re:Seems he has more of a clue (Score 1) 703

It's easy to avoid ocean acidification. Urban farming, using drought resistant food plants that can get by on little water, to use photosynthesis to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.

Sea level rise can be handled with seasteading to give poorer populations a place to live. Their waste can be used for farming salt resistant food plants, like sea beans, on the boats, sucking more carbon out of the atmosphere, as well as converting the methane to energy for propulsion.

It's a matter of reimagining what our response is- away from prevention and towards adaptation.

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