> The poor are free to trade with the rich or not

Indeed. They are free to starve.

Freedom is easy when you can afford it.

Thanks Mark

and another good example is internet explorer. When it was competing with Netscape, it was out innovating Netscape as well as using underhanded methods such as embedding it in the operating system. Once netscape was dead, it stopped innovating. Finally Firefox took off, and chrome. So without competition MS does not innovate.

Another example of underhandness. Apple was leading with Quicktime which had a proper extensible architecture. They had to do a Windows version of Quicktime and hired an outside firm to port it. Microsoft was struggling with performance of Media Player until they hired the same firm and surprise surprise that firm knew all the techniques to accelerate the performance of video. Where would they have learned that.

not too worry as the election showed they are fast disappearing.

Gawd. Another looney denier. Learn some science and read any of the gadzillion scientific papers confirming it. This year will be the hottest year on record for Australia. Not surprisingly so were most of the previous ten years. You can expect it will be true for the next umpteen decades. Notice the trend? Perhaps it might be of concern?

Putting a price on carbon has its problems but it at least assigns a market cost to the offsets required to mitigate carbon use and uses market forces to change behaviour.

If the cost of the CO2 (the carbon price) is added then Coal and Oil are not as cheap as they are. It is only that the users of coal don't have to pay for the cleanup of the environment. Nuclear is all well and good but there are some scary cleanup/storage costs that are not at all clear.

Growing corn for ethanol always seemed to me a poor choice. Better to generate biofuel from the inedible waste plant material.

There is no Northern Hemisphere "bias". It is just that there is more land in the northern hemisphere and more cropland. So it influences the seasonal cycle more. There would be no CO2 advantage to moving the crops from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere. It would be nett neutral.

Best to read the source article http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

They are looking at the seasonal swing of CO2, it goes down in Summer and up in Winter. They are not saying it causes a net CO2 gain. It agrees with the book chapter you linked.

Cutting down trees which grow slowly and only few die each year, does increase the seasonal swing as you replace them by fast growing plants that die off every year.

True but slower growing and slower dying. Less in, less out.

Two problems. ESA does not have access to the plutonium as i understand it. The second issue is that it would have made the unit much heavier and so needed a bigger rocket to be able to meet the timelines.

That should be the first step. Learn how to mine the moon, export water to space, split the water to make fuel, oxygen etc. Mine moon materials and be self sufficient within easy communications range of earth. The skills learned there will be useful in eventually going to Mars. The distance for resupply is more realistic. The fuel created can be used for other missions. It is the next logical step from the ISS.

Is it start with a limited environment. Have these operate in large resorts, amusement parks, wildlife reserves etc. Build a big base of realworld usage before venturing further afield.

Those wimpy environ-liberals are so weak they fear being irradiated by exploding rockets. Where is the fun in that. I look forward to having three eyes and a tail.

Battery swaps eliminates the cost from replacing your batteries every 10 (?) years. But then again, i guess the cost would be amortized into every swap you do.