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Comment: Re:More person, more cost. Fine. (Score 1) 587

by ballpoint (#43352399) Attached to: Samoa Air Rolling Out "Pay As You Weigh" Fares

Trains are a lot cheaper to run than planes, and in the long run transport trains are a lot cheaper than trucks too.

Depends on how you calculate. In my country, the national train company receives 15 eurocent per passenger.km in direct subsidies alone. Last I checked, my 10000km plus return plane ticket didn't cost 1500 euros.

It's late and I'm not going to find out, but I have a hunch that train cargo isn't overly attractive, just by comparing the volumes shipped.

Again, rail is surprisingly expensive.

Comment: Re:More person, more cost. Fine. (Score 1) 587

by ballpoint (#43349891) Attached to: Samoa Air Rolling Out "Pay As You Weigh" Fares

Maybe not "more competitive pricing", but fair pricing aka charging the real cost. That cost, plus the cost of the former supposedly better service, used to be hidden by huge subsidies before privatization.

Trains are surprisingly expensive to run. So privatized companies are suffering while offering the service at an acceptable price. Socialist governments are happy to offer the service way below cost but hide the tab and charge it to others.

Comment: Re:Dumbest story title, ever? (Score 1) 235

by ballpoint (#43191085) Attached to: Smartest Light Bulbs Ever, Dumbest Idea Ever?

Nice to finally see someone posting here who actually grasps the value of a high CRI.

I'm sick of dimwits blindly recommending a lower or higher color temperature when someone complains about the low light quality of current energy saving bulbs. Color temperature isn't the big problem: our brain easily adapts to a different white balance. Whole swats of spectrum missing is, as that makes a lot of pigments look dull.

So let's hope for lamps that can produce a continuous weighted spectrum from 650 to 400 nm with 90% of the theoretical peak efficiency.

Comment: Re:"...hatred of seeing windmills on the horizon.. (Score 1) 482

by ballpoint (#43183737) Attached to: Windfarm Sickness Spreads By Word of Mouth

Having a beautiful, natural view obscured by ugly windmills couldn't possibly cause stress and induce real physical sickness in folks, now could it?!
If you travel much, you'll notice that folks tend to be happier in areas with beautiful scenery, much less so elsewhere.

Another thing, most people tend to be very mild mannered. Quite a large number of people will accept a burnt pizza with a smile, only a small minoroty will complain. Perhaps these people were bothered all along and just didn't say anything to avoid rocking the boat...until it was pointed out to them that they had the right to speak up and demand a pizza that wasn't burnt to a crisp.

This. Of course there may be some hypochondria involved, but people living close enough to hear whoosh-whoosh all day long, have their house invaded by shadow effects or their formerly rustic countryside tarnished have all reasons to complain.

Comment: Re:Right action, unscientific argument (Score 1) 583

by ballpoint (#42883693) Attached to: Obama Proposes 'Meaningful Progress' On Climate Change

If you take just a second to look here, here, and here you will see that hurricanes, for example, have not become significantly more frequent nor intense.

The same applies to other freak weather events. They're just more mediatized now, and affect more people in an increasingly overcrowded world.

Comment: Re:I didn't watch the speech (Score 1) 583

by ballpoint (#42883567) Attached to: Obama Proposes 'Meaningful Progress' On Climate Change

Oh, oh, the gullibles sure were as worried then as they are now, alarmed by the same quality of pseudo-scientists as the current CAGW crop.
It just didn't become that "big", because post-normality had not taken hold, science was not yet so deeply infested by public-teat-sucking watermelons, and reasonable minds still prevailed.

Why do the current alarmists deny that old scare and try to swipe it under the carpet and rewrite history ?
Do they count on the lack of memory and perspective of the general public ?
Is the analogy hitting home too closely ?
Is it an excercise for the serious backpedalling they'll have to do shortly, now that their pseudo-science is falsified ?

Comment: Re:Petroleum bias (Score 1) 468

by ballpoint (#42709203) Attached to: Norwegian Study: Global Warming Less Severe Than Feared

I'm Norwegian and I can inform you otherwise. What you're describing was before islam arrived (2nd generation fanatics) and helped throw massive amounts of grit into the system, a system of homogeneous societal trust that was never built to survive massive intentional abuse and violence. Now we're as fucked as everyone else even though the numbers on paper look prettier than elsewhere (as long as you squint just right and pretend not to know this or that). The last two years it has started to become plainly visible to just about any and all Norwegians and even the mainstream media is writing about the serious deficiencies (but not yet the root causes).

Some people have even stopped caring enough about their own well-being to bluntly admit to their own "nasty" thoughts! Even among the socialists! Ten more years of this and Europeans will make Hitler look like a lackadaisical pansy (I can't decide whether that's for better or worse but it would be nice to avoid it and still get rid of all the "cultural enrichments").

Anders, is that you ?

Comment: Re:How is this "contrary"? (Score 1) 468

by ballpoint (#42709079) Attached to: Norwegian Study: Global Warming Less Severe Than Feared

There are probably hundreds of studies that try to estimate the climate sensitivity. Most get numbers between 2 and 4 degrees per doubling. .......... So?

These studies are falsified by recent observations, and so far as they did so correctly (they were peer reviewed, right ?), so are the theories they rely on. So.

YOW!! The land of the rising SONY!!

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