All countries with a developed civil infrastructure OR a stable leadership would have done some prospecting by now.

Some, but not enough. Especially in other African countries (examples such as the DRC that lacked stability) there may be many more deposits. The more mining that is performed in a country the more deposits are found.

It is the same as the copper problem. There are significant amounts of copper in the DRC and Zambia. But because of corruption and the lack of stability it is not exploited.

There is no reason not to use aluminum wire or galvanised stainless steel wire.

South Africa may have many chrome reserves but there are many countries with large reserves and there is no shortage (even when South Africa starts to implode).

One reason that South Africa have so many reserves is because of good prospecting (both for chrome and other minerals). Other countries may also have substantial reserves that we don't know about.

It would however not be sensible to use stainless steel.

Galvanised steel (steel with a very thin zinc coating) is routinely used for fencing. In my part of the world they also use it for telephone wire in rural areas (since copper gets stolen). Steel wire could replace copper in many situations.

Then use steel...

It's simple. Don't buy inkjets.

I wouldn’t go that far. You should just buy smart. Do not buy anything with Lexmark, Epson or Canon on it (especially Lexmark, they are evil). Check beforehand if the cartridges can be refilled.

I’ve bought an HP inkjet+scanner (F350 or something) 2 years back. I print a lot. The cartridge is an HP21 cartridge. The printer costed around $60 bucks with a colour and black cartridge (multiple uses). To refill a cartridge you simply pull the sticker back, stick a needle in the hole and inject ink. It is as fast as immunising a rat. For the black cartridges (I don’t use colour) I get about 30 refills before the quality declines. A refill costs about $1 and is good for about half a ream of paper.

I’ve shopped around for cartridges also. In brand name shops a cartridge will cost around $37. I found cartridges that sell for $20 though (imported from Singapore). This is original, brand new HP21 cartridges (probably gray imports). The moral of the story is to shop around.

Also, if you are refilling, check that the cartridge doesn’t run dry (this damages the printhead and reduces the quality). As soon as you are out of ink you should refill. Another thing is that if you use Vista, use the native Vista drivers. The normal drivers are irritating (telling you the cartridge is empty when you refilled it. This doesn’t prevent printing but it is irritating).

One of my family members picked up a printer printing with an HP21 cartridge for around $40 dollars. This included the cartridges. The only catch was that it came with a funny plug that had to be replaced (probably a grey import from a funny country). HP printers are also nice for printing double sided pages.

Many cheap laser printers have the same model as cheap inkjet printers (Gillette model: Give the shaver away and sell the blades). So their refills are extremely expensive.

\rant

2) As people get wealthier their access to health care, proper sanitation etc. becomes easier. This increases the survival rate of their children which reduces the number compensatory pregnancies. In other words, when a child dies a woman's friends,

You do not understand - economic development will not be a good thing. Take as an example Africa. The place is economically underdeveloped so it produces almost no Carbon Dioxide. Whether the population growth is high or not, doesn't matter - it will reach an equilibrium (carrying capacity of the land).

If Africa were to develop like China, pollution will increase (not decrease) even if birth rates were to decrease.

"Engaging with skeptics" is an approach that I find improvised and naive at best.

You know that there are a fair amount of “Skeptics” with PhD degrees? (e.g. Hans von Storch, Roger A. Pielke, etc). Skeptics in this case are scientists that dissent from the mainstream view. Gallileo was also in his time viewed as a skeptic.

You also ignore the fact that the skeptic which is the most hated (as the hate in the e-mails proclaim) discovered numerous errors. He discovered an error in the Goddard Institute of Space Science (GISS)’s temperature record for the USA which they corrected (this is a very big thing). He also discovered errors in a paper by Mann, et. al. which forced him to make a correction in Nature.
All of these actions by a “skeptic” helped push science forward.

The nature of science is supposed to be adversarial – you make a claim and others test our claim (by reproducing the results for example). That is why you “defend” your PhD (it is not filled with a room of yes-men who all agree with you). The Climate-Alarmist-Scientists seemed to dislike the adversarial method of science.

They are out to destroy the legitimacy of climate scientists in public opinion and they use all the dirty tricks in the book toward that objective.

As these emails reveal, it is the climate alarmists which used every dirty trick, including but not limited to: 1. Manipulating data. 2. Hiding data whilst breaking the law (deleting data under a Freedom of Information Act Request). 3. Deception (“Hiding” the decline) 4. Ensuring that results could not be reproduced by not giving data and obfusticating data. 5. Loading review boards. 6. “Redifining” the peer review process (as one stated). The list goes on. What happens here is a blight on the scientific method. Popper would turn around in his grave.

This affair should really be reviewed by ethics review boards of the specific universities.

I have to go with the way Dawkins approaches this type of situation. Giving them a seat at the table gives them credibility.

That is the problem. A lot of "skeptics" are good scientists. A good example is Stephen Mckintyre that found a major problem in the temperature record that Godard Institute for Space Science (or whatever) admitted and corrected. He then further found an error in a paper by Mann, et. al.

All of those are significant findings - yet the "scientists" try their best not to give him data and to ensure that their work is not reproducible (otherwise fiddling with data and loading reviews, but that is besides the point). This Climate Gate will probably not change any debates in Climatology, but I am pretty sure that a few chapters in Professional Ethics textbooks will be written by this affair.

Nuclear power produces base-power, it can not produce peak-power

For interest sake, peak power is almost removed in some countries due to differing costs of electricity. You will be surprised how much industry (big and small) is started up at non-peak times.

Can you link the image?

I got results for Obamas - but no ape comparisons, just normal photos (except the celebrityape.com one, but I do not have the image).

sensitivity to such issues whatsoever know that it's racially-charged to use the symbolism of a monkey to represent a black person. In the name of not looking like a racist pig most people would just choose a different way to caricaturize the President.

In otherwords, oversensitive people who get their panties in a bunch is okay? But I guess that double standards is the standard these days?

Bush was characterised as a stupid white frat boy. He was compared to a chimp, intelligence called into question, etc Cheney was compared to Darth Vader, Sauron, Satan, etc All of these things were accepted without batting an eyelid.

Yet when one website called celeberityapes.com makes a picture of Michelle Obama (when its sole purpose is to make Simian-human hybrids of celebrities) it is branded as racist. WTF? Why is it “International News”.

I personally think that it is only because of the cult of personality around the Obama’s.

Really? When I searched for "Michelle Obama Monkey" on google image search, the pictures I got was of George Bush.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm157/cin2008_album/bush_monkey3.jpg

http://www.globalpov.com/images/bush-monkey.jpg

And a monkey that got to first base:

http://klog.imjustsaying.org:81/files/images/monkey.preview.jpg

Another was of Palin being compared as an Ape

http://i.somethingawful.com/u/garbageday/apepalin.jpg

The only Michelle Obama photo was from a site called celebrity apes (a site which now seems defunct http://www.celebrityape.com/).

This furor over the photos shows a double standard in the media when liberals are concerned.

What makes you so sure that this comparison is racially charged? Why is all criticism (whatever the form) of Obama branded as racism?

Can't we even disrespect our president without being branded as racists?

Hell, I'm a red headed Canadian with a penchance for Blues and Soul music... and I feel dirty watching BET, as if i'm doing something wrong as a white man watching a BLACK channel. Why are we moving towards separational thinking again?

I thought that the whole idea about a multi-cultural society is that each group can have its own unique culture? Is it wrong for a black (or white or Indian) person to live out his own unique culture?

It becomes clear to me that the much toted "multiculturalism" promoted in the Europe is nothing but cultural assimilation where the dominant culture is left-liberalism.

Add 12% tax, $5 customs handling, $45 brokerage, ~$20 shipping, and 6% duty onto just about anything you buy from the US online.

I was under the impression that Canadians liked paying taxes.