Placebo Blocker http://xkcd.com/1526/

So eat protein made from grasshoppers! Someone up thread bemoaned a general lack of understanding of thermodynamics... it's even worse if you don't grasp Ecosystem Thermodynamics...

The aircraft and the technology are impressive enough in their own right. The team and the sponsors that made this happen are not lightweights by any measure! However the real point of this project and adventure is basically twofold. One, to prove that off the shelf technology is available to be applied to real world applications right now, PV and battery technology is quite mature already and it does work. The second point is that whether we like it or not we, as a global industrial civilization are on the cusp of a historical transition to a completely new energy paradigm. BAU and fossil fuels got us here but from here on things will be changing at a very fast pace. We will all have to make do, and do better, with less available energy. Some of us will rise to the challenge and hopefully forge a new better and cleaner future with a smaller ecological footprint. Clinging to the old paradigm is a mistake!

100% agree with this comment and I too am an atheist and a fan of Krauss et al. The Pope did what he could do within the limited context in which he can do and say things. A billion people will listen to him and possibly start to act. I also admire the Pope for having the guts to rock the boat of the status quo!

It was just a natural reaction, a sort of self defense mechanism. Self driving cars tend to feel threatened by the presence people...

Give each Californian a Stillsuit... I'm assuming most here are familiar with 'Dune'.

Klingon!

Disclaimer, I've actually taught English as a second language to scientists and technical personnel...

"Understandable. Daniel Kahneman has some amusing anecdotes who people who work in finance really don't seem to figure out what it is they're really doing."

Daniel Kahneman is highly suspect, he's friends with Nassim Taleb https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Games?! Bah! I remember inputting the source code for a graphic of the space shuttle on my Commodore Vic 20 that had a 16 Kb memory expansion card...

Luckily the memory was good

"declaring that "at 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide."

Yeah but it seems there may be some unintended consequences...

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/ar...

Lead author Dr Roel Brienen, from the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, said: “Tree mortality rates have increased by more than a third since the mid-1980s, and this is affecting the Amazon’s capacity to store carbon.” Initially, an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – a key ingredient for photosynthesis – led to a growth spurt for the Amazon’s trees, the researchers say. But the extra carbon appears to have had unexpected consequences. Study co-author Professor Oliver Phillips, also from the University’s School of Geography, said: “With time, the growth stimulation feeds through the system, causing trees to live faster, and so die younger.”

"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly Roy"

What do you call someone who speaks more than three languages?

A polyglot.

What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

Trilingual

What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks only one language?

A gringo...

That title is pure unadulterated yak dung! Granted that for the average lay person, even upon very close inspection, finely refined yak dung is barely distinguishable from finely refined bovine feces from the male Bos taurus indicus... Just because the media says so and the lay public believes them doesn't in any way reflect on 99.99% of real scientists doing actual science. Perhaps my experience is anecdotal but the scientists that I know personally are honest ethical professionals. Furthermore the scientific method is a self correcting process and as far as I can tell peer review still works and science does not appear to be getting things increasingly wrong! Quite the contrary...

" Solar panels have hobbled Mars rovers as well as other spacecraft."
The solar powered rover, Opportunity is still rolling and sending back data 10 years after it landed, not too shabby!

Americans are buying Hummers again?! Really? Hmm, The last Hummer H3 rolled off the line at Shreveport on May 24, 2010. I guess Americans are buying more used cars nowadays...

Be especially wary of ingesting too much Dihydrogen Monoxide...