I doubt that two thirds of these people them have any real idea of what libertarianism is

I'll answer that - it's a cool sounding label self applied to people whose political views cover the entire range from outright anarchists to the sort of people George Washington if he was alive today would want to shoot for being counter-revolutionary royalists. In other words - an utterly meaningless label. Your "so called libertarians" is just "no true Scottsman" bullshit and you have no more "idea of what libertarianism is" than them. Astroturfing has added more by bussing in extra teabaggers for more noise but they as just a much "libertarian" as anyone that sticks that label on themselves.

It's a case of using that North Sea oil for something useful instead of redundancy payouts which is how Thatcher squandered oil money in the UK. The only thing that grew was silly financial games that periodically collapse.

Or did you think that li'l ol' war was just going to end itself?

Actually yes, but that would have meant Russian occupation of all of Korea and more of Japan than that island north of Hokkaido.
Things would have gone very differently if the US had not had a change of leadership and the new leader reached for the nukes. Better? Who knows? Different anyway. Most of the cold war grew out of a stupid line on a map and and idiot waking up to find that lovable "Uncle Joe" really was the monster that Churchill had been warning about.

The sad thing is that place is making an effort. How bad are the places that are not?

Your statements would imply that these countries are inept and/or grossly negligent

In Australia's case with the offshore cables that was Telstra run by Sol Trujillo, so both inept and grossly negligent with a possibility of some sort of kickback as well.

I think it's unlikely that anyone would be successful suing them for turning over data due to a court order

It's the bit about keeping quiet about it afterwards that could be a problem. I suspect a business that is putting sensitive data on a compromised server some time after the court order would not be happy that they were not informed beforehand, especially if some of it gets out due to "intelligence community" leaks.
I think businesses involved in aerospace, oil or similar where a competitor has a very close relationship with the "intelligence community" would be especially upset. There's so much of a tangle of private and public interests that your special technology would be forwarded on "in the national interest" faster than you can say "Airbus" (as in the stuff revealed in the Airbus vs Boeing lawsuit approx 10 years ago).

It is interesting that you see a description of your own argument as a "salad". If you think that is meaningful, perhaps you ought to contemplate what it actually means.

Considering that above you compared an entire lifetime energy use analysis to diesel at the pump I have nothing but contempt for your transparent little game. Pretending you are here to make comparisons is a very obvious lie which you are continuing by putting one side then expecting others to finish the comparison. Your false politeness after accusing me of fanaticism above just confirms that you are a slimy untrustworthy weasel here to mislead the readers with your fanboy agenda.
There is no "one true energy" - just a range of options for different cases despite what salesfolk and their deluded fanboys excrete.

Any research from big oil OR alternative energy would immediately be dismissed as biased by the source of funding. Where insurance has done any research, the discussion right here on /. showed that their results will be questioned for bias as well.

At least with government research, we can hope that opposing influences can potentially balance or that the necessary appearance of neutrality is cionstraining enough to produce something approaching actual neutrality.

It was Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper who lied to congress, not Alexander. At least not provably.

It is important that we keep the facts straight, every stray bullet is an excuse for the pro-NSA types to discredit our position.

Ah, hell. Tonight is my night for mis-reading what other people wrote.

What you stated above is not unreasonable, except for the part about the faulty premise. It is not faulty at all. if we don't understand one, we will never understand the other. It's that simple.

You are demonstrating your bias by arguing that one part of the science merits study but another part does not.

Do you realize that the "cyclical" (as one person mentioned, the proper word is probably "periodic") factors in climate science are so strong, and the AGW factors so weak, that it is still a matter of debate whether the latter even exists?

BOTH are valid subjects of study, and by studying one, you are going to shed light on the other. Your choice of which to support is entirely political, not scientific. Because if you understood the science, you would be supporting further study of the periodic factors that influence climate.

Sorry, man, but like others here you're trying to have it both ways. You can't understand the one without the other, and by fighting the study of the one, you are trying to lessen our understanding of the other. It simply won't wash.

As in ""Overall, about half of adult Facebook users, or 47 percent, 'ever' get news there,"

What does this mean? 53% of Facebook users never read their wall? Or they do but none of their friends post news stories? They have very poor memories? The question confused them?

Facebook won't let others access information like which news stories are the most posted, but if they did it would actually make a decent news aggregator, without implicit editorial bias. One of my favorite news feeds used to be "Yahoo Most Emailed" - interesting stuff that was never on the front page of news site with editorial story selection.

I'd love to join that kind of data with my own selection of what constitutes a credible source (boy, do my friends love to post nonsense from naturalnews...).

You know what? I concede this argument, because I went back to refer to your original comments, and I had mis-read what you wrote (quoted above). I had it in my head that you had written "There is not a single piece of evidence to that effect."

Mea culpa. Misunderstanding. You are correct that there is nothing that can disprove the hypothesis of a "young earth". I had simply not read your comment correctly, and thought you were claiming something you did not, in fact, claim. :(

Laughable. "There is no evidence" is a very clear statement. If there was a misunderstanding, it sure as hell wasn't on my end.

And I explained that your standard of evidence is complete horseshit, which is also true.

Yes, it is the point. You want PROOF. There is none. Get fucking used to it. Case in point: