If I could mod this reply I would mod it troll. This isn't a Trump vs. Hillary comment thread. It's about paid political advertising on online platforms. Nobody cares about your opinion of Trump, negative or positive. It's not going to change any minds, or sway any opinions. Nobody should want to be perceived as supporting ANY political candidate because it's a faux pas in a workplace or corporate setting and frankly more people should keep their favorite political candidates to themselves. Regardless of party.

Sure Spotify is suspending political ads but they still run things like "Your daily drive" which features highly curated media outlets like The Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, and left-wing podcasts. All they're saying is that they won't run blatant political ads, but if you are are "journalist" reporting on "facts" they will continue to spam people with this super divisive content.

The UK has 15 nuclear plants and approximately 10,000 wind turbines. The nuclear plants produce roughly half the energy (But in reality the same amount of energy, because installed capacity != peak capacity), except they don't pollute the landscape, require less maintenance, and require far less transmission infrastructure.

How dare you suggest we could fix climate change using "engineering" and "science". The only proven way to solve climate change is to import more solar panels and lithium batteries from China, and simultaneously outsource all of the US and Europe's manufacturing and engineering there for safekeeping. Then once the transfer is complete China will take care of everything for us.

In 2019 Richard Stallman is vilified and Bill Gates is our hero. That's how out-of-whack and messed up the world has become. All you need is enough money and a good enough PR firm and you can manipulate the news. Should be no big surprise seeing the kind of crud most news organizations are pumping out

Big surprise, RMS is not (and was not) very socially adept. It doesn't mean he is a bad person or that he was a failure. I don't agree with this controversy and personally don't care. Tech news outlets can continue to print hundreds or thousands of stories about this and the only reaction they are going to get from me is a middle finger.

The whole climate change denier trope needs to die. It's a straw-man argument. A very quick and cursory glance at the history of the planet would make it obvious it changes. That's why we find fossils of tropical plants and dinosaurs in the middle of Montana. It's also why we've had periods in human history where entire regions that are now desert, such as along the Nile river, were once lush and heavily populated

What people who are not "believers" don't agree on, is that people are being honest about feedback loops in the climate, how quickly the climate is actually changing, and if it would make any practical difference for us to stop using fossil fuels even if they were causing climate change. Or if other governments would even comply (e.g. China) putting us at an economic disadvantage to a bunch of authoritarian communists. Then if you unpack it further, we might argue that the suffering humanity would see from a global economic crisis caused by elimination of fossil fuels would greatly outweigh any caused by this supposed crisis.

But for the people who are full on climate change believers? (The religion, not the science) They conveniently ignore all of the repercussions or externalities of their gospel. They seem to think if we could only turn down our thermostats, buy some solar panels, buy an energy efficient car and vote for some politicians and we could solve the climate crisis in a snap. And that's equally as ignorant as the straw man they've constructed of people on the other side of the argument from themselves.

I don't shut off my computer because it's powered by limitless nuclear energy which has zero impact on the climate. In fact energy is one of the most abundant things in the universe.

That said, the next time you need cancer treatment, don't wan't to live through a famine because of farm mechanization, or find it odd that we haven't had a World War in a while due to a strong and robust world economy fueled by cheap energy, I hope you're grateful that people like me didn't choose to remain luddites. And if you're lucky, once the rest of us figure out space travel you and the environmentalists can have the Earth all to yourselves, and can go back to spending your days outrunning large predators with sticks, the way nature intended.

You must have never encountered the system. Comments like this really show the naivety.

Weed laws have relaxed in (some) states but the same crooks that would have gladly ruined someone's life over an joint not 10 years ago are still working there, are still the same people, and are still running the system. Even in the most liberal states, if they don't like you they will use parallel construction to get in your house. Have a few too many ounces? That makes you a trafficker. Have kids in the house? Child Endangerment. Are those illegal car modifications on that turbocharged Honda the garage? Looks like you're running an illegal auto shop and circumventing federal emission laws. Looks like bad news for you.

Are you outraged? Don't like it? Well then too bad, courts have a 70-80% conviction rate. Word of advice: Never, ever, underestimate how unfair and dangerous the system can be. Law enforcement is a business, you are the product, and the government is the customer. You can have your constitutional rights stripped in an instant, and that's a best case. All we can do is avoid it, and make an effort to vote out people and insane policies that continue to trample on our rights.

Bezos' net worth is all in equities. If Bezos sold it all it would be worthless, or worth a fraction since the stock would tank milliseconds before he could sell it all. Sure he has a lot of money but the fantasy that he can drop 175B like you'd spend on a credit card is complete nonsense.

Air conditioning doesn't just lower the temperature, it also removes humidity from the air, which makes the environment less sticky and uncomfortable. Even if I only needed it 5 days a year I'll gladly fork over a $150 for a window A/C. My time and personal comfort is more valuable than that.

Even the most dire predictions for climate change predict a 1-4ft. rise in sea levels in the next 100 years. Most of the East Coast sees 10-20ft. swells on a regular basis. I find it hard to believe that "huge swaths of land" will be consumed. More likely we'll have to move a few docks and reinforce sea walls in areas prone to erosion. And then life will continue on as usual, as if literally nothing happened.

Lots of plants love 40C weather and above. I used to grow tomatoes in this environment in California, they would grow 12' tall, and produce substantially more fruit than tomato plants I'd grown on the East Coast.

It seems like an unnatural number of people on Slashdot have some kind of Mad Max fetish.

Look at a map of the world some time. See the blue parts? That's water. There's more than enough to supply a trillion people with drinking water for a billion years. All you would need is some kind of powerful, nearly-unlimited source of energy. Oh wait: We invented that in the 1950s, decades before most people here was in diapers. And yet it seems like you, and other folks with a tired and outdated Malthusian lens on the world think so little of the next 100 years, the same period of time that took America from horse and buggy to landing men on the moon, that you can't possibly imagine anything better.

I don't really understand your point. We don't have a shortage of energy. Most of the world is still operating on early 20th century technology. We could provide the entire planet with a surplus of abundant nuclear energy for less than the cost of a single Iraq War. It's not a money problem. It's not an energy problem. Also your rant about the rich makes no sense. Most people who are well-to-do donate huge sums of money to help those in need. A good fraction would gladly give up their entire fortunes if it meant they could solve world hunger or bring nations out of poverty.

The reason people suffer is the same reason much of the world is starving to death even though we produce a surplus of food that could feed it several times over. It's because other countries are dysfunctional, they have dysfunctional governing systems, and greedy dictators and leaders that steal from the people. Global warming isn't the reason the third world is suffering. Greed is. And no amount of money, or solutions for Climate Change will fix that. It's the same as it has always been for thousands of years of human history.

The world doesn't care about "per capita". US could drop its emissions to zero, and "Climate Change", as it has been described would still happen. China is responsible for the majority of the world's emissions and nothing the US does will change that.