There's the slight difference that Brunner can think and Pournelle and Niven are ideological hacks who can't write a decent story to save their asses.

And what, exactly, distinguishes a lying sack of shit like Monckton or Watts from a holocaust denier? They know they are wrong, they are not that stupid. They lie, lie and lie again, each lie gets debunked multiple times by people actually giving a shit, and 2 weeks later, they spout the same lies in a slightly rephrased manner.

Hey, quick! Take cover! Black helicopters! FEMA and UN troops under the Red Flag of the United Socialist States of America are RIGHT BEHIND YOU! Get out while you can, man!!!

Gotta love the instant foaming-at-the-mouth by wingnuts like rubycodez as soon as Al Gore is mentioned. It's as if he touched them in a bad place once.

If you think this is brilliant, you might want to move over to Watts' forums and join the braindead circlejerk there.

Not in the context of fraud, libel, slander and bribery to others to commit the same. And that is all that is left in the denialist crowd.

The moment you even expect that users should, could, would or even remotely in their most maddened fever dreams WOULD WANT to modify the kernel, you lost it.

And now imagine that happening just 30 years ago. An object entering on a ballistic trajectory and setting off a 500 kt airblast essentially over the main Soviet plutonium facility in Mayak next to Chelyabinsk. I am retroactively shitting myself right now. As a species, we have more luck than common sense...

And believe me, that respect increases when you find out that you did not split enough wood in summer and have to grab your axe and do some chopping in the freezing cold, as I found out last week. Ok, I wouldn't have had to, since I got oil heating to, but given the relative cost of oil and wood, I very much prefer to run the oil burner at a minimum. Also, a huge-ass tiled stove in the living room simply rocks.

I can't imagine the amount of foaming mouths and mad screeching from the right wingnutters should that ever happen. Would probably amount to straight-out political suicide.

Indeed. I have been living in the US while working on a project for my PhD for about 6 months. Wasn't really convinced by the quality of the beef either. Then again, I am somewhat lucky to get beef from pastures in the foothills of the alps right around the corner - or at least I was. Moved a bit farther north by now.

Not cost effective, because the externalities are not priced in...

You know, when a lie is so discredited that even Watts isn't using it any more, you should probably stop doing so, too. Makes you look like an idiot.

Beef or no beef is also a false dichotomy. I love beef. But I only eat it roughly every two weeks. Sourced locally, from a farmer that pastures his cows on a piece of land only marginally useful for other agricultural purposes. I guess you could get a higher biomass to meat conversion by pasturing goats there, but, heck, while I like goat, I wouldn't want to make it my staple meat source either. Looks pretty sustainable to me. I just avoid the high intensity feedlot crap. That's indeed the stuff that has to go if you think about sustainability.

Lol, I am a fascist now, sure. Dude, from an US perspective, I am so far to the left that you'd shit your pants.