We seem to be talking about completely different things. Let me see if I can state what I said more clearly. My comment had been that there is nothing new about this "news" story. Your reply was "Not sure I agree. The increase is not linear."

The fact that the increase is not linear is not relevant to the fact that there is nothing new.

You continued "That makes milestones relevant, as it helps gauge the exponent of the function."

Nope. The "milestone" 430 ppm gives you no information whatsoever about "the exponent of the function".

This story is not news. The fact that the curve is exponential does not make it news.

You're really saying that deviations from linearity that happened fifty years ago are the reason that this story is news today?

There is a little curvature visible in the measured carbon dioxide rise, but it's the steadiness of the rise, not the slight curvature in the rise, that is the reason it hit 425 ppm.

The word "should be" has no meaning in the context.

For the majority of the history of the Earth it had no oxygen in its atmosphere. But nobody is saying "basically, the Earth should have no oxygen."

I know too much about human cognitive processes and learning. I know that humans get desensitized to information they hear over and over, and eventually just filter it out.

The greenhouse effect is real, and our emissions are increasing the temperature of the planet.

But.

This really is a non story. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has been increasing constantly since the measurements have started (and undoubtably before that). Every year has higher CO2 than the previous year. There is nothing new in reporting this. There is nothing interesting about 430 parts per million, it's not a particular milestone, other than it's higher than 420 but not as high as 440. There's nothing about this particular year being the highest level since well before the beginning of the holocene, that's been true for years.

Except as an excuse to keep carbon dioxide in the news, there's really no new in this news story.

Yeah. Depends a lot on what you categorize as a "smallsat," but a lot of these are cubesats built by students, and they have a huge failure rate.

Didn't "fall out of the sky." It lost power and stopped communicating, but it's still in orbit, and will be until atmospheric drag eventually brings it down.

Article was written by somebody who doesn't understand that you don't need power to stay in orbit.

What in the world do they mean, the satellite was "going off course"?

That's absurd. This is a satellite with no on-board propulsion; it can't change orbit. It can't go "off course." It lost power, and hence stopped communicating, but losing power doesn't mean it drops out of orbit.

Alternate source that is a little more credible: https://www.satellitetoday.com...
Another source, but paywalled: https://spacenews.com/methanes...

The use of different fuel efficiency mandates for different vehicle classes is a real problem. If one-ton vehicles have a more stringent fuel economy mandate than 1.5-ton vehicles, this drives the market to make their vehicles heavier, which is exactly OPPOSITE to what you want. We've seen this in US regulations.

Likewise, if trucks have more lenient regulations than cars, this drives manufacturers to very carefully look at what the definition of a truck is, and make sure their vehicles are classed as trucks rather than cars. (One reason for the rise of pickup trucks and SUVs in the US. SUVs are technically trucks.)

Just a quick note, the regulations discussed here are about carbon dioxide emissions (and also, not mentioned in the headline, about trying to reduce India's dependence on imported oil), not about particulate pollution, carbon monoxide, or nitrogen oxide emissions.

You're both right. Some jobs simply require teams to work in the same physical location. Also, if it's safety critical, the engineers should be following the documented requirements, and documenting everything.

Just as a reminder, the SpaceX Falcon-9 has one of the best success records of any orbital booster in history. You could argue that the Atlas V has a slightly better success record, but Falcon-9 has an order of magnitude more flights. Successful Falcon-9 launches are so routine that they rarely even make the news.

So, no, not all SpaceX rockets "keep blowing up."

Your post was also talking about women scientists and engineers. A lot of SpaceX's routine success is attributed to Gwynne Shotwell, the President and COO of SpaceX, running the company. So, hiring highly competent women scientists and engineers seems to be a winning strategy for SpaceX as well as NASA.

Of course. But the rich ones expropriate far more than the poor ones.

When you're talking about people contributing nothing and feeling entitled-- your words, not mine-- it's the rich ones who do most of the taking.

It's low because they were tested on puzzle cases that are deliberately selected to be hard.

It's like saying most people are ok at commonplace arithmetic in everyday life. So how come their accuracy rate is only 20% in solving puzzles in The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles?