It's not inhumane ('humane' being another oxymoron, because it's meaning, and acting like a normal human, are opposites) because 1)they have a life at all, which they would not if not given the opportunity by my family 2) they have a place to live that life, which they would not if not given the use of the land and 3) nature also creates barriers to movement, so it's not unnatural for an animal to live it's entire lifespan in one place...perhaps for cattle, but not the rest. Farm animals are not humans, and those that have an aversion to being stationary have no place on a farm. You could say that not being nomadic is 'inhumane', as our natural state is not sedentary, but few would argue it's 'cruel'.
'Animals' are not humans, so are not slaves. That idea makes you sound ridiculous. See the South Park episode for a good example.
Stopping suffering is not within our scope.
There are many reasons why stopping meat eating is not reasonable, but the one you should be the most interested in is, if humans didn't eat cattle, they might be extinct. The same goes for many animals we eat, and if we didn't eat things like pork, the ecological disaster feral pigs create would be almost as bad as what humans do.
It would be easier and cheaper to change the conditions in the slums of India and elsewhere than it would be to eradicate the meat production (edit:and consumption) of the entire planet. What do the people do now that no longer have jobs? What do you do with all the animals that no longer have a 'use' and don't own property to move onto? How do you control their numbers so they don't destroy what's left of the planet?
Technically, yes, all humans are animals. Mentally handicapped humans are not TREATED 'like animals', by which you MEAN treated poorly and without thought for their comfort and well being, which in fact is NOT how most animals are treated in our first world society, no matter how much you think so. Factory farms are a different matter.
When dolphins take control, they can treat mentally handicapped dolphins better than average humans. It's not arbitrary to treat your own species as the most important, it's an evolutionary trait almost all species likely possess.
No, I can't eat an entire vegan diet. I've tried many vegan foods, and found them ALL inedible, some made me sick.

You made blanket statements about how ALL animals are treated, and how ALL meat is produced and then defended that blanket statement. I'm glad you now admit your mistake, I hope you can see it through and stop blanket blaming ALL meat eaters.

What other people eat is farther outside your influence than how they treat their children.

Without the calorie dense food that is 'meat', we would still be nomadic gatherers, if we could exist at all. Eating meat is one of the things that gave us the energy to evolve those 'higher brains' that can choose our actions and determine what's 'rational'.
You will never see a vegan Olympic athlete. (Edit: well, maybe in Olympic curling...)

Daesh has brought about change...a change that THEY see as positive. That's not a good argument.

Yes, you are a monster for supporting such unabashed, unproductive carnivores ;-)...and I would hazard a guess that you don't feed them only free range, gmo free turkey carcasses, so you sound worse than me, the unashamed meat eater that pays the extra money for proper animal treatment....not just for them but because it's healthier meat too.

I did my part for the animals and the planet by not having children. ;-) Too bad I'm such a minority that it won't make a whit of difference.

Remains to be seen if EVERY star system contains life or if he just didn't properly describe the systems. More than likely, like similar games where you explore the universe, you will have a sustainability of life detector.

Also, you do realize that the exploration of a planet is one aspect fo the game? Assuming this is a sim, there will be city creation, ship creation, etc. I mean, really think about all the aspects of things in the actual universe and those things may all be possible.

I don't know anything about their plans for creativity, but if it's anything like Minecraft, you can do a youtube search to see the endless possibilities of that game. Now imagine it in an entire universe?

Or an entire planet's worth of ecology, ranging from desert to tundras to barrier reefs to Himalayanesque mountain ranges -- That's amazing.

But only as amazing as our imaginations can project. Not as limiting as we only see in the small space of time allowed to air on Colbert.

Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!
I love this on so many levels. It's a beautiful melding of recycling, innovation, art, ecology, engineering, exercise, job training, self sufficiency, etc. This is how I want to see 3rd world countries to better themselves, in ways that better their lives without falling into the same traps 1st world countries have that destroy their priceless environments for convenience or profit. 1st world countries could learn something from that too.
*promote

What part of "do not have a choice" do I not understand? How about the subject of the 'choice' you are denied. Now that you have clarified that you don't have a choice about how the electric company pays you, or how solar works, I'll reiterate, you still DO have a choice about how to use the power you generate. Making better use of that choice would serve you well, but you seem intent on claiming it's all out of your control (and that you're forced 'at gunpoint' to sell all your production cheap and buy it back expensive rather than find a way to use it directly). I'm intent on making the best use of the choices available to me (and I bet to you) in order to make intelligent choices about my energy, choices that have saved me thousands to date, and should save me tens of thousands in the long run, and save uncounted tons of CO2 from being produced. You have instead invested in a system that now serves your needs terribly, and now want to tell others how solar is not economically viable or green, both of which are absolutely backwards from my experience and research.

You were not kidnapped, you walked into that guys home and put his gun to your own head. I wonder if you've even investigated 'net metering' in your area, it could make your system work for even you.

OK, so energy cost VS energy produced is ALL you want to compare. Then you MUST include all energy costs to be reasonable, including the energy cost of cleanup of coal waste failures (that right there already totally tips any scale against coal, it can't come close to making the energy that cleanup takes), the energy used in upkeep of coal waste storage for centuries, the energy costs of habitat destruction/reconstruction by coal mining itself, the mining itself, transportation of the coal, power plant operation (construction, upgrading, and maintenance), and the cost of mitigating the 20-40 times the amount of CO2 pollution, health issues, loss of sunlight (solar dimming is real), etc. The list of energy costs goes on and on for coal, while the list for the energy cost of solar panel production and use in some cases is damn near zero (where it's made with leftover chip wafers in solar powered factories it barely takes any extra energy at all, but I do understand that most aren't made that way now).

Double return VS coal, because you get twice as many KWH per dollar with solar PV, or better.

Again with the 'spend more energy to produce one KWH of PV than with coal', show me some data. Everything I can find shows you're 100% wrong if you look at the lifespan of panels which become energy neutral in well under 3 years on average (some much sooner) and last 20-30 years, while coal continues to need more energy to produce more (filthy) energy. Perhaps in the extremely short term you have a point about cost/production, but any time period over 3 years puts PV ahead of coal in energy costs/energy produced, and in their 20-30 year lifetime they do much better.

Coal made power is NOT cheaper than solar made power. If it was, I would not save money with a solar system. I have already saved money with solar VS buying the same amount of coal produced power, therefore solar PV is cheaper than coal. Period. If it wasn't, our electric companies would not be 'farming solar' here as fast as possible, they would be building more coal plants.

Some people support coal because they have been misinformed about alternatives. That's why I have continued our discussion here, because your information is wrong based on my personal experience and research, and I fear you might convince someone to not even look into solar enough to see how wrong you are, how much money they could save (if they do it properly), and how much pollution they could not create.

Um...I DO grow my own vegetables in my backyard too. It's cheaper, and I get far better produce with zero carbon footprint. Another statement you've made that I take personal exception with. It's not a HUGE effort, but is some effort, but the returns are great and totally worth it. I think many people stopped subsistence farming because they're lazy, overworked, and/or live without any place to farm. I've been doing it since I was 12 and ate my first self grown corn, and I've never had reason to question that decision. I've read about people spending $50 to grow $5 in tomatoes...I'm not one of them. I spend $50 on manure to grow >$1000 in produce yearly, and have enough to give >1/2 of it away.

Not a single one of your examples are 'more viable' than PV in every situation, and private owned home solar doesn't take public dollars away from public power projects. I looked into wind-it's way more expensive for the same generation power along with numerous other issues, nuke-also far more expensive with other long term major issues, solar thermal-hardly working as hoped yet in the few, hyper expensive plants in existence, wave-not yet but fingers crossed, hydro-DISTEROUS for the environment and short lived. (You left out geothermal, which is excellent where it's possible.)
Also, most of your examples are not viable for residential use (what we're talking about here), as you said are more expensive (so are bad economic choices), and/or have other serious ecological issues that PV does not.

Money is the only reason to stick with coal or nuclear, and that's only because the companies that use it get away with not paying for most of the true long term costs, and even with that it's now FAR more expensive to buy that coal/nuke power than it is to make your own with PV, leaving NO real reason to stick with coal or nuclear....so what are you talking about?

At some point, yes. But for the time being, increases in productivity (automation) are less of a job killer than your everyday policies and ideologies.

Speaking of my own country, the amount of work not being done is enormous, and the aggregate of work not having been done over the last decades is absolutely staggering. The current economic system not only unloaded a great number of burdens onto society, it also never found a way to come up with a way to integrate the aforementioned work. No one is willing to pay for it, so it doesn't get done, period. The most prominent examples would be infrastructure works of all kinds (energy, most of all), ecological restauration and care for the elderly. Our national railroad alone could hire 100,000 people and still be understaffed.

You can have full employment next year, but not if you expect the private sector to provide the jobs within the current system. The public sector could create them, if you use a sovereign, free-floating currency, but ideology doesn't allow for it.

As long as we focus on finding people for a given job, there'll be mass unemployment, no matter what. Reverse the process, create/find jobs for a given people and we might make some headway.

Again, ideology doesn't allow for it. And that's also what made me stop advocating for an unconditional basic income (UBI). The financial details of it can be a nightmare, yes, and it would be a break with a social welfare system that survived two world wars. But the deal breaker for me was politics.

A UBI would mean taking the boot of the peasants' necks. Liberty and (some) equality made real. Love it.
But look at how vicious the Greeks are attacked these days, not just by the elite, but by our fellow worker bees. They're not just burying the last bit of European solidarity in Greece, they're unloading all their frustrations onto the schmucks who had very little to begin with. It's despicable. And it indicates to me that any attempt to introduce a system that would take from people the need to work would unleash unimaginable hatred from the usual suspects. And significant portions of the public would go along with it, given how easy it already is to channel their frustrations towards "welfare queens" and "moochers".

So yeah, a UBI would be lovely. Finally some liberty, finally more negotiating power for the worker (can decline any job offer without repression). But the shit would need to hit the fan hard before there can be any room within the political sphere for it.

Artificial islands?!? Are they dumping sand on atolls, destroying reefs, in order to attempt to extend Chinese territory farther out to sea, or something? I thought that was against international law, and had been proven to not work (the sand gets washed away eventually). It's definitely terrible for the ecology.

Also, has 'American military, please go away' ever worked even once?!?

Here's a funny yet serious thought -- will anyone watch this video and read our comments while they're dying on Mars, cold, alone, asphixiating?

If only I had taken South Dakota seriously..! Why GOD?! WHY!!!!!!!! ...why couldn't I have been as smart as those people commenting on Videosift? Those geniuses! No, instead, I moved to Mars -- for the evil ends of SCIENCE.

Like a convoluted Martian ecological science fiction horror murder mystery movie poster from the 1980s --

SHE MOVED TO MARS TO FIND LOVE...
BUT ALL SHE FOUND...
WERE THE MARTIAN MEAN STREETS...
A NEW WORLD WITHOUT LAW...
WITH ALIEN ARTIFACTS...
JASON VORHEES RESURRECTED...
AND VERY... LITTLE... OXYGEN.

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL...
STRAIGHT TO CAPITAL HILL...
EARTH!

bum bum buuuuum -- THE TERRESTRIAL CONSPIRACY.

I had wondered about that. Having no idea what the ecology was like there before they built, I had no idea if they screwed it all up, or created habitat where there was none before hand. I just figured Dubai didn't do any eco-studies and just did it.
I also wonder why they've had such a hard time selling lots and building there. They, and the world islands still seem fairly empty. Neat idea, but apparently a terrible one in the end.

Perhaps in your mind, not mine. I have consistently said Carter was my favorite recent president, just the least popular. He did what he saw as right (and in my eyes he was correct at nearly every turn, like adopting solar BEFORE it's too late, and using less oil and gas by turning down your thermostat and putting on a sweater if it's cold inside for military, economic, and ecologic reasons), and was called wishy washy for it. He was a nuclear submarine commander, HARD CORE military, yet he was called weak on the military/defense (rather than insightful). I also disagree that Obama was the worst, in my lifetime Bush caused WAY more damage to our country, Obama has taken 6 years to dig out of the Bush hole, so he's no hero for me either...but he's certainly not the villain you wish to label him...we haven't even had a domestic terrorist attack on his watch.

Regan policies include raising taxes on the rich and limiting military spending (true, not by choice or often, but he did do both) If that's what you mean, perhaps you're correct...but I think you mean his trickle down economics, which were a clear proven disastrous failure and didn't even work for the rich...it made the top few % more dollars, but less wealth in the end because those dollars were worth far less, as @dannym3141 said above.

Odd, you have no trouble changing facts....why can't I? ;-)

Newtboy said it well; ice ages come and go due to numerous factors, but one of the most important factors is how much of the atmosphere is composed of carbon dioxide and methane.

Indeed, there have been interglacial periods where the earth was largely void of ice and had the much higher sea levels to match. At one point global temperatures were about as high as is expected to occur in the next century or two.

The difference between then and now is that life and the ecological chemistry of earth had millions of years to adapt before those periods reached their height in most cases. I say in most cases because there have been periods where climate change occurred faster than before and severely disrupted ecological stability or simply caused mass extinctions. Climate change has always happened, but the reason why current climate change is so worrying is because it is happening faster than ever before and because there is a massive amount of data to back it up.

You have it backwards...ignoring and denying climate change is all about money... climate saving is about surviving. It's the rare climate scientist who's fortune is tied directly to their theories...just about 3% I would guess.

'bio-fuel' is only an ecological 'neutral' if it's made from waste material, certainly not if other, more ecologically necessary things (like trees) are destroyed to create it. Everyone is NOT hacking down forests to make bio-fuel, most places have outlawed that, and many climate scientists decried it at the outset as neutral at best and terrible at it's worst.

Facts are facts, not manipulateable at all. Interpretation of the facts is easily manipulated, if one is not able to understand the facts enough to interpret them for one's self, but not if one is able to interpret them. For instance, the political right would have you believe that solar is an expensive wasteful fools errand, the political left would have you believe it's an expensive but ecologically sound and needed energy alternative...the facts are it's both relatively ecologically sound AND financially sound as a long term investment...mine has paid for itself in under 8 years with at least another 12 years of free electricity to come and I haven't been subjected to repeated blackouts like my neighbors...double win. The point being that if you allow politicos with agendas (on either side of the fence) to interpret the facts for you, as you seem to do, you'll only hear what THEY want you to hear. I interpret data for myself, and often come to different conclusions than those I hear publicly supported.

Religion is based on faith, not facts. Faith is believing something without proof or factual evidence and ignoring any factual evidence to the contrary. Science is thinking a certain thing until/unless the facts prove otherwise. Religious people often don't understand the difference, I'm a scientist. Show me full data sets and facts that disprove my current theory, I'll happily modify my theory. Show me an interpretation that attempts to disprove my theory without facts and/or data (or with cherry picked data and facts), I'll poke it full of holes and sink it in the briny deep. Put your life vest on now.

I hate to tell you, but I'm far more intelligent according to repeated testing than the average person, contrary to your insulting implication. 138 aint bad buddy, and my science degree helps too.

Those that attempt to say +-97% of climate scientists (along with near 100% of other scientists that peer review their work) are in cahoots to defraud the public in order to secure some phantom money (the implication being that they wouldn't possibly be able to make money if they didn't lie about science for some reason), and only the <3% that are paid by oil and gas companies to come up with theories that consistently benefit their benefactors are honest are simply insane or dishonest. Period.
Your analogy is false, because in it you speak of 'scientists' from a time before the scientific method was even a thing, people who based their 'theories' often on scripture, while the real scientists 'swam against the current' to support modifiable theories based on facts and data...just like climate scientists have done so successfully over the last 40+ years that they have now convinced nearly 100% of the planet that they are correct. Deniers are still floating down stream while the rest of us are swimming against their slowing current, spawning and trying to continue the species.

No hypocrisy by NGT, only your complete misunderstanding and/or misstating of the facts. Sorry.

Oh, then you do believe in AGW? If not, what's the straw man?
If global warming were the reason I do the things I do, you would be correct, going vegetarian would be a reasonable next step. The thing is I've done all I have done for personal, self centered reasons that benefit me personally, it just so happens that they mostly also benefit the planet. Because I intentionally didn't have children and don't believe in reincarnation, I have little incentive to attempt to save the planet beyond my lifespan. That said, I eat little beef, which is the worst meat to eat, and mostly chicken, the best meat for ecology (except for Iguana tail, a truly sustainable meat product).
CO2 staying at current levels dooms the planet fairly quickly. Raising those levels dooms if faster and more completely. I see little chance that we might actually decrease CO2 production levels, much less turn it to a negative number, which needs to happen if there's any chance in hell of stopping the run-away greenhouse effect. I see it as an issue that's far too late to stop, and can only be minimized at best, and will likely be maximized instead.
It's more like 4 billion that need to reduce their 'footprint', and another 3-4 billion that need to not expand theirs. More to the point, it's about 5 billion that need to not reproduce, while the other 3 billion only have 2 children at most. Not a likely outcome, but what is needed to solve the most pressing issues of the day.
Government is required to incentivize industry to follow suit and reduce their emissions. Without coersion, they'll do what's cheaper every time, and not cleaning up your own mess is always cheaper.
The only 'climate scientists' that are skeptical are the deniers, all others have examined the data and come to the same conclusion, just differing in the levels of change they expect. From what I see, they all underestimate the changes to come and ignore compounding features of the systems.
I'm not sure why you don't see this as a serious conversation, but that's on you.
I have given a scientific commentary. you ignored it and asked the same questions again, claiming they had been ignored. I'll try again....

CO2 saturation and temperature are linked, and have been proven to be so. Human production of CO2 is larger and faster than any natural CO2 rise in known climate history, well over 200000 years and up to hundreds of millions of years depending on what data you consider reasonable and reliable, and it's not only the amount but the rate of change that is greater than any natural climate change ever seen in the data. It's that faster rate of change that's the most dangerous, but the amount that determines the change to come. The system is slow to react, and is only now reacting to last centuries atmospheric changes. That means that even if we stopped CO2 production completely today, the effects will still be felt for centuries to come, and we aren't even slowing the rate at which we raise the amount of CO2 we produce, it's going up faster by the day thanks to those that either deny the problem or ignore it in favor of profit or simplicity. That's why estimates of the future are all lacking in my eyes, they all assume either static or reduced CO2 production, which is not reality.
We're hosed. The only option I see is to become self sufficient and die before the planet does. One more reason to not have children and instead be self sufficient as much as possible and enjoy what's left while you can.

I think this is a very important point. I watched a movie about the Challenger disaster yesterday with Richard Feynman on the committee. Richard Feynman was some sort of kook, who asked the experts at NASA what was the failure rate of the Challenger. They said there was a 1 in 100,000 chance that a Space Shuttle would fail catastrophically (Destroyed and all Crew Dead). Feynman knew that was "a wish" because that would mean if you launched Space Shuttles every day it would be 274 years until one failed (on average). Furthermore he polled the engineers of the shuttles and their numbers were 1 in 200 some as low as 1 in 50.

You throw numbers at people and a lot of times they don't know what to do with them. How to categorized what they're hearing. And if you throw science at them which specifically NASA was doing to the public to try and confuse them, it takes a brilliant mind such as Feynmans to explain in basic terms what is going on.

The same method to determine whether or not the world is heading for serious ecological collapse is why we are all standing here today. Why our medicines work, why our machines work, why the little rectangles that we gaze at all day bring us the entire world.

If you are curious about this sort of thing, and you come at it with an open mind and work off of a basis of scientific knowledge to understand the world, you will come to the conclusion that global climate change is happening and it's getting very serious. If you come at this with cynicism, or superiority, or especially politics you won't get it and that's on you, not science.

The facts back me up my friend. Turbines, were they not seen by the tree hugging, green peace brigade, as "ecologically" sound, would decry them for the same reason sane people do. They are a short term, knee jerk solution to a problem that will, ultimately, be solved by more scientific measures.
I'm done, and am mow off to solve the worlds energy crisis with wind energy..)

im no statist but this video is so childishly naive as to be laughable.

might as well call the free market jesus.

jesus is the way and the light.
follow jesus for salvation.
only jesus can absolve you of your sins.

this is about power.
if the libertarian is willing to acknowledge that the government is bloated and corrupt but unwilling to recognize the abuse of power wrought by corporations...because the corporation is part of the "free market"...they can end their sermon right there.

i am no longer interested.

if a libertarian preaches the importance of individual sovereignty and individual rights but dismisses that they are part of a community in a larger society.
they can proselytize at somebody elses door.

if a libertarian wishes to shower me with the glories of private property and ownership but ignore the importance and basic human dignity of the very workers who produce everything for those private owners.

then i say unto them that they wish to enslave their fellow man and the freedom they seek is for them alone and the rest of humanity be damned all in the name of profit and greed.

they can take their cult of ayn rand and masturbate somewhere else.

UNLESS....
they are willing to admit that:
1.as @VoodooV pointed out,we live in a society and a society is populated by PEOPLE.

2.that people deserve more than just the right to trade freely (which i agree with) but that human dignity and compassion,and yes..the right for life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

3.that the corporation is actually MORE vicious than a government.a corporation is amoral by design! so if we are going to address the abusive powers of government,the abuses of corporations should be recognized as well.

4.the argument that corporations would not exist without governments is a canard.that may have been true in 1910 but no longer.there are corporations that have a higher GDP than most nation states.

5.the argument that governments start wars are only half-truths.can you guess what the other half is? thats right! banks and corporations using their power and influence to oppress third world nations...through the use (or abuse to be more accurate) of this nations military.see:smedley butler.

6.while a non-state would be amazing i am not naive enough to believe it could ever happen in our lifetime.yes many arbitrary borders have been penned by empires but there will always be lines drawn by cultural,religious and ethnicity..lets be honest.

7.while i do not share voodoos optimism in this democratic representative republics current health status (i feel it is broken and dysfunctional),it is a FAR better thing than the authoritarian,totalitarian system that is the american corporation.unless they went all democratic on me and i didnt get the memo.

8.government does have a role in our society,though it should be limited.
defense (not illegal and pre-emptive wars of aggression).
fraud control and law enforcement.
roads,fire,police,education and health,because thats what a society does for each other.
we take care of each other.
you dont like that? move to the mountains..have fun!

9.the corporate charter should be re-written."for the public good" should be re-instated for one thing.
a.i was talking to a libertarian and he used the term "non-aggression" and i really REALLY liked this.so a corporation will be held responsible for any and all:destruction to the ecology (local and abroad),destruction of peoples health,home and property.externalization of any sort will be seen as "aggression" and the CEO and all officers will be held liable to be paid by:dissillusion of company of jail time,they can choose.
b.a corporation is NOT a person and ZERO funds will be drawn from company money to purchase a legislator.they may spend as much money as they wish from their own personal accounts,but ALL contributions shall be made public over a certain amount.
c.any corporation that has been found to pay their workers so little as to put the burden on the tax payer shall be found performing an "aggressive" act against the american people and shall either pay the amount in full or forfeit their company.

dammit.im rambling ...again.
but oh baby am i digging this non-aggression dealio!

can i rewrite the corporate charter?
please please please please.....

*promote the discussion