Doesn't matter. After Trump's "tremendous" debate performance... this election is over.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

So, I don't want to take anything away from these dogs. They are smart, extremely trainable and handle adverse environments with ease. Kudos to them for this "feat" of outer worldly doggie duties.

But lets not kid ourselves here, the dogs are NOT flying the plane. The yoke is locked and they are simply pushing down left or down right to "steer" the plain. Impressive for the likes of dog... but not flying.

Flying involves so much more than tilting the yoke. Way finding, fuel/weight calculations, the ability to take off and land, stall evasion, emergency outs, the ability to understand weather forecasts and weather patterns, etc, etc, etc.

If the pilot unlocked the yoke those dogs would have nose dived into some English ninnies garden in less time than it would have taken them to eat a treat.

Up voting for the dogs... down voting for the schmaltzy human commentary.

I take issue with the part about birth rates and the 35-year population forecast.

Firstly, the premise that we (Germany) need to stabilise our population level stems primarily from the depopulation of parts of the country, the north-east most of all. However, the cause is not low birth rates. It's urbanisation, which is part and parcel of capitalism. Everything gravitates towards the centres while the rest becomes hinterland to be exploited for resources.

Secondly, population forecasts turn into horseshit real fast. If we were to look at a 35-year forecast created in 1980, we'd miss the reunification, the breakup of Yugoslavia by NATO, about a dozen wars in the Middle East and the destabilisation/desolation in large parts of Southern Europe. Nevermind the EU with all its freedom of movement agreements that were recently suspended.

If we had made a 35-year forecast in 1910... well, you get my point.

Thirdly, Europe is not a singular unity. Our ongoing assault on the economies of Southern Europe (aka austerity) lead to a mass exodus already, Same for the Baltic countries. Unfortunatly, those countries who lost a significant portion of their young and educated over the last years are also the countries who are least equipped to deal with mass immigration in an orderly fashion.

Which brings me to my fourth point: many folks make the argument that we cannot possibly pay for the integration of 800k refugees, much less for 400k a year. Well, we payed for reunification in the most inefficient, corruption-inducing and anti-social way imaginable by piling the cost exclusively on our version of social security. And you know what? It still fucking worked. If Germany can shoulder the cost of reunification, the EU can pay for 2-3 million refugees. End of story.

Finally, we need immigration. Not to maintain population levels, not to even out low birth rates. We need it to not become too homogenous, especially Germany. Too much consensus, too much group think, not enough confrontation and cultural diversity. Shake things up before people start believing their own bullshit again about their own superiority. We've seen it already vis-a-vis Greece.

@eric3579

Does the Polish Six Flags guy look familiar? It's the very same racist imbecile who described the plan to create a unified driver's license across Europe as "Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Ticket" while doing the Nazi salute.

I'd rather have a thousand Syrian refugees than people like him.

It's a discussion we've been having in this country for as long as I can remember and was one of the prime arguments made for a vast set of reforms a decade ago. And I still don't buy it.

At the very basic level, the argument is that a declining percentage of working age people have to pay for an increasing number of pensions. But that's only half the story. The working age population has to generate enough output to sustain not just themselves and retirees, but also children, the unemployed, the sick, anyone not working. A shrinking population means less children, and most importantly less unemployed. Increases in productivity are more than enough to compensate for that, no need to increase birth rates or immigration.

Germany is regularly paraded around as a country in dire need of immigration, given our low birth rate. Even if we ignore for a minute that any 50 year population forecast of the past has been invalidated after maybe 5 years, the "worst" they could conjure up was a decline in working age population of 34% by the year 2060. So what? That's 0.8% a year. And since it's based on a population decline of 20% over the same time, it's an annual drop of 0.2%. That's their worst case scenario, and it's statistical noise.

We've had a massive increase in average age over the last century as well as two world wars and our system managed just fine. And an annual drop of 0.2% is supposed to bring it to its knees? Pah.

Now, I'm all in favour of immigration, primarily to spice things up and prevent our society from becoming too homogeneous. But our pension system needs neither mass immigration nor an increased birth rate. What it needs is for politicians to stop funneling funds from our "PAYGO" system towards their buddies in the private sector. Current income = current payments, public system. Everything else is too volatile and susceptible to the Vampire Squids on Wall Street.

You would not believe how much attention the media over here spend on his appearance and overall attitude. Shaves his head, doesn't tug his shirt in, doesn't wear a tie, drives a motorcycle... a rockstar by every measure.

There were regular forecasts that the chicken would come home to roost for him any day now; that the public would recognise his responsibility in their suffering and that they would turn against them.

And every single time, the public cheered him on even more. The press couldn't understand it at all. What a glorious fella he is, throwing the entire establishment out of balance like this. Maybe someone should project his face onto the ECB monstrocity in Frankfurt at night, just to rub it in.

Anyways, I don't have a clue why he resigned. There are several rumours, but beyond that, nothing solid.

As for the comments: they are my way of processing my rage. Doesn't work particularly well though, I'm still pissed off. But it's nice to hear that it provides a different perspective for some folks.

Not actually weird because the twain are irrelated.

Hotness is for newly-submitted videos forecast to be something many people will want to see. Top 15 is for videos that achieve lots of votes during their first 3 days of being published, regardless of how long ago they were initially submitted.

@gorillaman

Why would we need to quintuple resources by 2100 if population is only forecast to grow 50%? There is no shortage of potential arable land and more would be made room for if food prices were to rise (bringing them back down).

As I said before, I'm not debating environmental damage and climate change need to be addressed. But you address it directly, you don't attempt to reduce the world population to <1Bn ... somehow, like you propose.

No, corporations primarily do cause environmental harm, particularly climate change:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change

That's why changing their incentives directly through taxes or emission schemes is the best approach. I would almost say that attempting to reduce your carbon footprint at a individual level is an exercise in self masturbatory indulgence, which while gratifying is completely insignificant. It's the by-products of all the everyday products that you consume during the industrial process that create the vast majority or pollutants.

3rd paragraph - I've already addressed everything there several times here. You simply are not acknowledging the facts:

http://priceofoil.org/2013/11/26/new-analysis-shows-growing-fossil-reserves-shrinking-carbon-budget/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2013/nov/26/why-fossil-fuel-reserves-growing-oil-carbon

Does our current reliance on carbon based energy precipitate environmental issues with regards to global warming in the future? Obviously, but an international agreement on raising the cost of it, to reduce our reliance on it, is more likely than an agreement on enforced family size limits.

I'm advocating passivity because I don't recognise overpopulation as a threat, more an inconvenience, and one that we couldn't really prevent even if we wanted to.

I don't see what's preposterous or optimistic about taking widely accepted birth rate data and projecting based off that. Birth rates are predictable and stable sampled over a large population. The data consistently shows that as societies come out of poverty, their birth rates fall. The only assumption here is that there isn't another GFC event that hinders growth which at this point is not particularly likely.

All taken into account we already know it's plateauing, and have known for decades. This isn't a hypothesis, it's happening right now. Unless you can show me why this trend will suddenly and irrevocably reverse, despite population data being incredibly stable and predictable historically, it seems the onus is on you to explain why you're so pessimistic.

Again, I think you're still conflating (1) what I want / whether it's bad versus (2) whether it could plausibly be stopped. I would also rather live in a less populated world. At current rates of technology and resource utilisation, things would be cheaper, there'd be more to go around. Reality is not like that. But as I said before, every policy focus has an opportunity cost. I don't see a plateauing population as a threat and I would rather see that effort devoted to poverty which will help reduce it anyway.

We're nowhere near an economic bubble. Maybe a short term stock market valuation bubble right now, but there's plenty of economic under-utilisation in the US and Europe, and China and other developing countries have decades to grow.

The term technological bubble is a bit nonsensical. You can have a technology sector bubble but actual physical technology which works now, will not magically stop working tomorrow based on inflated expectations. If you're saying instead we'll reach some cusp of innovation, well people have predicting that for decades.

We're nowhere near a peak oil event. Every time people say current known reserves are dwindling, they either (1) discover a huge reserve in under developed countries that were previously not surveyed (Africa and parts of SE Asia at the moment), or (2) something like fraking comes along which unlocks new supply. The US is forecast to be the largest oil exporter by 2020 based on that second point.

Hell, I'll play devil's advocate with you. Suppose we do reach a glut. We'll know this at least a decade ahead based on dwindling new reserve discoveries. The price of energy will leap up far, far ahead of us running out. That will spur innovation in more efficient sources of energy and will incentivise both individuals and businesses to be more energy efficient. A gradual adjustment like I've talked about endlessly here. Why am I wrong?

Environmental damage is a different issue and something that I agree needs to actually be addressed. I'm sure if you search back through my posts you'll see me talking about the economic rationale of addressing this directly when corporations who pollute aren't subject to the negative externalities that they impose in our current capitalist system and that will inherently create issues. Hopefully countries will take note of the smog clouds in China's big cities.

This is ridiculous...In California, a 4.4 earthquake should not make the news at all. Instead, it was all they talked about all morning. Funny enough, the 6.6 that hit my area around 2 weeks ago hardly made the news at all...as it should be. There was no major damage or injury, so get over it.

What is this trend happening where local (and national) news organizations freak out about any tiny thing (Like the 'OMG, run for the hills, there's 1/2 " of snow forecast for tomorrow...we'll stick with this story for the next 2 days straight instead of our usual programming to keep you informed on the impending snowpocolypse.' stories of last month)? It seems like they're stretching for any story they can fabricate to distract from the fact that they no longer report 'news' or do any 'investigation' whatsoever, and then acting like their BS stories are the most important story of the century. Time to switch to PBS I guess.

I was sipping on a Whiskey when I got the call
Yeah my friend Lex was lying in the hospital
She'd been pretty sick for about half a year
But it seems liked this time the end was drawing near
So dropped my plans and jumped the next London train
I found her laid up and in a lot of pain
Her eyes met mine and then I understood
That her weather forecast wasn't looking too good
So I sat and spun her stories for a little while
Tried to raise her mood and tried to raise a smile
But she silenced all my rambling with a shake of her head
Drew me close and listen this is what she said now

"You'll live to dance another day,
it's just now you'll have to dance, for the two of us,
so stop looking so damn depressed
and sing with all your heart that the Queen is dead"

Yeah she told me she was sick of all the hospital food
And of doctors, distant relatives, draining her blood
She said "I know I'm dying, but I'm not finished just yet,
I am dying for a drink and for a cigarette"
So we hatched a plan to book ourselves a cheap hotel
In the centre of the City and to raise some Hell
They waste to all the clubs and then when everyone else is long asleep
We know we're good and done

"You'll live to dance another day,
it's just now you'll have to dance, for the two of us,
so stop looking so damn depressed
and sing with all your heart that the Queen is dead"
And South London's not the same anymore
The Queen is dead, and the last of the great has finally gone to bed

Well I was working on some words when Sarah called me up
She said that Lex had gone asleep and wasn't waking up
And even though I knew that there was nothing to be done
I felt bad for not being there and now, well, she was gone
So I tried to think what Lex would want me to do
At times like this when I was feeling blue
So I gathered up some friends to spread the sad sad news
And we headed to the City for a drink or two
And we sang

"We live to dance another day,
it's just now we have to dance for one more of us,
so stop looking so damn depressed,
and sing with all our hearts, long live the Queen"

strategic forecasting.. one call and i made it.

Al the vigilant commando.
What's the forecast today Al?
"Hot and humid with a 30% chance of shart".