I understand, and "pollution per capita" is a logical argument. But from my point of view there are some critical problems and many flaws with following such reasoning. For example:

The US isn't the greatest emitter of Co2 per capita, but when that's brought up...the argument falls back to emissions in absolute terms. Many would say that that's hypocritical.

Wealth inequality is particularly bad in the US, with the top 20% of the population holding upwards of 88% of all wealth (while the total wealth of individuals isn't GDP, it does correlate with income flow). Doesn't this skew GDP per capita, holding the poor in the US to an unfair standard, vis a vis emissions? If it doesn't, then how is it unfair to poor, rural Chinese?

No international organizations agree on the definition of a "developing" country. Without this, aren't these types of arguments extremely subjective and open to abuse? The point being that there are very, very few "apples-to-apples" comparisons available. For example, would it be a fair comparison if I told you that China's per capita Co2 emissions exceeded the per capita emissions of the EU starting back in 2014?

But you're right...in that the US has polluted the most in absolute terms historically (with China catching up pretty fast). We didn't have a "God-given" right to do it; for most of it, we didn't even know that "it" (Co2) was a pollutant.

You're also right that as individual Americans we have more power to demand change. I understand and accept the dangers of climate change, and I very much want to do something about it. This is why I'm so frustrated with our current administration.

I just want you to understand that I'm not strictly pro-US and/or anti-China. In my opinion, climate change is giving us one resource to either take advantage of or to squander. That resource is time. And time isn't going to make accommodations for any nation, big or small, rich or poor.

This is why I'm troubled by a government like the CCP, that has plans to accelerate their emissions. We know better now (re. Co2), and so such actions on their part are unreasonably selfish. They know their actions will likely hurt or kill all of us, and yet they continue...with the hope that other nations will sacrifice so much as to be properly weakened while they themselves are strengthened.

I understand that in a perfect world, we'd have an equality of outcome. Wouldn't that be great? But we don't have the time left to make most of South America, much of Asia and virtually all of Africa economic equals. What we can do is get our own emissions down to as close to zero as possible, and help these nations build up an infrastructure using green energy. In this way, maybe we can try to foster at least an equality of opportunity energy-wise. The Chinese government has the funds to not only fully transform their own nation, but also to help to some degree in the aforementioned global initiative. But instead of being honestly proactive, they're creating a new cold-war mindset. This is not only wasting time, but also resources (both their own and those of the US in seeking to maintain their strategic edge militarily) that could be better used to help the less fortunate.

So what do we do? Well, I'm not entirely sure. But I can tell you that having other countries paint the US as a villain in this issue, and China as a saint certainly isn't helping.

sanctions could only bring a new cold war like state of affairs, not a resolution of this crisis. I believe Putin won't recall troops from Crimea until he plays that card at the negotiating table, probably demanding Ukraine abstains itself from any alliance with NATO or some shit like that ...

The solution will be that someone will come up with better encryption/ways to confuse/overload the servers that classify all this shit they are piling up etc. It's a new cold war between freedom and control except it's not nation vs nation, it's the people vs their governments...

*brief Short, but great.

This truly is one of the most amazing CME or Filament eruptions I've ever seen. I personally think this is, literally, the BEST I've witnessed. It's mesmerizing and AMAZING to watch... Truly an amazing dance of high energy Physics with extremely powerful forces of Physics also at play, making this little dance all come together; much like the beautiful loops of plasma formed over sunspots as the plasma flows from the negative flow sunspot it's positive brother. This flow between these two areas create magnificent loops of plasma above the Sun's surface sometimes stable for awhile until there is a magnetic reconnection, which in turn creates the stunning filament that was created in the southeastern area (which now has rotated towards us and is more central southern area) of the Sun and then shooting off into space in many directions. All thanks to NASA's SDO satellite that took this amazing video (and photos; there is also a FAR bigger array of things that the little satellite got: scientific readings at several time increments, photos in every energy frequency you want basically, same with video, and other assorted stuff--it REALLY IS the little satellite that CAN do, it has shown time and time again that NASA knew what they were doing when they made it and they have lived up to their reputation of exceeding the standard of excellence that is expected of them--JUST LIKE the now infamous Curiosity rover; GO NASA).

P.S.- This is off-topic, but here it goes anyway... There is a great need for us to overhaul our education system, there have been so many examples lately that show the need for more science/engineering students from/in the United Sates. Which right now just isn't happening. The U.S. superiority complex is losing to ITSELF, mostly thanks to idiotic Bible-thumping Republicans/Tea-Party members. Just look at what NASA has done in the last 10 years with the small and ridiculous budget they have--the same people that once put men on the Moon and created a HUGE amount of new devices (like the MRI, just for a quick example; there's a huge list somewhere--NASA happens to be one of the only government agencies that uses its money, files patents, and then the U.S. creates a consumer version that makes quite a bit of money...). NASA has a PERFECT Curiosity landing, a landing that was extremely complicated and...well, awesome. A team like that would make use of EVERY PENNY, better than a bank could. Sadly our government is delusional along with the citizens who almost believe sometimes that NASA should just be zeroed out. BUT, I think NASA of course deserves 20 or 30 times the money it receives. We, in HOW we treat our own REMARKABLE, admired, and talked of world wide Space Program, make ourselves look like the idiots we are (atleast the ones that deserve that statement). If Obama wants to do something interesting he should raise NASA's budget by quite a bit, as Mitt has made it clear that he plans to just raise the military's already bloated beyond definition ("We're a hyperpower...") budget and to possibly engage in two wars, plus a second and brand-new Cold War with Putin's Russia.

>> ^blankfist:

Let me try my top 21 predictions for the next decade! A lot of this will be US centric.
1. HDTV dimensions will increased from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160.
2. Screens will be increased to print pixel depths. 300dpi is only the beginning.
3. An affordable, flexible LCD material will change the tech and advertising world. Maybe the material can be cut to fit any size?
4. The war in Iraq will be over. But the occupation will last for decades. Other wars in the Middle East will continue.
5. Sarah Palin will never be President.
6. The US Deficit will grow to a historical high. As the Dollar and the Renminbi compete for world currency a new Cold War will be declared.
7. Top 40 music will suck.
8. The browser will be integrated as part of the OS and no longer treated as just software. Your work software (IDEs, Microsoft Word, Excel, etc.) will be treated as online plug-ins, savable (with versioning) in the cloud.
9. Electricity will be wireless.
10. Reality Shows will be the new sitcom. Again.
11. China's working class will stage small worker union revolts, but the scale and number will be dramatically inflated by the media.
12. Tommy Lee Jones, Adam Ant, Joel Coen, Matt Groening, Bill Clinton, Lorne Michaels, Sam Elliot, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Steve Jobs and Roy Scheider. One of them will probably pass away.
13. Google will acquire Facebook.
14. Apple's stock will drop if Jobs passes away. They'll try to embody the innovate spirit of Jobs, but they'll miss the mark and stick to just updating the current products like iPod, iPhone, Macbooks, etc.
15. There will be an assassination attempt on a Congressman. Congress will pass into law the Vigilant Act that declares DC to "be at war". As a result no civilians except current residents are permitted to enter. Under the Act any type of search and seizure in DC is legal. To counteract the bad press, the America Museum is opened in Virginia.
16. GM will file for bankruptcy.
17. Like the huge increase in gas prices as become part of day for the US, the people will grow accustomed to the high rate of unemployment. Politicians will no longer talk about gas prices or unemployment.
18. Marijuana is legalized in three states. It's legalized for medicinal use in seventeen states.
19. Autism is linked to the artificial sweetener, Aspartame.
20. Most internet enabled TVs and projectors become equipped with a'la carte system of channel ordering. So you only buy what channels you want streamed to your tv.
21. A new phone technology is developed that works a lot like bit torrent. The phone's signal piggy backs off other phones in the area, and the more phones in an area the better the signal. Most people, however, turn this feature off because it's rumored to be a security weakness.


To answer a select few points:

1. I thought 4k displays would be up next? (4096×3072; as a coder I hate widescreens. I need horizontal screen real estate).
3. This will happen sooner than we'd like
7. When did it not?
9. See 3.
Addendum to 21: We will see a surge of private networks, linked by VPNs and shared by friends; mostly done by people trying to run away from all the crass advertisements and data gathering schemes in the net today.

Let me try my top 21 predictions for the next decade! A lot of this will be US centric.

1. HDTV dimensions will increased from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160.

2. Screens will be increased to print pixel depths. 300dpi is only the beginning.

3. An affordable, flexible LCD material will change the tech and advertising world. Maybe the material can be cut to fit any size?

4. The war in Iraq will be over. But the occupation will last for decades. Other wars in the Middle East will continue.

5. Sarah Palin will never be President.

6. The US Deficit will grow to a historical high. As the Dollar and the Renminbi compete for world currency a new Cold War will be declared.

7. Top 40 music will suck.

8. The browser will be integrated as part of the OS and no longer treated as just software. Your work software (IDEs, Microsoft Word, Excel, etc.) will be treated as online plug-ins, savable (with versioning) in the cloud.

9. Electricity will be wireless.

10. Reality Shows will be the new sitcom. Again.

11. China's working class will stage small worker union revolts, but the scale and number will be dramatically inflated by the media.

12. Tommy Lee Jones, Adam Ant, Joel Coen, Matt Groening, Bill Clinton, Lorne Michaels, Sam Elliot, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Steve Jobs and Roy Scheider. One of them will probably pass away.

13. Google will acquire Facebook.

14. Apple's stock will drop if Jobs passes away. They'll try to embody the innovate spirit of Jobs, but they'll miss the mark and stick to just updating the current products like iPod, iPhone, Macbooks, etc.

15. There will be an assassination attempt on a Congressman. Congress will pass into law the Vigilant Act that declares DC to "be at war". As a result no civilians except current residents are permitted to enter. Under the Act any type of search and seizure in DC is legal. To counteract the bad press, the America Museum is opened in Virginia.

16. GM will file for bankruptcy.

17. Like the huge increase in gas prices as become part of day for the US, the people will grow accustomed to the high rate of unemployment. Politicians will no longer talk about gas prices or unemployment.

18. Marijuana is legalized in three states. It's legalized for medicinal use in seventeen states.

19. Autism is linked to the artificial sweetener, Aspartame.

20. Most internet enabled TVs and projectors become equipped with a'la carte system of channel ordering. So you only buy what channels you want streamed to your tv.

21. A new phone technology is developed that works a lot like bit torrent. The phone's signal piggy backs off other phones in the area, and the more phones in an area the better the signal. Most people, however, turn this feature off because it's rumored to be a security weakness.

Hey dag -- as I posted on your post:

Holy out of sync batman! I'm calling *dead even if it's just kinda busted. Dag, you can either fix it with this -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K_LZDXp0I -- or I will when able. XOXO.

I'll be happy if you do it yourself -- the sooner to have it on my amazing new Cold War playlist!

You know, I'll be the first to admit that there are SO many thing happening behind the scenes that we don't know about. However, this bullshit stinks of *lies so badly that I don't even know where to start.

A new Cold War has already started, so all the intrigues have begun anew. If the US was involved in any way with the Georgian conflict I won't be completely surprised, but let's not give Putin the benefit of the doubt either. The guy is former KGB, so he's a natural born liar. Just like a certain former Director of Central Intelligence.

I posed the same question to my dad's friend who is a proud Russian patriot, he said that the nation is prosperous but is again sliding in to the same political system that was prevalent in the USSR.

This is something reflected now in the way Russia is dealing with Iran and Georgia. I still believe the economy is over reliant on oil and gas pipeline control from Central Asian nations going into European markets. Alternative pipeline development in Georgia is a reason I believe Russia is meddling in it's affairs, as an alternative gas line from Central Asia to Europe would hinder Russia's ability to control the market to it's benefit as it has been trying to do with Ukraine.

Economy development is nice and all but it doesn't correlate directly with political and democratic freedom, at the same time that Russia's economy is developing we have an entrenchment of power via the Nashi / United Russia Party. Putin's role in bringing Russia back has been hyped up, when in reality they are benefits of difficult economic decisions made by people under Yeltsin, which Putin reaped politically. Economic development has also been centralized in Moscow, its not like Serbia or any other Russian backwater is better off now on the same level.

People in Russia didn't want Putin to leave actually, he didn't change the constitution to validate a third term, but am sure he will after Medvedev is done, to me that is basically the return of the politburo in the high echelons of power in the Kremlin.

My view is pessimistic, as Putin represents that most dangerous element of human psyche, someone raised in the mystique and power of the old Soviet Union, trained by the KGB to watch it all collapse in 1991, now working to build up its power once again but not through democratization but through a return to centralized power.

This is of course the same kind of Managed Democracy we see in China, and every former Soviet State. The important factor uniting them being the illusion of simple 'consumer' freedom.

In reply to this comment by EDD:
In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
I disagree with you Legacy, Putin is centralizing power under himself thus its a authoritarian regime. History proves that too much power concentrated in one singular person always leads to a collapse not a sprout of growth and progress. This is why Nazi Germany failed, why the USSR failed and why every despotic regime fails.

Furthermore it is not economic stability when a country is wholly dependent on its oil export revenue to sustain a military expansion that is slowly leading into a new cold war.

I'd really like to super-promote your comment right now.

Although to be fair, legacy had some valid claims - at least the idea that a civic society in Russia would eventually arise through strong consumer society is backed up by Dmitri Trenin's Getting Russia Right, which I am currently in the process of finishing translating.

Hope I'm not bothering too much by following up on old comments. If you're not bothered too much, what's your take on Russia nowadays - up or down? How likely we really lapse into a new cold war with all the recent bs going on?

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
I disagree with you Legacy, Putin is centralizing power under himself thus its a authoritarian regime. History proves that too much power concentrated in one singular person always leads to a collapse not a sprout of growth and progress. This is why Nazi Germany failed, why the USSR failed and why every despotic regime fails.

Furthermore it is not economic stability when a country is wholly dependent on its oil export revenue to sustain a military expansion that is slowly leading into a new cold war.

I'd really like to super-promote your comment right now.

Although to be fair, legacy had some valid claims - at least the idea that a civic society in Russia would eventually arise through strong consumer society is backed up by Dmitri Trenin's Getting Russia Right, which I am currently in the process of finishing translating.

Hope I'm not bothering too much by following up on old comments. If you're not bothered too much, what's your take on Russia nowadays - up or down? How likely we really lapse into a new cold war with all the recent bs going on?

The thing with preemption is, how far do you preempt things? Some say that Russia is rebuilding itself right now and engaging in new cold war, the same is said of China. Could preemption of either of this nations benefit the US? Especially with China the case could be built as it's a communist nation...

I think culturally the Japanese people were different because of the acts of the Emperor of Japan to lull the nation into accepting occupational forces. I don't think the same would have happened with a preempted attack.

The whole attack on Pearl Harbor was not a success entirely, while alot of ships were destroyed the aircraft carriers were not, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto the mastermind of Pearl Harbor, is believed to have said "I'm afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with terrible resolve".

WTF is McCain doing?! Pandaing to the Christian community - way to go fucktard - and now every other faith is going to be *very* comfortable with you in charge...

You can have any religion, worship any god, but this is not a criteria from running a country...

I can't believe an American running for President doesn't know basic fucking history of his own country.

The rest of the world is laughing at McCain, Dont forget his http://www.videosift.com/video/McCain-knows-his-presidents "meeting with germanys leader"

Oh, and this guy also wants to start a new Cold War with Russia, by kicking them out of G8

Way to Go McCain - isolate America from the world - Thats change...no, wait thats the bush administrations policy...

Also, George W Bush said "God wants everyone to be free...in fact,...erm...its part of my foreign policy"

McBush for 2008! hehe, de doesn't like that either much eh?

Anti-satellite weapons are very important to someone trying to disrupt a modern fighting force like the US forces, which are highly reliant on network centric warfare through GPS to coordinate its ground, air and sea power in any campaign.

China was the first nation to shoot down a satellite a few years ago, this of course spooked the US as it meant its GPS system could be taken out at will in a possible future naval conformation between China and Taiwan.

Since then the US has been itching to do the same, and now they did. AST weapons could mean a new cold war in space weaponization between super powers. In fact though many nations and members of the security council of the UN have signed countless treaties banning the weaponization of space, nothing was said about weapons designed to take out spy satellites or GPS satellites.

I expect the Star Wars program to resume soon as well.

I disagree with you Legacy, Putin is centralizing power under himself thus its a authoritarian regime. History proves that too much power concentrated in one singular person always leads to a collapse not a sprout of growth and progress. This is why Nazi Germany failed, why the USSR failed and why every despotic regime fails.

Furthermore it is not economic stability when a country is wholly dependent on its oil export revenue to sustain a military expansion that is slowly leading into a new cold war.