He is, but he is clear that he thinks Islam is the worst, most violent misogynistic and intolerant. I say that’s equally true of all religions at different times.

While I do like that he can see when his team goes off the deep end, where that line lies has steadily moved to the right as he aged. I’ve been watching him since before he had a tv show. I live in CA, and I don’t have the issues he complains most about….of course I don’t live in the most expensive, most regulated county in CA like he does. He complained for years about getting permits for his solar system and blamed the liberal government, I got my permits in one day with no issue at all.

My biggest peeve is that, even though he’s been a professional comedian for over 40 years, he still doesn’t understand that a groan/clap is approval for a joke in bad taste or particularly pointed. It bugs the shit out of me when he gets mad his crowd groaned while applauding and laughing.

We actually started HBO to watch him there…but he’s changed so much we often don’t bother anymore. I rarely recognize his panel anymore too. New Rules is definitely the highlight of the show these days.

Made me wonder, how many steps (geographically/ scale) can be made starting with the universe and ending at a residential address?

(edit)
Universe
Super Cluster
Cluster
Local Group
Solar System
Planet
Continent
Country
State
County
City
Neighborhood
address
(may not apply to everywhere i'd assume)

That's my best stab at it. Do tell if it's not correct in some way.

If you count the total costs, remove government subsidies and exemptions from ecological laws, there are few more expensive ways to generate energy than oil and coal today.

Turbines, solar, wave, tidal, and geothermal are all insanely cheaper today when you count the whole cost, not just the price at the meter. Have been for decades. My solar system paid for itself in about 8 years.

"ARE coming"

Eratosthenes actually knew from local lore that the sun shone directly down a well at modern day Aswan, in Egypt, on the summer solstice. On the same day at noon he measured the sun's angle using a vertical stick at Alexandria.

Well explained here: https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/big-history-project/solar-system-and-earth/knowing-solar-system-earth/a/eratosthenes-of-cyrene

Way too long, didn't watch, but I must disagree with the description.
Population control is hardly removed from the debate. IMO it's just ignored when it's brought up because the vast majority of people won't even consider not having children to the point where when China tried to take action and limit couples to one child the world called them draconian monsters instead of intelligent.
I personally often say I think every problem facing humanity and the planet is a function of overpopulation, and I'm not alone. I admit, I'm rare in that I put my money where my mouth is and had a vasectomy in my twenties before having children. I'm of the belief that no other action could possibly have the positive effect that not adding to the population does, but I also bought a full solar system over a decade back and try to grow most of my own food, and I drive well under 5000 miles a year.
There's no reason to abandon population control in favor of technological fixes or vice versa, indeed I believe maximising both won't fully solve our issues that have taken over a century to create, but I also believe not acting in every way possible to mitigate our damages leads to certain doom for most species.
I also think none of this will make a whit of difference in the grand scheme because way too many people have decided making any lifestyle sacrifices or not wastefully living above their means is intolerable even if it means their children suffer for it.

@bcglorf Here's a tome for you....


It's certainly not (the only way). Converting to green energy sources stimulates the economy, it doesn't bankrupt it, and it makes it more efficient in the future thanks to lower energy costs. My solar system paid for itself in 8 years, giving me an expected 12 years of free electricity and hot water. Right wingers would tell you it will never pay for itself....utter bullshit.

Every gap in our knowledge I've ever seen that we have filled with data has made the estimates worse. Every one. Every IPCC report has raised the severity and shrunk the timeframe from the last report....but you stand on the last one that they admit was optimistic and incomplete by miles as if it's the final word and a gold standard. It just isn't. They themselves admit this.

The odds of catastrophic climate change is 100% in the next 0 years for many who have already died or been displaced by rising seas or famine or disease or lack of water or...... and that goes for all humanity in the next 50 because those who survive displacement will be refugees on the rest's doorsteps. Don't be ridiculous. If we found an asteroid guaranteed to hit in the next 50-100 years, and any possible solutions take a minimum of 50 years to implement with no surprises, and only then assuming we solve the myriad of technical issues we haven't solved in the last 100 years of trying and only if we can put the resources needed into a solution, not considering the constantly worsening barrage of smaller asteroids and the effects on resources and civilisation, we would put all our resources into solutions. That's where I think we are, except we still have many claiming there's no asteroid coming and those that already hit are fake news....including those in the highest offices making the decisions.

Every IPCC report has vastly underestimated their projections, they tell you they are doing it, only including data they are certain of, not new measurements or functions. They do not fill in the gaps, they leave them empty. Gaps like methane melt that could soon be more of a factor than human CO2, and 100% out of our control.

The AR5 report is so terrible, it was lambasted from day one as being incredibly naive and optimistic, and for not including what was then new data. Since its release, those complaints have been proven to be correct, in 5 years since its release ice melt rates have accelerated 60 years by their model. I wouldn't put a whit of confidence in it, it was terrible then, near criminally bad today. I'll take NOAA's estimates based on much newer science and guess that they, like nearly all others in the past, also don't know everything and are also likely underestimating wildly. Even the IPCC AR5 report includes the possibility of 3 ft rise by 2100 under their worst case (raised another 10% in this 2019 report, and expected to rise again by 2021, their next report), and their worst case models show less heat and melting than we are measuring already and doesn't include natural feedbacks because they can't model them accurately yet so just left them out (but noted they will have a large effect, but it's not quantitative yet so not included). Long and short, their worst case scenario is likely optimistic as reality already outpaces their worst case models.

Again, the economy benefits from new energy production in multiple ways. Exxon is not the global economy.

It took 100 years for the impact of our pollution to be felt by most (some still ignore it today). Even the short term features like methane take 25+ years to run their cycles, so what we do today takes that long to start working.

If people continue to drag their feet and challenge the science with supposition, insisting the best case scenario of optimistic studies are the worst we should plan for, we're doomed....and what they're doing is actually worse than that. The power plants built or under construction today put us much higher than 1.5 degree rise by 2100 with their expected emissions without ever building 1 more, and we're building more. Without fantastic scientific breakthroughs that may never come, breakthroughs your plan relies on for our survival, what we've already built puts us beyond the IPCC worst case in their operational lifetimes.

There's a problem with that...I'm good with using real science to identify them without political obstruction and confusion, the difference being we need to be prepared for decisive action once they're identified. So far, we have plans to develop those actions, but that's it. In the event of a "surprise" asteroid, we're done. We just hope they're rare.
This one, however, is an asteroid that is guaranteed to hit if we do nothing, some say hit in 30 years, some say 80. Only morons say it won't hit at all, do nothing.
Climate change is an asteroid/comet in our orbit that WILL hit earth. We are already being hit by ejecta from it's coma causing disasters for millions. You suggest we don't start building a defense until we are certain of it's exact tonnage and the date it will crash to earth because it's expensive and our data incomplete. That plan leaves us too late to change the trajectory. The IPCC said we need to deploy our system in 8-10 years to have a 30-60% chance of changing the trajectory under perfect conditions....you seem to say "wait, that's expensive, let's give it some time and ignore that deadline". I say even just a continent killer is bad enough to do whatever it takes to stop, because it's cheaper with less loss of life and infinitely less suffering than a 'wait and see exactly when it will kill us, we might have space elevators in 10 years so it might only kill 1/2 of us and the rest might survive that cometary winter in space (yes at exponentially higher cost and loss of life and ecology than developing the system today, but that won't be on my dime so Fuck it).' attitude.

"That's more than the number of stars in the solar system"

You don't say!

Uh, what? Nobody said that at all. It is neither a "classic example" nor an assumption. The trajectory has been tracked since it was discovered, which is hyperbolic around the sun, and the speed of the object is such that there is no way it could have accelerated to its current velocity due to the gravity of our sun alone, hence it has to be interstellar, picking up kinetic energy from another system outside of our own. The orbit is not improbable, it is unusual compared to trajectories of asteroids that exist within our own solar system. Sharpen your crayon there bud, and stop trying to impress people with your new thesaurus for hipsters (come on, "undergird"?? Really?)

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I totally agree with her that environmental concerns turn "conservatives" off on any argument (funny, since it's conservation of the environment that they can't abide).
I think she should also be using financial phrases, because done properly, renewable energy saves you money in the long run. My solar system, for instance, paid for itself in the first 8 years of an expected 20 year lifespan, so I get 12 years of 'free' electricity and ignoring rate hikes, but most right wingers would claim it will never pay for itself and is nothing more than pie in the sky hippy fantasy because that's what Alex Jones and his ilk told them.
Showing people that being responsible will actually save them large sums of money is the number one way to convince them to change their behaviors, it's far more effective than any philosophical arguments. It's the main reason I bought my system, and is also a main reason I want an electric car.

Side note: the 'sit in your car in your garage' argument is the same one I use against anti-smokers. I tell them, "you sit in the car you drove here in to complain about some smoke with a hose from the tail pipe going into the window, I'll sit in my car smoking, and we'll see who dies first.". This is to illustrate that their complaints about the dangers of smoke are ridiculous and negligible compared to their own polluting behaviors.

Few points...

We have no options for serious load shifting to utilise all that solar power in the evenings when it would make a difference. And power companies refuse to trust it for baseload power, so they still generate what they estimate they need for base load,and pay for rapid generation to handle spikes. Most electricity generated from home solar in Aus is wasted.

Without battery backups, the best production of the day goes to the energy company for 8 cents, and we buy back power from them (generated by coal of course) at night for 36 cents. Our energy companies aren't going to pay a premium for power they really don't give a crap about.

Most panels in Aus face north/east, to generate the largest amount of energy. When most people aren't home to use it. Instead, panels should face north/west to generate the most power in the afternoon when we come home from work/fire up air conditioners/start cooking etc. And even then, the power than is generated is but a fraction of what is consumed during peak periods due to the setting sun.

Annnnd most people in Australia do not even check their systems to see if they're still doing anything... It's estimated 14% of all home solar systems are currently non-functional due to faulty panels, inverter or both.

Until the point in time comes when energy companies can create a way to load shift solar production to ensure continuity of power, or household power storage units pricing comes down enough to be viable, non industrial solar in Australia is mostly feel good propaganda.

And while a number of coal plants have closed recently, it's not due to lack of demand as solar take up reduces requirement for coal fired power... It's because the plants are not viable any more to run and owners do not want to run at a loss. Each one that closes represents a significant portion of our overall generation being lost, with no core plan for continuity (wind and solar are not being considered as a core strategy currently).

I'm all for saving the planet, but the science/facts on solar outweigh the feel goods. Perhaps instead of patting ourselves on the back, we should be thinking about a better plan.

This trailer misses the exact thing that No Man's Sky trailers realized - you have to show the transition in scale. If you want to impress, you need to seamlessly transition from surface to orbit to solar system to galaxy. If you don't do that, the celestial objects just look like balls with high res textures and the surface shots look like Bryce 3D renders, but there's nothing to connect them.

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Aliens with the tech to get here from another solar system would mop us up.

We simply couldn't fight that.

Back in the '70s scientists came up with a space weapon they called THOR, which is essentially a crowbar-sized bit of metal that has guidance fins at the back. Drop that from outer space and the simple energy of it falling creates an immense amount of damage at ground level.

Aliens who could get here from another solar system could simply throw chunks of asteroid at our cities until we capitulated. No space laser is going to stop that. Especially when they'd have space lasers of their OWN to target our space lasers.

This whole thing is pure fantasy. The same kind of diseased minds who believe in God, Ghosts, and Donald Trump's fitness to be President.