Maybe someone can figure out why HackerNews is such a hotbed of climate change denial? On the surface of it, there is no obvious connection between that and the usual subjects discussed here.
Oh this is very interesting. It is relevant for a P2P network architecture that I am working on. Thanks a trillion times for posting this -- I don't get enough time to keep up-to-date with what's being done in the academic world.
glad to see a climate change post that is not denial, which seems to be the hallmark of nickb/pg and other horatio algers hellbent on selling you a rosy future.
I don't know whether the numbers in the post are correct since I'm still hoping for a sub 450 solution and can't be bothered for the moment to consider other scenarios.
in any case lets not forget that all that desertification and other ways of fucking with nature (ocean acidification!) means NO FOOD for x% of the world's population, i.e. mass starvation.
most "industrialized" folks somehow seem to suffer from some irrational smugness that they won't be part of those x%.
I live where climate change based desertification started 10 years ago. in sudan it's already killed 100,000+ people. in california it only started 3 years ago so people are still in denial.
Complaints like this turn up ever so often, but I guess Paul is still bitter about losing the popularity contest back in high school (http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html) and now wants to create a popularity contest that's geared towards him winning from the get-go. Can't keep him from doing that, all we can do is ignore the mods.
Both Bussard and his most likely competitor, Eric Lerner, have done presentations on Google Tech Talks, you can find them on Google video. Bussard died the other day unfortunately. Lerner's technology, Focus Fusion, seemed a more likely candidate anyway, in his talk he briefly mentions how much closer he is than Bussard to achieving fusion.
Funny, the two most common labels I am hearing these days are not on the list: 'liberal' and 'conservative'. In political discussions a lot of ideas are suppressed - or at least verbally dismissed - using these labels.