Wrath of Dagon

Considering that it's well known Pakistan sponsors the Haqanni network in Afghanistan, any treachery on their part shouldn't be surprising to anyone.

Did you pay for the article? (I didn't) The abstract for the article only states an estimate of 20,000 for 2009, not 2006. No, I didn't pay. 7000 in 2006 is what it says in the abstract, unless we're somehow looking at different articles. Edit: sorry, I followed the link from the Wikipedia article, I see you actually linked to the update with the 2009 number. No one here said such a thing. I will certainly grant it more credence, however, than a poster with an agenda on an internet message board that makes a loaded post with an implication to the seriousness of the environmental impact wind generators have on bird populations simply by posting that, in fact, a bird was killed by a wind generator (all the while downplaying things like oilspills because they are accidents, not a part of normal operation). That's a lot to surmise from my simply posting an ironic news story. Don't know enough to answer that question, not sure anyone does. It does however bring up the point that when claiming an energy source is "clean", especially with low intensity sources, one has to consider the energy cost and environmental impact of construction, maintenance and decommissioning of that energy source, and not just view it as perfect source of clean energy. For example, a study was done that building an electric car takes so much extra energy that the only way energy is saved if that car is driven for many years at long distances, which few are because of their limited range. Also corn ethanol, although considered "renewable", actually takes about as much energy to produce as it provides. In general, if something costs a lot more, it's because it consumes a lot more resources, thus the desirability to have the market determine which energy sources win out, as those are likely to be the most efficient.

Part of me has to ask "If it causes more damage than the windmills, do we care if it's an accident?" (Note the word "if" as I don't actually know the numbers). There is also situations such as when wildlife enters tailing ponds of oilsands extractions (as an Albertan, this topic comes up a fair bit): http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2010/10/26/edmonton-more-ducks-tailings-pond.html This article refers to 230 dead ducks, although it does reference an incident that happened in 2008 where 1600 ducks were killed by landing in a tailing pond, although in both cases you could rule it as an "accident" as well. I did a google for "birds killed at power plant" and ended up at the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power#Ecology Whether or not "per Gigawatt Hour" is the best form of measurement is something I can't really agree nor disagree with. I could see having more wind power generators altering this number, but it could just as easily be an improvement as a decrease for me as I'm just guessing. A paper was written in 2009, here, that appears to conclude that wind power generators are safer for birds than fossil fuel power generators, although states that additional research is required. This was the source for the Wikipedia articles numbers. Ok, the study you linked (published in 2009) estimates in 2006 7000 birds were killed by wind turbines in the US, while the same Wikipedia article states that a US government estimate in 2009 was 400,000 birds killed by wind turbines annually. Not saying either one is correct, but it's quite a difference. Of course we're supposed to unquestionably accept any study because it's "science".

The only ones I'm aware of are due to oil spills. Mind you those are accidents, not part of normal operations.

Hmmm, please convince me that I'm wrong in assuming that there wasn't any sort of inference because it was done by a "clean power generator." I don't understand what you're asking. Of course the point was that it was done by the "clean power generator" as are uncountable numbers of bird deaths if that's what you mean by inference.

Humans are having a devastating effect on the environment: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/28/birdwatchers-flock-to-see-rare-bird-then-watch-it-killed-by-wind-turbine/

Well, I can't see what I'm agreeing with, but may be I'm not understanding the discussion.

An interesting update on Age of Decadence http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,3347.0.html

Inspector General said conservative groups were targeted, there's no evidence liberal groups were.

This is a strong argument for removing submitter names from the peer review. Interesting, however, that your article would have passed it's own peer review! I wonder if the fail rate would be the same now, or if papers like that made an impact (it was written in 1982). My bad. I saw this reported recently, assumed it was recent, then googled it to post the link, and didn't notice it was from '82. Probably the same thing would still hold though.

Here's what happened when already published articles were resubmitted for peer review under unknown names: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=6577844 Edit: Btw, the only science "we" don't believe in is global warming, which is politicized junk science at best and complete fraud at worst.

Yes, funny how a Marxist rag like Mother Jones is complaining about people ignoring facts and evidence. Here's an interesting article on the peer review process : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/25/peer-evil-the-rotten-business-model-of-modern-science/

I didn't say it was OK (although it is), I said it's legal. But the Supreme Court also said it's constitutional. In this case I agree, if you look at the fourth amendment, they're not searching your personal effects (like I said before, that data doesn't even belong to you). For example, it would be illegal for the phone company to listen in on your conversation, but it certainly isn't illegal for the phone company to get the phone numbers and the duration of the call.

You have me confused. The IRS targeted groups with "Patriot" "Tea Party" and such in their names for audits. Not specific people who registered republican in "battleground" states. And like I said before, the IRS targeting those groups could have just been them targeting groups they suspected were abusing the 501©(3) system to have a tax free PAC, when 501©(3) designation is designed to be a-political. And possibly individual Republican donors as well. But my point was simply that they already have all the personal info they could want about you. Also they only targeted conservative groups, as they themselves admitted, so it wasn't base on any suspicion, it was based on viewpoint. It is legal, since it was authorized by Congress, and it's not equivalent of wiretaps. They are (supposedly) not listening to conversations, but only collecting info on the phone numbers and such, they're (supposedly) not even allowed to look at it unless they have some evidence that it's relevant, at which point they can go back and check the record. Also the info doesn't belong to you, but to the phone companies and ISP's.

It's funny how concerned people are about NSA having a record of which phone numbers called which phone numbers, when the IRS already has all your private information and has shown it's willing to abuse it.

And? Doesn't matter if they make it compulsory to use Live to sell on PC- something they didn't do with GfWL. If they do that the entire reason for publishers to use steam goes out the window since they'd have to pay both MS and Valve for pretty much the same service- and the MS option would give them more cash as well. Wouldn't be particularly great for consumers, but would be great for both MS and publishers. MS can't do that on PC, it would violate all their anti-trust agreements with the government.

Metro: Last Light. Good writing.

Yeah, I'd say having the Kinect always on is a deal breaker, just the sheer arrogance of it!

Second part is already addressed, but the first part is just... Terrorists of 1776 who attacked their own country, terrorists of 1861 who attacked their own country, terrorist mujahedin in 1980, terrorist rebels in Syria now, terrorist rebels in Libya (presumably supported by terrorist west as well), the possibilities are endless. In 1776, they declared their own country and fought in uniform. If someone was simply going around killing British soldiers, it would be considered murder, and retroactively terrorism, although I guess that concept didn't exist back then.

The reason if was terrorism is these were British residents, probably living on British dole, attacking their own country. Also any combatants not fighting for a government are illegal, although I guess there's a question who makes the law.

It's a lot more complicated than that. Drone strikes tend to have **** accuracy. So even if you're gonna manage to kill the target, so do hundreds of other people in it's vicinity. If you kill some taregt in Afghanistan where dozens of families get killed too, it tends to shatter entire communities that eventually will turn to radicalisation. This news of course is being spread around the entire Muslim community on the globe, and being perceived as an attack on Islam as a whole. Of course it's easy to say "Well **** them, bomb them into pieces too", but a) not only is this kind of thinking just wrong, but b) also turns into a "national security problem" for the countries that do these attacks. So expect the rapidity of these revenge attacks soaring as cowardly drone strikes continue. At some point, we're gonna have a global Israel/Palestinian situation here. A perpetual war machine that will beget more revenge attacks which will beget even more drone strikes ad infinitum. Okay I see what you are saying, to be honest I did think that drone strikes were able to reduce casualties by being more specific but I am not an expert. I do agree with your point that any innocent killed does fuel the "anti-Western" sentiment. But here is the question, if the USA knows that there is Taliban leader in a village in western Pakistan that is directing attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan how do you suggest he gets killed? Actually the drone strikes are very precise and there's always an attempt to minimize civilian casualties. Sending special forces into hostile territory against a heavily armed suicidal enemy is not practical. You might lose some or all of the force every time it's tried, it's a hugely complex and expensive operation, and if anything civilian casualties are likely to be much higher. Yup, that worked out so well in Boston. Or that schoolshooting. Or the Batman shooting. Or the New York sniper. Or the multitude of family dramas. Or the schoolshootings. Etc. etc. It only looks like it helps the perpetrators. Or is that what you want? As horrible as this is, they had to resort to knives. Only one innocent life got lost. In gunhappy America the innocent deathtoll would probably be much higher as they would just empty their guns on everybody. Much easier killing. Actually the terrorists had a gun, it's the civilians who were unarmed and helpless. Also Boston was a bombing, bombs are already illegal.

It's also a short-term, band-aid solution...because you're still going run out of an unrenewable energy resource, and life on the planet still needs sunlight. Good enough for at least a hundred years, by then there will probably be other options. Edit: didn't understand your sunlight comment before, it wouldn't eliminate all sunlight, just a tiny fraction, like a volcanic eruption does sometimes. EU leaders back shale revolution: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/23/newsbytes-eu-leaders-back-shale-revolution-roll-back-climate-policy/

I bet the murderers belonged to some radical mosque, and for some idiotic reason Western countries refuse to deport those who incite them.

You generally have to look at both sides for a debate. I wasn't trying to prove there's a debate, just provide info for those interested. Yes, it would be much cheaper, like tens of trillions of dollars cheaper. I'm not sure what they are addressing with this point: "It also suggests that the residence time of CO2 in air is no more than a few months rather than years, because in 4 summer months nearly all of the increase of the whole year, is undone. But isotope analysis suggests 5-14 years, most likely 5 years. The IPCC says several centuries." Probably just pointing out that there us still some unanswered questions. I didn't say it's my opinion ice cores are suspect, I said not everyone agrees with their accuracy, and this is referred to elsewhere on that website, not the statements you quoted. The strongest argument for CO2 increase being man made is simply that since CO2 concentration started being directly measured reliably in 1958 there's a very strong correlation between atmospheric CO2 increase and the amount produced by man. This may appear strange given the small percentage of man made CO2 in the overall carbon cycle, but it's hard to argue against that conclusion so long as the correlation stays so strong.

We'd have to examine what other variables existed to ascertain whether or not a runaway greenhouse would occur. The first evidence I found of the previous highs for CO2, however, figure it was probably about 3 million years ago when they reached this level, and sea levels were about 30 feet higher. (source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/05/130510-earth-co2-milestone-400-ppm/ ) Now, to shift gears somewhat, isotope analysis lets us see what types of CO2 emissions are in the air, and we can see a higher concentration of CO2 that is a consequence of fossil fuel burning. I am reasonably convinced that the spike of CO2 in the atmosphere is probably influenced in large part by human activity. I do agree that runaway greenhouse is among the worst case, and probably unlikely as a result. I'm curious how much effect reforestation would have. There's a measurable decrease in CO2 every year with the spring and summer, as plants work their thing. I wonder what other sort of carbon sinks could be explored. There's actually some debate on whether the CO2 record from ice cores is correct. Here's an anti-warming web site which discusses a lot of the issues brought up here: http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/climate4.htm#is_CO2_from_fossil_fuel But as Gifted's example points out, even if there is a dangerous degree of warming, there are several geoengineering proposals to counteract it, such as injecting aerosols into upper atmosphere or making clouds more reflective.