@51 Palindromic:

And lastly, the elephant in the room that hasn't been pointed out yet, which is, how can you, or anyone at all, with a basic grasp of science, think that any of these measures is going to have a noticeable effect on the climate? We are infinitesimal in our overall output of CO2, compared to something like the ocean..

Um, source please? Every reference I've seen says that the ocean absorbs CO2, not emits.

[1], [2]

Further, to say that nothing humans can do can noticeably reduce the amount of CO2 going into the environment is the same as saying that nothing humans are doing now is noticeably increasing the amount of CO2 going into the environment.

If you're building up to a "humans don't cause global warming" argument, just come right out and say it. I don't know if you'll find anyone that would be bothered to argue with you, though.

@ #43 The Unusual Suspect:

That's silly. That's like saying

"I just put a new solar panel on my roof!"
"Wait, did you do it, or did a contractor do it?"
"Um... the contractor did it"
"Well, if you had done it yourself, and the contractor had done it himself, there would have been TWO solar panels! TWO!"

Plus, it's silly to talk about the money "saved" if I did it myself. If my hourly rate is more than the tree planter's hourly rate, I save more money paying him to do it. That money could go towards my next windmill. (If my hourly rate is less than the tree planter's, maybe I should become a tree planter).

@ #53 Preliminary_Reporter:

Hooray! Great post. Countless are the number of times I present a really interesting study to people and they say "bah, I don't buy it, something was probably wrong with the experiment" makes we want to bang my head against the wall again and again and again.

Yes, there are some not-great studies that get through the walls of grant funding and peer-review, but to just dismiss it out-of-hand, as if you know better? Gah!

As you note, it is the instinctive reaction of luddites who are afraid of the latest thing that might threaten their perception of the world.

@ #55 Antiglobalism:

Huh? Talking to real people isn't "reality"?

#25 Palindromic

Several people have already brought up the seemingly rock solid counter-argument, that such money would be vastly better invested in green friendly transportation. How is an 'offset' a better investment than a carbon friendly change of lifestyle?

Well, it depends on how much CO2 you save, per dollar, with an offset, versus how much you save with green transportation.

That part is pretty simple.

What is not so simple is which saves more, the offset or the "green" transportation. Adam, above, said that a Prius might save about 4 tons of CO2 compared to an Explorer.

So if you are choosing which car to get, you might spend several thousand dollars to save those 4 tons of CO2 a year.

At TerraPass, they are claiming you can save that much for under a hundred bucks.

While it may or may not be true, it's certainly possible. A hundred bucks towards planting trees, investing in green energy, and buying carbon credits from companies so that the polluters aren't able to buy them.

People make it sound like you're just "buying your way out." If I went out in the dirt and planted twenty trees myself, people would say I was en ecological hero. If I pay someone else to do it, I'm "buying Indulgences."

Still on the vat-grown meat line...

One of the main reasons in the coming decades for everyone to become vegetarians will be the heavy energy costs associated with meat.

Will vat-grown meat require more or less energy than "in utero"-grown real meat?

I assume the vat grown meat will still require energy in the form of sugars, and I read something about electrical impulses being needed to "exercise" it.

# 3, 5, 9, 12,

Does noone read the articles they comment on?

All the subjects had cellphones strapped to their heads. All the cell phones were on. The computer, however, could switch the cell phones between "standby", "listen" and "talk" modes.

Only the "talk" mode, which is the only mode that transmits electromagnetic radiation, affected the patients' abilities to sleep.

#15, Ericthegeek,

"This is not evolution. This is adaptation."

Let me just probe to find out exactly which part you have trouble with:

1) Do you think that the changes to the lizards' digestive system could be passed on to the lizards' offspring? (In this case, they haven't conformed that, but I'm just asking if you think it's possible)

2) Do you think that other adaptations could be passed to the lizards' offspring?

3) Do you think that, on the assumption (see 1) that the changes to the lizard's digestive system were genetic, there could also eventually be changes to the lizards' reproductive organs?

4) Do you think that the changes in 3) could ever be enough to prevent the lizards from mating with another breed of lizard?

5) Do you agree that one basic definition of "different species" is the inability to breed with members of the other group?

#2:

"Researchers found that the lizards developed cecal valves—muscles between the large and small intestine—that slowed down food digestion in fermenting chambers, which allowed their bodies to process the vegetation's cellulose into volatile fatty acids.

"They evolved an expanded gut to allow them to process these leaves," Irschick said, adding it was something that had not been documented before. "This was a brand-new structure."

This doesn't sound like changes attributed to just eating different food over the course of a single lifespan...

That said, the researcher noted that they still hadn't done the genetic testing to confirm that the changes were genetic.

I found out later that this "every other thread" knitting technique is called a "multi-pick" weave, and that it was designed by Bill Russell, the player-coach of the world champion Boston Celtics.
--

Umm, what?

I have to say... I did NOT know that.

#6: ... try imagining other meanings of the term "multi-pick weave"
...

I think Rob is having you on. ;)

Has anyone made a high-rez version that I can use as a desktop background..?

#53: Aarrrrghhhhhh! The "most wanted song" is almost certainly up there on my 20 least-favorite songs of all times. As the music starts up, my skin suddently starts to crawl, and it goes down-hill from there.

I don't think this was unexpected, however. I think the idea is that you can pull together all the parts of music that people hate and still make a fun song, while pulling together all the parts that people love will make a sickeningly sweet yuck-fest.

If they had actually wanted to make the worst song in the world, probably pulling just one or two elements and really, really (ab)using them, repeating them continuously, would have felled even the post experimental music lover.

Works made by any employees of the Federal Government, in the course of their duties, cannot be copyrighted and are automatically in the public domain. (link).

Is there no similar law for work made by employees of a state?

I came to add a comment to say the exact same thing as #2: I would recommend checking the fine print very, very carefully. I once received a check, for no reason, for about $18.00, that came along with a rebate check. Assuming it was some extra rebate, I almost didn't think about it, but then saw a bunch of fine print on another page. Turns out by cashing the check I would be signing up to be a member of some scam organization that gives you the odd coupon and charges you something around $30 per year......

Then again, #1's idea also makes sense -- if they promise to ship it back, why spend $1.50 when you can buy the person off with $1.10. In which case (since it costs you nothing but time to send it), the hack is ripe for exploiting.

This is silly. Humans were only invented about 6,000 years ago. Any "ancient" crap that you find in a cave was indisputably "placed" there by God in order to test the faithful.

That said, in order to selflessly help future generations and archaeologist understand life in the 21st Century, I will now pledge to crap only outdoors in dry, protected areas from now on.

This is happening here in the States as well, even for companies with easy-to-remember URLs.

Here in Boston there are a large number of posters for Kellogs cereal, which, instead of showing a URL, say "Find us on Yahoo!" and have a big picture of a large Yahoo search box with "kellogs" typed in the search field.

My assumption was that it wasn't so much that they wanted to make it easy for the consumer, but that they were advertizing Yahoo at the same time -- Yahoo probably paid Kellogs a fair bit, or at least paid for part of the ad campaign. Some web chatter agrees: http://sphinn.com/story/988

So it's quite likely that those Japanese search engines are getting a piece of the action.

Here's a simple way around this, which would take the terrorists more than 20 seconds to think up since such devices are already "mainstream":

Strap a bomb pack to yourself and hold on to the trigger. If you get shocked, you let go of the trigger and the plane explodes. Are the crew members really going to be able to think of the "greater good" and zap the guy, killing everyone, in order to prevent a hijacking?

[Note, if electrocution causes muscle contraction, you could easily wire the trigger so that instead of holding it closed you had to hold it open.]

The explanatory video on their website is absolutely priceless. Particularly the air marshal who "accidentally" brains the passenger who's nowhere near the terrorist.