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France has roughly the same permitting system and storage regulations as Switzerland but you may not posses given types of rifles/handguns. Furthermore there is a limit on ammunition you can purchase per year.
Let's go beyond just gun control here.. Look at Canada gun ownership there is More per capita than the United States and gun violence is practically unheard of. -- There's something else wrong w/ this country..
Rather than two events which, however horrible, are an anomaly.
How many mass shootings per year over the last decade? Two decades? And so on?
It's like those who pointed to Australia banning guns after the Port Arthur massacre:
"Homicides went up three per cent the next year! Gun control doesn't work!"
1. "Homicides" encapsulated other methods than "with a gun", and most importantly,
2. Whilst there are 17,000 homicides a year in the US for which a three per cent rise represents over five hundred more deaths, the conveniently omitted fact was that that same three per cent rise in Australia meant that deaths went from 94 to 96, in other words, an anomaly.
Right, because if some crazy asshole shoots people randomly it's a mass shooting but if he happens to be muslim it's terrorism. Sorry, keep forgetting about that memo.
Well the relevant difference is whether the shooters had external support to commit their crime.
That it's possible for a determined group to acquire guns and attack people is one thing. It being possible for a single mentally unstable person to do so is quite another.
Actually I think the current practice is to label pretty much everything terrorism. Part of the perpetual crisis strategy used to justify the militarization of police forces.
I know right? It's almost as if the purpose of this whole farce wasn't actually to save lives and to protect our freedoms (for which they hate us). Wow, who'd have guessed...
Disappointing with regards to the rest of his track records? re: Guantanamo, reining in Wall Street, cracking down on whistleblowers, widespread use of drones to perform extra-judicial assassination?
If after 8 years you still think Obama is the Nobel peace prize wielding progressive philanthropist you've been fooled into thinking he is, joke's on you tbh.
Parent comment expresses incredulity at Obama's comment on the topic being discussed in the thread.
I point out said comment is perfectly in line with the policies implemented by Obama and his administration during his two terms and OP's incredulity is unwarranted.
Not sure how that's OT or inappropriate but furry muff, HN works in mysterious ways.
You would be better off having picked examples that are closer to the topic at hand.
Such as the fact that he voted for retroactive telecom immunity as a senator, supported increases in NSA surveillance as a President, and certainly signed off on the extraordinary measures taken to try and apprehend Snowden.
His stance on surveillance is clear. He has strongly supported it since 2008. (Before he was the Democratic nominee he spoke out against it.)
Fuck HN Moderation. HN mods support government fascists, and absolutely accept the statui quo, will bury Snowden news, and allow government shills to post. Fuck HN mods.
"Is this seriously the America that exists today?" Not denying they have taken it up a notch, but FBI has always been some borderline Gestapo institution from it's inception. You heard of Edgar Hoover right?
" a government has a large amount of power to dictate money flows within the country, but very little power to compel terms of trade overseas."
Isn't the petrodollar system precisely the historical exception that allows the USA to have a lot of power when it comes to "compel terms of trade overseas"?
edit: obviously the other side of that ability to "compel terms of trade overseas" being the US formidable military power that allows them to further twist other countries arms when they refuse to play by the petrodollar system rules (see Libya, Iraq, etc)
"They are asking about a job. I am thinking about identity, community, purpose – the things that provide meaning and motivation. I am talking about my life."
Wow, leaving aside the complete "first world problem" approach that makes this relevant for like maybe 1% of the world population at best, this guy didn't just drink the Kool Aid, he's literally douching with it.
"The global surface temperatures across land and ocean in February were 1.35C warmer than the average temperature for the month, from the baseline period of 1951-1980."
Earth having been around for millions of years, how statistically significant is a 29 years period in the grand scheme of things?
How statistically significant are each of us "in the grand scheme of things"? Not very. There will be no Hollywood biopic about my life, nor likely yours.
If you believe in an eternal afterlife of joy in a heavenly garden, then even a billion years of life on a single planet is statistically insignificant in the grand scheme of things. (Or, like Secretary of the Interior Watt; if you believe the Rapture will come in our lifetime, then why have an environmental management policy at all?)
If we are but a colony of some Galactic Confederacy, then again we are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
If the Sun should go nova tomorrow, and destroy all life on Earth, is that really statistically significant in the grand scheme of things? No.
Yet despite all of that, I still think I'm significant enough that others - who are all just about as insignificant as I am - should still care about not littering, about keeping poisons out of my water, about keeping disease causing bacteria out of my food, about keeping CFCs from the ozone layer, and keeping the Earth's climate stable and in the current climate regime.
But of course, how statistically significant is one more piece of trash in the grand scheme of things? Not very. So why not throw that trash out the window?
In other words, I reject your qualifier "grand scheme of things" as meaningless, at least not without further clarification of which grand scheme you mean. Policy decisions must have a more concrete goal, with a more meaningful time span than the heat death of the Universe.
For me the biggest question is why is that period of time considered the "baseline".
The climate is a dynamic system in constant change. There has never been a static period of climate. It is forever in flux. Climate Change is the normal state of climate. The REAL question is, how much of the observed rate of change is attributable to human factors, and what is the most effective way to combat the emergence of a potentially hazardous climate scenario.
I am personally in the camp of plant more trees. It is a fact that sunlight falling onto a plant causes the energy to be converted into cellular metabolism and sequestering CO2. A desert however will absorb and then re-radiate a lot of that heat. We need to stop deforestation and take advantage of the higher c02 levels to grow more plants. Hell lets start some geo-engineering projects which will be useful for when we need to terraform other planets.
That may be one way to address it, but there's a lot to be done to have any effect there. Most of the places where massive deforestation is happening is where the most corrupt officials are.
I agree 100% that there is a lot more to be done than simply reducing deforestation, however it is a simple action to be taken. The growth of just trees/plants is only one method of sequestration, all the insect and animal growth are also CO2 and energy sinks.
There are many things that we can do to attempt to tackle the issue of a developing hostile climate. however trading carbon credits is not one. We need simple engineering solutions, but biological CO2 sequestration is quite efficient. especially algaes, plankton, grasses, insects, etc.
30 years (not 29) is long enough to even out the short term cycles that will affect our temperature measurements (most notably, the ENSO cycle).
The age of the Earth isn't relevant at all. Imagine tossing a coin to see if it's a fair coin. How many times do you have to toss it to be fairly confident it's fair?
> Earth having been around for millions of years, how statistically significant is a 29 years period in the grand scheme of things?
I'm almost left speechless by the scale of this goalpost-moving. The earth will continue to exist and won't notice any climate change. It's mostly a ball of iron and rock. We, on the other hand, have a population that is heavily reliant on the climate not changing too much, and in so many different ways.
Keep in mind that the climate doesn't just 'get warmer'. It also has more extreme weather events - like a pot simmering on a stove, add a bit more heat and it gets a bit more violent.
You have a expected lifetime of ~70-80 years and I assume you've already been around for 18. Go and stand in a Sauna for a few hours and tell me how statistically significant that few hours is to you.
So I go to the sauna for a few hours right? Reach abnormal temperature for a statistically insignificant period of time wrt to my expected lifetime, then a few minutes later after I left the sauna my temperature is back within average expectations.
What was your point again?
To clarify: my point is, even only taking into account only the period during which it has been inhabited by mankind, Earth has probably reached hotter and colder averages than what we've experienced over the past half century. Mankind did fine.
"So I go to the sauna for a few hours right? Reach abnormal temperature for a statistically insignificant period of time wrt to my expected lifetime, then a few minutes later after I left the sauna my temperature is back within average expectations.
What was your point again?"
My point was that you're dead.
In a Sauna for a few hours. You will die. Statistics and average lifetime are not relevant.
Well I wasn't totally sure so I googled quite a bit and what with websites recommending 20 minutes, articles about deaths, discussions about achieving 45 minutes in a sauna, I would say that a few hours in a Sauna would kill you unless the temperature was very low by Sauna standards. I was originally going to suggest that the OP stand in an oven but thought that too crude.
Realistically I accept that this debate is not 'winnable' in any traditional sense. Even if the governments crack down on CO2, and the temperature drops back to non increasing fluctuations there will be no acceptance from some people who will always insist that it is/was a conspiracy the same as the moon landings and the UN. I suppose the only way that one side could convince the other is if the CO2 keeps increasing and the weather doesn't end up killing us all. Sorry for the digression.
"Mankind did fine". It survived, sure (not every species did though). There's quite a lot findings attributing the vanishing of various populations to climate change.
People are concerned about negative effects, not just surviving.
Those 29 years are just a baseline that's used by convention. You can pick whatever period you want to use as a baseline and it doesn't change the result (i.e. the absolute magnitude of the anomalies will change but not the relative change which is what we are interested in).
pm if you want to be CMO on this one