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[alway]

To be fair, methane is worse than carbon dioxide for that.

Yeah, the wife educated me on just that. Apparently livestock produce enough methane to be statistically significant when it comes to greenhouse gasses.


So yes, cows are a problem.

So does rice farming, which apparently is kind of a big thing in some parts of Asia.

Rice has several problems; being amazing absorbers of arsenic is the really big one, and it is probably slowly poisoning millions of people. With the least processed, previously thought most healthy, brown rice being the worst. Rice is basically a big arsenic sponge.

[Putnam]

Can we get a link to the report itself and not blogspam talking about it?

[alway]

http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm352569.htm

[Putnam]

So it's not "probably" slowly poisoning millions but "possibly" slowly poisoning millions. I'd wait until they do a report on that.

[alway]

So it's not "probably" slowly poisoning millions but "possibly" slowly poisoning millions. I'd wait until they do a report on that.

It isn't so much the US as it is in places where:
1. Rice is a staple food
2. groundwater is contaminated with arsenic

A 2007 study found that over 137 million people in more than 70 countries are probably affected by arsenic poisoning of drinking water.[1] Arsenic contamination of ground water is found in many countries throughout the world, including the USA.[2]
Approximately 20 incidents of groundwater arsenic contamination have been reported.[3] Of these, four major incidents occurred in Asia, in Thailand, Taiwan, and Mainland China.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gWU8IsKCaQ5srzFdJo2H7S_j6o7Q

The arsenic doesn't appear out of thin air, so it will be the worst where people are already getting higher than usual arsenic doses through their water supply.


In entirely unrelated news: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/recaptchas-are-finally-readable-by-normal-humans/
Wut.

As part of this, we’ve recently released an update that creates different classes of CAPTCHAs for different kinds of users. This multi-faceted approach allows us to determine whether a potential user is actually a human or not, and serve our legitimate users CAPTCHAs that most of them will find easy to solve. Bots, on the other hand, will see CAPTCHAs that are considerably more difficult and designed to stop them from getting through.

Google knows whether you are a bot before you do a captcha.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I just happened across this, but have a look at the most Earth-like planet we've ever observed.

[Putnam]

Damn, an unconfirmed exoplanet candidate? That's pretty iffy, but then, everything's iffy until proven.

And that's a damn small planet, whooee. If that's confirmed, it'd be good to check out more.

EDIT: A bit of research shows that, if it exists as observed, its Standard Primary Habitability (suitability for vegetation as we know it) is 1. For comparison, Earth's is 0.79.

[kaian-a-coel]

How come Earth's is not 1? 

[Putnam]

It's pretty cold.

[Dutchling]

Are you sure Earth's is 0.79? This says it's way lower.

  The annual mean global terrestrial SPH today is 0.335 with strong oscillations between seasons (Figure 2). Area corrected, the south hemisphere is more habitable (0.432) than the north hemisphere (0.184). The fact that these number are not 1.0 tells that our planet is not optimized for its vegetation today, there are too many deserts and seasonal ice. Even that plants adapted to many environments, they have their limits.

[Another]

Taking into account that Earth had a lengthy period of being completely covered in ice after the Oxygen Catastrophe - not really surprising.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

And that's a damn small planet, whooee. If that's confirmed, it'd be good to check out more.

Small? It's not small. It's a Super-Earth. It's bigger than our planet.

[GlyphGryph]

Regardless, I want to go there, and bad.

[Dutchling]

Meh. It's a gazillion kilometres away >.>

[Helgoland]

And that's a damn small planet, whooee. If that's confirmed, it'd be good to check out more.

Small? It's not small. It's a Super-Earth. It's bigger than our planet.

Compared to the other planets we've been able to discover so far, it's pretty damn small.