Adani has a mine here in australia 100% automated from pit to port.

I'm interested in learning more about this. You're referring to the Carmichael Coal Mine, correct?

My understanding is it's not yet functional, it's strictly a coal mine, and it utilizes pure strip mining procedures.

If my understanding is correct (I'm prepared to be wrong) then it violates a number of environmental laws in the US.

Please inform. I'm not familiar enough with Australian mining to really know, maybe you're referring to something else. Further, doesn't Australia currently have a coal embargo against China, or did you lot get that sorted out?

We are nearly at war with china, they have another smaller automated mine they used as a prototype for carmichael, i have a friend who works for adani.
Basically environmental laws do not really exist for billionaires in australia.

The right 'actively denies climate science and evolution' in the same sense that the left denies climate change adaptation and biology. Its the same for wind/solar power vs nuclear energy. There are a vocal minority of science-deniers on either side, there are sane pundits and intellectuals that accept the science on either side, and there are politicians who range from softball pandering to the lunatics to being lunatics themselves.

There's certainly been no monopoly on science during the pandemic either. We've seen the left embrace wildly inaccurate projections of casualties and treat them as scientific fact until they got proven false, we've seen political pressure outweigh science when it comes to the danger to children and need to take restrictive measures to 'protect' them. And throughout it all, there's been an overwhelming force of dogmatic authority that denounces any scientific dissent, be it studies on mask effectiveness, danger to children, the origins of the virus, the death toll, etc. Up until and sometimes even after the view being denounced turns out to be true. And of course, all that goes alongside the right-wing embracing quack science, denying the death toll, being irrationally skeptical of vaccines or overt anti-vaxxers (alongside notable groups on the left, both city hippies and black pipo).
People are people, buying into conspiracy theories and rejecting science and declaring your own unproven theories as orthodox gospel are just fundamental human behaviors

Ah. So the information I have on that is essentially correct?

It's an interesting project. Reminds me of almost a streamlined process with much heavier machinery for some of the gold sifting operations they used to televise. Pretty innovative, if you don't mind the environmental disaster.

I take it your billionaires just have to pay a fee, fine, whatever for violating regulations? The kind of fee/fine that would completely tank a small business, and probably land the owner in jail?

Trump certainly changed the dynamic of the Republican party, there's no doubt about that. However, I'd argue that Trump is the exception, not the rule. Folks like Mitch McConnell, Richard Burr, etc. are deeply in bed with corporations (a good thing IMO!) and are firmly in the free trade camp. Just follow the money. I think folks like Josh Hawley may give lip service to the plebs but I have to imagine it's all for show.

More power to you if you want to cook your own food. I prefer to have someone else do it for me and I'll always be able to afford it. As for Thor, he gets paid by the taxpayer because his lab's research is funded through grants. I think this is great and we should actually invest more so that we stay on top.

Environmentalism and construction projects seems like another good example of science vs politics.
A lot of opposition to oil pipelines is rooted in wildly unscientific opinions by people who reject legitimate environmental reviews, don't understand risk management, overestimate the risks of spills by orders of magnitude, etc etc. There might be some well-informed opposition by those based solely on tribal advocacy or a desire to end any and all fossil fuels, no matter how misguided that is. But for every person like that, there is an entire legion of dullards who would sign one of those 'ban H2O' petitions. People who think an entire ecosystem is destroyed if a pipeline spills 100 gallons of oil before an auto-shutoff into a frozen patch of rock solid ground, before a crew comes and vacuums it all back up.

This is very true. We transport a shit ton of oil through pipelines and while it has the potential to be "bigger" it's a fairly rare occurrence. You are far more likely to have oil spills from car accidents (both in number of incidents and volume of oil lost).

Let's not draw a false equivalence between the left and right when it comes to being anti-science. The GOP just has far too many religious nutjobs and I don't see that changing any time soon. Having said that, the left often conflates "science" with "leftist policy with science as an input." Science can only take you so far: eventually you have to make a public policy decision based on your values. To shut down the economy, close schools, etc. isn't a scientific decision. Those are decisions that attempt to take science, economics, etc. into consideration.

How prominent and controlling are the anti-science elements of the GOP right now? There are some elements surely at the forefront, like anti-vaxxers. There's at most a tepid impact of climate change denialists for sure. But the religious right? Where's Michele Bachmann today? I'd argue that most of the voices at the forefront of the Trump-era republican party are far more closely aligned with Biden and the establishment democrats than they are with the old guard of anti-science religious nutjobs. I'd say Trump's election showed the religious right has fully embraced political pragmatism and taking a back seat on their ideological convictions if it means getting political goals and influence they seek. As long as Trump churned out those federalist society vetted picks, they overlooked the fact that he paid for more abortions than Bill Clinton and spent his whole life being a godless heathen jew york state liberal up until he started angling for the Republican primaries.

I'd be a lot less concerned with the anti-science by fringe elements of the far-right who are willing to bow to the moderates, than with the anti-science fringe elements of the far-left to whom the moderates must bow

I think Thor's funding should be halted altogether. Not private funding ofc, just the taxpayer funding. Until all medicinals are provided to the military and all public employees absolutely free of charge, I do not believe a single additional penny should be stolen from the tax payer to provide to medical research. These all go towards patented drugs and procedures that Americans have to pay an insane premium for after having already funded their base creation. This is not a good thing at all.

Likewise, Burr and McConnell are the most hated names on the right, after Romney and Cheney. You're truly picking out the RINOs. And the idea that public servants who we pay six figures to represent "We the People" are instead representing "They the Globalist Corporation" is as anti-right as it gets, in this day and age.

Now, to be fair, go back to my posts in PaRD in say 2010-2015 (don't honestly remember when I started posting in this sub), and you'll find a lot of support for nearly everything "liberal". And some of that is reflected in my posts today. Why? I haven't changed on... That much. My abortion stance has changed, my tax stance has changed, and my "role of federal government" stance has changed. Outside of that, not much has changed. I'm a poor representative for the right, because I was never on the right. The overton has been pulled so far left that I found myself on the right without moving much. Yet I'm very representative of the modern right as it stands today. The right that prevented Hillary from office, and the right that'll likely prevent Biden from being reelected if he's stupid enough to run again. I trust if he doesn't, the left isn't stupid enough to try to elect Harris.

Also, I cook my own food because I don't trust others to do so. I've met and worked with too many chefs that couldn't even cook decent sticky rice using a rice cooker. How am I going to trust that they'll safely handle raw meat and raw veggies? I can't even eat a salad in a public restaurant without assuming the person who prepared it had raw chicken juice on their hands. What goes in my body is vitally important to my well-being, and may well be the cause of my death. To Thor's credit, I do drink a fair amount of vodka. In no way do I drink every day, nor am I an alcoholic, but I certainly drink. And I do so with full knowledge and consent that it could end up being the last thing I do. And you see... It's my choice. Death by some random person making $9/hour as a line cook mishandling and/or cross contaminating my food? Not down. Even more not down in the Mexican restaurants. I know of a couple where I know the proprietors, know their standards, and can inspect any time I go in where I trust them and their employees. Outside of that? Hard no.

There's more to this lockdown shit than I think you understand. The little businesses that people like me actually trust have been closed and for the most part, are still closed, due to lockdowns (nope, not over). Several are gone. Closed permanently. I won't become a customer of McD or BK or Subway ever. Subway actually makes me laugh, because I can literally make the exact same sandwich in half the time, with four times the meat, for half the cost. And it won't be shiny! The problem comes down to individuals owning businesses, and the impact on those businesses from having to pay continual leases for two years with no income. Insurance covers nothing. That riots have destroyed many along with any tools of the trade and inventory still in makes it worse. Insurance pays on average about 1/3rd of the cost to the business of cleanup, rebuilding, and lost inventory, and that's after over a year's worth of negotiation, meanwhile, the lease payment still has to be made.

Ugh... I'm rambling. I'll stop. I do want to point out that Goom is correct.