No. This is why Nye, and people like him, are not "the foremost science educators" anywhere. This is not science. Science is not about being correct, science is not about deferring to authorities; science is a process for understanding our world, for explaining and predicting. It's a philosophy, not a set of facts. People in the future will be saying “What were you freaking people doing? What was wrong with you?”, but they won't be saying it to climate change "deniers" or "sceptics" - they will be saying it to the "science educators" who thought levelling charges of heresy was a better course than providing a reasoned, evidence based argument.

You see if you truly believe in the scientific method, and the wider philosophy of rationality, you provide a reasoned, evidence based defence of your position and attack on your opponents position. You don't tell them that they're not qualified to speak because they don't have a PhD from Harvard, or because they disagree with the "consensus". Science does not rely on qualification or authority or consensus and the myth that it does is the biggest threat to scientific literacy today.

And show some f***ing consistency, please. If you're going to shout down "conservatives" for being unqualified to talk about climate change please shout down "liberals" and "greens" that talk about, and accept, climate change as being unqualified to talk about it too.

OK, I swear the text in that quote changed while I was copying and pasting it from "target" to "existence"... and the original...

Either I'm going senile, or the NSA want me to think I'm going senile...

From that link:

Nope, can't think what their target could possible be. Probably they DNA test people's dogs...

If you just write the occasional letter, yes. If you're a heavy user of general purpose office software then you will notice the benefits of moving off anything pre-2007. While the 2007-2010 and 2010-2013 changes are more incremental I think the 2007-2013 change is definitely worth it for heavy users. I always get the impression people who say things like you probably haven't used a more recent version of Office than 2003 because the changes are substantial and worthwhile. People always go on about how wonderful LibreOffice (or whatever they're calling it these days) and Google Docs are. They're not. They can do the basics but they can't take the semi-pro market like Office can. Sure, if you're typsetting a book use Latex and if you're plotting publication quality scientific graphs use Origin/Sigma Plot/etc. But for everything in between MS Office has no competition.

Yes, you keep using Windows 95. I mean I'm sure it's just as good to use as Windows 8.1, it's got complete feature parity and you're productivity will skyrocket from the modern interface and featureset.

...science relies on evidence and is not swayed by what I, arbitrary authorities or consensus believes. But this goes both ways:

Now I'm not familiar with the US vote. It does seem reasonable, as policy makers and legislators are going to have to respond to climate change in their legislation, that they decide whether they buy the arguments for it or not. And given that the US uses a democratic framework for legislating it doesn't seem unreasonable that the legislature uses a democratic vote to take such an opinion collectively.

You see, that's the great thing about science. It's true, they can't just vote it away. But it's not an authority - you can't demand congress address climate change just because the men in white coats say so - you have to address evidence based, logically sound arguments to them. And your opponents can respond with arguments of their own. And the adjudicator has to choose between them.

If you think that no one has the right to challenge the sanctity of the holy scientific truth then you're just as bad as the politician who thinks they can vote objective reality away.

So this vote may be stupid (or it may not be), but, inherently speaking, a group voting on how to collectively respond to some argument isn't necessarily.

Repeating yourself doesn't make your right. Assuming Uber works the same way in Aus that it does in London all their drivers and vehicles are required to be licensed by the local authorities. Typically this will include more stringent driving checks, criminal records checks, road-worthiness checks, proof of the appropriate professional insurance and so on. See here (sorry, stupid website - can't permalink). Now maybe Uber works differently in Australia, but I don't see why they would. Come back with some evidence, and I'll listen.

People keep saying this, yet I've never seen any evidence it's true. In fact, on the contrary, here in the UK at least, Uber are licensed like any other private hire company. Not to mention the fact that, just about everywhere, running a business without appropriate liability insurance is illegal (and stupid) anyway.

Actually David Attenborough graduated from Cambridge with a degree in natural sciences (specialising in geology and zoology). And, actually, I think that he makes for a far better model of science communicator than these modern loud mouths/wannabe philosophers.

When that happens I'm out of here. I'll go and find a country worth living in.

Except, unlike with guns, the internet is multinational and there's no reason to believe that the government is going to (or even can) force foreign companies with no UK offices to comply. So unlike guns, even if it's illegal, just about every innocent person will continue to use strong encryption (TLS with PFS, for example) on a daily basis - potentially without even realising it.

The terrorists have no problem with breaking the law to kill and murder people on kamikaze missions... but I'm sure they're nice reasonable people who will stop using encryption if we make it illegal.

Actually the "one another" is correct. https://english.stackexchange....

I saw this. What kind of crazy squirrels does America have that can digest glass? Seriously, I can't imagine it does their insides any good!

*insert high fibre diet joke here*

Sorry, here's the full text link: http://rdcu.be/bUz8