Who gets to choose which to follow and which to reject? How about these stories about how the early christian church redistributed wealth. Abhorrent or tenet?

"No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.”

Or this:

And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house.

Or this:

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”

Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

The consequence of possessions was death. Jesus even suggested eternal damnation was the ultimate result of wealth. Are these stories an account of how the early church was horrible, or is this religious tenet?

For example jumping to the instant assumption that the author is prophesying the end of the world is a classic denialist trick to distract from actual discussion, and to discredit the science by trying to discredit an unrelated argument.

Trick? What trick? Doom and gloom is the default case for these discussions (See IPCC report "2.2.4 Risk of catastrophic or abrupt change"). We're already moving in a renewables direction. Since 2007, renewables have slowly been eating into fossil fuels and becoming more cost-effective with every passing year. Of their own momentum. As are hybrid/electric vehicles. Which is why there needs not be a discussion, unless the adoption rate isn't occurring fast enough. That very concept of "not fast enough" implies urgency, which implies "end of the world/catastrophic" type scenarios. It's not like it's a huge derailment of logic. Between the dialogue and the agenda, in light of what's already occurring in the sector, it's a reasonable conclusion.

It's become necessary because of the media size for HD video. Even using BlueRay there simply aren't enough ponies to ship all the disks to carry the content.

I'm not so sure. You're conflating taste with stigma. If the water tastes gross then it tastes bad every time you drink it so of course a lot of people are going to buy better tasting water.

But if it's just some stigma over the fact that the water cycle is slightly easier to track then that's something people will get over within 5 minutes of the changeover. I live in a major prairie city, I've always assumed the water was "Toilet To Tap" and the idea never bothered me in the slightest.

People still swim in the ocean afterall, and I find the stuff you dump in there to be far more disturbing.

Here is what the IPCC actually said of sea ice 25 years ago: On the basis of current simulations, it is not possible to make reliable quantitative estimates or the changes in the sea ice extent and depth It should be noted that the models considered here neglect ice dynamics, leads, salinity effects, and changes in ocean circulation.

Don't suffer from single study syndrome. Look for a consensus rather than focusing on one paper or another. The IPCC is a great resource for understanding the consensus.

I think you are confusing sea ice area with continental ice volume. As the volume melts it deposits fresh water near the surface. Fresh water freezes more readily than salt water. So you can have the sea ice area increase even while overall volume decreases.

I think this was a lot worse.

The public keeps the senate in line and the Senate keeps the CIA in line. When the CIA oversteps its bound the Senate is the club the public uses to knock them back in line.

When the CIA spies on the Senate they're trying to take away your club.

You at least have the option of voting out a bad Senate, how do you vote out a bad CIA?

I see the opposite. Alot of conservative opinions are knee-jerk simplistic stances. To use your example, raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. Anyone can follow that "logic", unfortunately, it doesn't hold up in the real world.

And you see the same simplistic breakdown on the liberal side. The assumption is that that "minimum wage == more wealth for the poor person", as if money grows on trees. In reality, the additional expense has to be dealt with. A liberal just assumes the company owner is going to eat the loss out of their profits. In the real world, these expenses will either be pushed through to the consumer via increased product costs or pushed through to the workforce via reduced benefits or labor reductions. And that says nothing of the macro-level effects (such as inflation, or the ripple effect on other jobs). The end result of minimum wages is actually very heavily debated among economists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Debate_over_consequences) and far from the "automatic win" advocates pretend it is.

Too many people either can't or won't analyze things, they are more interested in a catchy argument that "sounds" right, but breaks down in the real world.

That I'll fully agree with. I see it on both sides, quite frequently.

When you imply that a huge majority of scientists are not sensible people then it's a strong indication that your world view contains a serious flaw.

This holds irrespective of whether human-made global warming is true.

I think it pertains exactly.

The essence of the Asimov article is that every scientific article is wrong, but it's less wrong than what came before and is a better approximation of the truth.

The articles you post demonstrate that current models have overestimated warming in the last 20 years, which is true, but as Asimov pointed out all science is wrong to some extent. The actual results were still very right, after the massive warming of the past half century and particularly the spike of the late 90's the assumption might be a reversion to the mean in the form of a cooling. Instead the actual temperatures were still (barely) within in the range of predicted temperatures and we saw a slight warming.

They were wrong.

But you are wronger

Or maybe they cheat 20 different ways, and they only got caught on one. Maybe they really suck when they stop cheating entirely.

There's some truth to that. For instance, the "grey territory" that is exploiting the wide receiver eligibility reporting is borderline cheating as well (http://www.baltimoreravens.com/news/article-1/Owners-Pass-Ban-On-Patriots-Ineligible-Receiver-Trick/aa52588d-47ff-4b0b-9bf5-65d759694c93). Although not explicitly illegal in 2014, it was shady enough to warrant a ban this year.

Keep up with the story. They've already released the type and size of the knife, and that knife is not illegal in Baltimore. The arrest was almost certainly illegal.

Not sure you've been following the story either, because the legality is still up in the air (http://www.wbaltv.com/news/officer-files-motion-contending-gray-arrest-was-legal/32824182). And "grey-zone" territory like this has come up before in Maryland, so this is nothing new:

http://www.mdshooters.com/show...
http://forums.officer.com/t513...

Ahah! But you fail to realize I have a vague memory of a blog post validating my position!

I think this isn't quite right.

You suggest obedience to seemingly unjust laws is solely due to the fact we've been conditioned to equate respect for the law with morality, but I think there's a far more pragmatic aspect to it as well. Humans are spectacularly good at rationalization, it is really easy to convince yourself that a self-serving act is moral. Therefore your default assumption should be to respect the law even when it seems wrong because you might be rationalizing an immoral behaviour.

The second part of that is your concept of what's moral may not agree with my concept of what's moral. We need a way to negotiate a common set of rules we can both agree with, this is the law.

That doesn't mean civil disobedience shouldn't be used to make a political statement, nor does it mean that laws are sometimes so bad they should be ignored, but it does mean that your default position should be to respect the law because violating it carries a very high risk of acting immorally.

I simply don't see taxi regulations as such an unjust inhibition of freedom that they can simply be disregarded.

So start in those districts, show it works, and give other districts a chance to evaluate and update their laws.

What Uber is doing is ignoring the law to that if/when their practices are legalized they'll be entrenched as the dominant market player and newcomers who played by the rules will be shut out. This is why I oppose Uber in particular.