Oh no, glyphosates(round-up) and some GMO crops in some study show a possible statistical correlation with negative health factors! We should quickly abandon all of modern agriculture to make sure we don't destroy the health of western civilization! Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

GMO foods are have been ubiquitous in the western diet for multiple generations already. How to health factors and benchmarks for those generations compare to the ones prior to them? They are radically better. GMO fruits and vegetables that have longer shelf lives alone have vastly improved the health of people across the region. That longer shelf life doesn't just mean a corporate mega supermarket chain can buy more yachts because they reduced losses to waste and increased sales. Those increased sales also mean that lowered prices and greater geographic availability of fresh fruit and vegetables improved the diets of consumers. Even as a kid in central Canada fresh fruits and berries were very limited, but today it's taken as a matter of course you can go out and buy fresh anything in the dead of winter if you're willing to brave the 10foot snow banks between you and the store.

Sorry, all the fears and studies about potential small scale impacts of GMO crops is dwarfed by the current good of the dietary improvements that GMO has brought.

I'm amazed how much objection genetically modified foods are receiving from the public. It smacks of a fear factor that exists in any new science where people don't fully understand it and there for reject it. What most people don't know, and probably should is that practically every food you buy in a store for consumption is genetically modified food. There are no wild seedless watermelon. There are no wild cows. There are no long stem roses in the wild. List all the fruits and vegetables and ask yourself is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it's not as large, it's not as sweet, it's not as juicy, it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the meats and all the foods we eat since we cultivated them. It's called artificial selection. Now that we can do it in a lab, all of a sudden you wanna complain? You like red delicious apples? We manufactured those, it's a genetic modification. The silkworm as we cultivate it has no wild counterpart because it would die in the wild. So no silk even anymore. We are creating and modifying the biology of the world to serve our needs, and I don't have a problem with that because we've been doing it for tens of thousands of years. So chill out,

Oh, before I offend you too much, that wasn't my own statement, but Neil deGrasse Tyson. A fairly widely well thought of spokesman for science within the scientific community.

I'm amazed how much objection genetically modified foods are receiving from the public. It smacks of a fear factor that exists in any new science where people don't fully understand it and there for reject it. What most people don't know, and probably should is that practically every food you buy in a store for consumption is genetically modified food. There are no wild seedless watermelon. There are no wild cows. There are no long stem roses in the wild. List all the fruits and vegetables and ask yourself is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it's not as large, it's not as sweet, it's not as juicy, it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the meats and all the foods we eat since we cultivated them. It's called artificial selection. Now that we can do it in a lab, all of a sudden you wanna complain? You like red delicious apples? We manufactured those, it's a genetic modification. The silkworm as we cultivate it has no wild counterpart because it would die in the wild. So no silk even anymore. We are creating and modifying the biology of the world to serve our needs, and I don't have a problem with that because we've been doing it for tens of thousands of years. So chill out,

Oh, before I offend you too much, that wasn't my own statement, but Neil deGrasse Tyson. A fairly widely well thought of spokesman for science within the scientific community.

That's some mighty narrow vision. Women's rights were marginally better under Saddam than the rest of the middle east... Saddam also committed two genocides against his own people with estimates of 2-300 thousand killed in each of them. He also initiated the Iran-Iraq war which killed over a million and extensively used chemical weapons in it, as well as in his genocide of the Kurds.

So, aside from the concentration camps, collective punishment, genocides and love for chemical weapons, Saddam was also a liberator of women...

Correction, it wasn't found because the program was destroyed during and after the first gulf war and by a unilateral bombing run from Israel earlier.

But that presumes the burden of proof was on Bush. Saddam was proven to have chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in the first gulf war. One of the most important conditions for allowing Saddam to remain in power and for the end of first gulf war short of his removal was the admittance and allowing of international inspectors to verify the termination of those programs. More than a decade later Saddam was still blocking inspectors. The fact was inspections had failed to confirm Saddam's compliance with ending his WMD programs. So much so that many of the inspectors, Like Scott Ritter objected to the war on the grounds that chemical weapons would be likely be deployed against allied forces. That of course didn't stop Ritter from being a cheer leader in chorus afterwards pointing out the failure to find WMDs...

I can't but shake my head at all the environmentally concerned people opposing fracking. More specifically, the ones vehemently insisting we be more considerate of the living conditions we are creating for people down the road. It strikes me as a very bad form of tunnel vision.

Fracking the oil from the American midwest makes America energy independent. Let me repeat that another way. Fracking the midwest oil means America doesn't need Middle Eastern oil.

IMHO, that ends the discussion and debate. I'm not dismissing concerns over how 'dirty' recovery of midwest oil is, I'm just of the opinion that the alternative Middle Eastern oil is even dirtier on account of all the blood spilled over it.

You assume that ISIL is a rational entity that doesn't believe that Allah would protect them and grant them victory in their jihad... Religious fanatics are exactly the crowd that would try and pull something like that off, because they either do not care if they would be exterminated as a result, or because their irrational beliefs honestly believe they will be protected from or win some manner of armageddon war. In fact, Armageddon is exactly the goal of all manner of religious fanatics. It's the very reason their extermination and marginalization is important to those of us who prefer life to death.

I'd like the alarmists to step first and admit their error. If you look at the First Assessment Report from the IPCC in the early 90's their projections grossly overestimated temperature and sea level rise over the ~25 years through to today. Far from any admission of overstating the danger, here are guys like you doubling down on how foolish everyone else will look in another 30 years. I don't need to guess if you'll finally shut up then, the experiment was run already and the answer is nope.

Fact: Things are getting warmer.
Fact: CO2 emissions contribute to warming.
Fact: Humans are emitting CO2.
Uncertain: What degree of impact will those human CO2 emissions have on global temperatures over the next 30 or 100 years.

Don't go advocating catastrophic changes when not all the facts for that particular position are settled, you look foolish.

Your facts are not what you claim.

Here's the projections from the IPCC First Assessment Report in 1991. You''ll find projections of future warming based on CO2 emissions remaining at 1990 levels by the best models suggested today would be warmer globally by 0.5C. More over, the scenarios with increased CO2 emissions that more closer match whats actually happened that predicted warming of over 0.5C by today. Actual measured warming though is sitting at about 0.2C warmer than 1990.

Verifying against historical and past temperatures is good, but it leaves room for bias in your corrections if you have a lot of variables and just end up matching them to the mere 100 years of instrumental record we have. Predicting future temperature trends though, hasn't been as conclusive and solid as you suggest.

Oh, the IPCC report also projected nearly a 10cm rise in sea level from 1990 to today, in reality the measured amount is less than half that.

Don't blame me, I voted for for Kodos.

IMO, neither party cares about public opinion on net neutrality and if you want your voting day activity to matter show up and vote for none of the above by spoiling your ballet. If you can get even 20-30% of the vote to show up as spoiled ballets then politicians selfish interests require them to take notice and try harder again to care what the public thinks in order to gain those extra votes to increase their power base.

What if it's on topic? Say, I dunno, when discussing climate change and citing a celebrity that won a noble prize for their related work?

I'll whole heartedly agree if you want to lay the failing at the feet of ever giving Gore the time of day in scientific circles, let alone a Noble prize. You'll have to forgive people for continually bringing Gore's statements on the matter forward though. His videos are showing up in schools to 'teach' kids about the important scientific research on climate change. My kids came home having watched before they were in grade 5. When the indoctrination is pushed that far out, people are NOT remiss to start pushing back.

IMO it's not much different than the situation with Islamic Jihadists and moderate Muslims. The fact some might claim common cause with a larger group doesn't make it so, but some denouncement from the greater community starts to become of importance. Regrettably, there has been little to no efforts made from the scientific community to distance itself from Gore's extreme proclamations and warnings. Yes, I know scientists don't appreciate having to come out of their research labs where they are doing actual real work to do stuff like that, but it's important. It's all the more important the more impact you believe your research has to society as a whole.

So deniers like the authors and editors of peer reviewed journals like The National Academy of Sciences and Geophysical Research Letters and Nature. Nature in particular publishing an article with the 'denier' skewed title of "Strengthening of ocean heat uptake efficiency associated with the recent climate hiatus".

Nothing burns me more than somebody faking as though they are all for the scientific process and defending it's 'findings' while at the same time totally ignoring the actual science. The reality as pointed out in the 3 linked articles, and many, many, many more is that since 1998 the rate of warming has dropped off heavily enough it no longer matches most predictions or modelling very well. Something in the predictions and modelling was missed that is happening in the real world, and has caused an apparent 'hiatus' in the rate of warming that was expected. Tracking, identifying and understanding that is important science, and thankfully they haven't stopped to listen to people like you who would prefer to deny that reality.

Which is the source of a huge part of my skepticism regarding the severity of the 'problem'.

1. Our climate is warming, period. We have almost 125 years of instrumental data to prove it. The but is that, 125 years is not enough data points for phenomena that as you pointed out span centuries and even millenia.
2. CO2 is a GHG and contributes to warming, and we are dumping significant quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. What severity of impact is that causing though? We have just barely been dumping that CO2 for a century, and our best data points don't give us much reference of the 'before' trend.

What pushes me past skepticism though and into outright rejection is graphs like the IPCC published Mann et el graph showing temperature over the last 2k or more years. The work and principle of looking at older proxy records to get a longer reference of climate is vitally important, and a way to extend what we know and can use to improve prediction. The principal is good. The published articles are pure hack jobs though. Data points projected by proxy prior to 1900 are posted and attached to current instrumental records and show an alarming and sudden upward trend in temperature starting at 1900. Now, any sane, skeptical mind would point out the change in data sources as the first and most important cause. Instead, Mann et al claimed a eureka moment, as human CO2 emissions also roughly coincide with that time, so clearly human activity is the cause.

That isn't just bad science, IMO it is deliberately and intentionally bad science. The fact is further proven and demonstrated if you take Mann's oldest and original graphs and just map out what 2014 and 2020 aught to look like if his observed 'trend' is real.

I like to class myself in the rational crowd, and I think a major blind spot between sides is regarding the degree of warming. The following are further facts I think we can agree must be recognized if someone wants to be taken seriously:
1. The instrumental record over the last 125 years clearly shows things are warming.
2. CO2 in the atmosphere acts as a GHG and causes warming.
3. Human activity is dumping sizable quantities of CO2 into the environment and measurable amounts are accumulating in the atmosphere.

These are all well documented, measured and verifiable facts, not part of any honest debate.

That said, I STILL count myself a skeptic of the 'degree' or 'rate' of warming that we should be anticipating over the next decades. Having all the hottest years on record occurring in the last decade or two doesn't alarm me over much. We only have 100 some years of data, and the trend in it is a relatively linear warming from start to finish.

The point of contention is the question of whether or not we are facing 'catastrophic' change or not. Plenty of reconstructions and climate models argue for exponential warming. Such predictions go back to the very first IPCC report, which current global average temps are nearly cooler than the coolest error bars of predictions from back then. More recent estimates start the 'curve' later and later which has served to keep predictions consistent with measured reality. Despite this though, the best models all still DO recognize the absence of accelerated warming in recent years as a problem. They didn't predict it.

If anyone is still reading and thinks I'm missing important reasons to still anticipate catastrophic results, please let me know, but in all my searching of journals and actual, honest research I am just NOT finding any strong evidence or suggestion that it's time to 'panic'.

It's not 'deniers' pointing out the hiatus, but actual peer reviewed scientists. They point out that the hiatus DOES matter because it's getting close to falling outside the error bars that were meant to take into account the 'statistical noise' you want to claim as excuse for inaccuracy. Surely you realize the stupidity in claiming, essentially, conflicting data doesn't contradict method X, after all, the data the method was based on is far too noisy to expect good results. Seems like your admitting to knowing too little, which is presumably what you mean to be arguing against,