Most of us haven't the time nor resources to go through all the data on global warming. Kudos to you for making the effort.

To your question:

Why is it, when this topic comes up, so many people that are on the side that says human centric global warming is a fact; tend to use the argument that anyone who does not agree with them is a right-wing gun toting SUV driving mentally crippled slack jawed idiot?

Experience.
Since very few people can become experts in ever field, we rely on other experts. Just as I do not expect my users to know much about how a Unix server works and they don't expect me to know much about how account management works, they do their job and I do mine. When the only climate scientists that argue against AGW are nut jobs and those that highlight them are gun toting right wing nuts, we extrapolate.

Of course there are exceptions. Some right wing nuts don't own any weapons and some drive sedans.

Why would a headline be looking at area instead of volume? They give us some numbers (in statues of libertys). Do we not have any estimates?

It's like people that harp on Antarctic ice increasing, when most of that's because it's warm enough to snow and that new ice coverage is not very thick.

However, blocking political sites on a corporate network is perfectly reasonable.

When a corporation decides to block certain content, that is _not_ censorship. That is a corporate policy that likely includes blocking other political sites.

Try going to http://www.antiwar.com/ when you're next on a large corporation's network and see what the response is. Very likely the content will be blocked because it's catagorized as a political website. Then try xkcd.org and it'll likely be blocked because it's a humour site. The arguement for both those sites is that there is no company business that will be served by visiting them.

Now, if the government was blocking the site to private individuals, we could have a censorship discussion.

That's exactly how a republic works. If we were to allow federal law to override state and local laws like this we may as well toss out the constitution, form a parliament, and join the commonwealth.

There's not enough evidence of harm to warrant a ban, but some people will have concern.

To touch on the related GMO food issue. I avoid where possible get buy GMO food because I think it leads to a healthier food ecosystem, not because I'm afraid that I'll turn into a mutant.

And it makes complete sense because...

Dell tech support found that many people did not know what "Ubuntu" is when ordering their laptops. If you've ever worked a consumer helpdesk, this will not surprise you. Keeping the option available over the phone will improve the chance that people ordering Linux computers understand that Windows is not included.

In an obvious effort to belittle the contributions of fighters in WWI and WWII, some polititians and commentators have decided to call the cold war WWIII and the War on Terror WWIV.

The WWIII designation has gained enough use to be in Wikipedia. WoT as WWIV is still limited to the lunitic fringe.

Texas buys the most textbooks, and thus has undue influence on the industry.

Don't think that's entirely accurate. Texas buys a lot of text books and they buy the same ones for all the schools, so they may be the largest purchaser of a single volume.

California buys the most text books (has the largest population). California stating they won't buy any TX tainted text books is therefore a big deal.

Many years ago when I was in TX by population it was 4th or 5th. A bunch of people have moved there (plus abstinence only in place of sex ex), but CA still has them beat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

I can't resist a good car analogy. You invent the electric car that will be the game changer. It would be legitimate to sell or license that to a manufacturer to produce something. But selling it to a third party that sells it to Exxon, who then sues me because the engines I'm putting into golf carts are similar to your idea is where you get to the behaviour of a real patent troll.

From the summary:

'food additives require premarket approval based on data demonstrating safety submitted to the agency' -- and caffeine is a food additive

Requiring premarket approval does not mean it is banned, just that you need approval. Before you market it.

This was figured out 40 years ago. Send couples, the come back for the next generation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land

Did you save the graph?

One major miss in your assessment is that deflation is related to the local currency. Most of the raw materials are imported. So if the yuan falls against the Australian dollar, copper becomes more expensive to the Chinese in real terms. Deflation continues to make the finished product less valuable.

If they were not a minority, these laws would not be passed and existing ones would be overturned

A founding principle of our republic is minority rights and majority rule. I think that gets overlooked at times.