Sorry, you're wrong. He is saying different things.

We know some things for certain. Global average climate has changed by a measurable, albeit small, amount. We know that emitting CO2 changes the climate. It is happening alright, and unless there are huge volcanic eruptions or other catastrophic natural disasters, it will keep happening. The rate of its happening has been projected to be quite modest, by IPCC, in 2007. Even before, the best scientific scenarios have been realistic - and more and more realistic all the time. Certainly we don't know exactly what the climate is doing, but our idea is getting better and better.

It seems to me that James Lovelock has just taken 20 years to admit he was wrong in the eighties.

I agree with you that we shouldn't dismantle civilization. Let's instead make a small effort, and put 5% of GDP into minimizing our contribution to climate change. That'd be a small contribution, hardly noticable, but would already do something.

Well, I agree with your point. But six years is a good time to let scientific papers simmer. Less than that is not enough time for other scientists to evaluate the correctness and value of some paper.

Transportation can be (and has historically been) powered with non-fossil-fuels. Likewise, heat can be produced without fossil fuels. But you've got a point - transportation is probably the most painful casehere. That's why I'm hoping that the usage of fossil fuels will be brought down gradually within 10 - 20 years, and not instantaneously. Most vehicles are replaced in 10 - 20 years anyway.

Btw, electric cars are almost as good as fossil-fuel-powered ones. People are not changing over very much, because they're lazy and reluctant to lose even the tiniest bit of convenience. Switching over now would definitely be felt everywhere, but I wouldn't call it suffering. Btw, I'm lazy too and no better than the next guy, and that's why I'm hoping we'll get strong governance directing more environmentally friendly solutions to become the cheapest and most convenient ones, so that people will actually switch over. As a first remedy, governments globally should put heavy taxes on all cars that pollute more than the most fuel-efficient (combustion engine) alternative.

As a final note, I don't claim to know for fact that electric cars would be less polluting overall, even though the text above assumes so.

We agree on one thing: fossil fuels need to be replaced with something else. The issue is not as catastrophic as you make it sound - many countries already produce half of their energy in some non-fossil-fuel way. But how can we get human populations to switch to something else? Humans are ingenious, resourceful and lazy. The change comes either from political pressure, or the depletion of fossil fuel resources. The former can be a controlled process, the latter cannot.

By the way - estimates on how long fossil fuel resources last are generally based on the "guess", that their use will remain constant until we run out. In reality, energy usage is growing exponentially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFnrvcS6AQ (The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See) describes the situation with proper gravity.

I thought that the exam questions change from exam to exam! Based on this assumption, I'd call the deed just "studying". Sometimes going through ten previous exams is the only way to figure out what the lecturer thinks is important about a course. Sure, this is a problem that could be solved by other methods as well, but it isn't. Go figure.

The exams should test if students know what they should. If an exam succeeds in this, then students can not study exams without learning exactly the things they were supposed to. Thus studying old exams is in principle no different from studying course exercises or course material.

What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 tells the story as it stands after investigations. It's a rather chilling read. But it makes one thing clear: it was about human error. The plane was even fully operational when it crashed, as an anti-icing system had managed to bring air speed sensors back to operation before it.

Two years after the Airbus 330 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, Air France 447's flight-data recorders finally turned up. The revelations from the pilot transcript paint a surprising picture of chaos in the cockpit, and confusion between the pilots that led to the crash.

I'm genuinely confused about if it only applies to people whom a Proper Court has Judged to be associated with specific Terrorist Groups, or if it applies to people of whom somebody says they're associated with specific terrorist groups, or something in between.

But if the justice is not involved in deciding whom this applies to, then there's no justice in applying it.

You convinced me that no US citizen can be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo.

I'd be very happy to be convinced that US citizens can't be detained indefinitely elsewhere either.