The other thing still being disputed is whether or not it matters that global warming is happening... Yes, the planet will change, some species will go extinct... But the planet has been changing for billions of years, and species have been going extinct since the first evolution of species.

Planetary change is a normal thing, and will continue as the sun's output varies (and the sun eventually dies). This will happen NO MATTER WHAT WE DO. The Earth has warmed and cooled many time in the past without human intervention. It will continue to do so.

That said, we ought to be more concerned about not squandering our resources, and limiting our population growth. I'd like to see us reward efficiency whenever we can. But you are talking to a /. reader who is always trying to find the most efficient set of steps to make a pot of coffee using the least amount of water to wash out the pot first... The correct order of cold and hot water to take advantage of the lukewarm water while the hot water is getting hot...

Of course... And climate is WAY more complex than weather... We can't even predict weather a few days in advance... We certainly cannot predict climate years in advance, and definitely cannot predict the effect of our actions on climate (barring something crazy like a nuclear war).

You pretty much summed it up. A scientist wants to prove his theory wrong, not right.

There may be an almost consensus that climate change is happening, but there is far from a consensus that it is caused by man's actions or inactions. The planet does a lot of thing that we cannot understand completely.

Weather is far from predictable-- as a pilot I find the weather predictions can rarely be trusted more than one day out... How can we possibly make predictions for *decades* in the future?

Am I saying we should burn all the oil as fast as possible and dump as many pollutants or greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as possible? Not at all... We humans have a duty to be conservative of resources in everything we do. Improving efficiency is a good thing, and that often takes economic factors.

Code can only be created by intellectuals, like /. readers; therefore, it is Intellectual Property, not some ho-hum, run-of-the-mill property...

Why is it that our asinine politicians in both parties have no respect for the Constitution anymore? I thought at least this crap would get better under Obama. Instead it has only gotten worse...

That would be nice, but we have both sides of the fence touting god this and god that. Obama is constantly holding prayer breakfasts and promoting these fairy tales, saying that his faith guides his policies just as much as Bush did. There is no escape from this lunacy.Perhaps his Holy Noodleness, the Great FSM, will smite them all!

Precisely, I mean this is where Al Gore was elected Senator!

Perhaps the hippie states realize that the red states tend to be the ones with all the guns... Can you imagine how much more broke California would be if they got attacked by Texas?

Post a link about the pay walled NYT site on the pay walled WSJ site. Then post a link back to the pay walled NYT site on the WSJ site. You use up everyody's ten free views and people realize how cool these papers are and start paying for them..

Either that or we end up in a Chronic Hysteresis...

Tesla is the wheels I'm looking for. Move along...

And regulation is a magic wand that fixes technical problems and design flaws?

Simple as that. I would never consider driving a car that looked hideous.

More like a free trip to Gitmo...

There is already a service that works like this. An app called iSwifter gives you a Linux Firefox window that runs flash based content. It works decently, though can get a hinlegalgy at times. iSwifter is a one time fee. They do Not charge per month (I think they originally did, but nobody wanted to pay). I use iSwifter for King Schools flight training programs, which are flash based. Works pretty well.

There are far too many in "accedemia" who just get tenure and do nothing. How about schools focus on TEACHING, specifically undergrads.... Universities these days just worry about publishing and other things that get them grants, but don't care too much about the students, especially the undergrads, which is all the degree most of them are going to get... Put people out in their field and they will learn far more in a week than in a semester of school.