This is nothing like Google Glass, or the Oculus Rift. But it is a direct competitor for Sony's HMZ head-mounted personal displays, only a little cheaper & crappier.

I applaud your effort to bring actual data to the discussion, but I'm not certain those links support your claim of temperatures "equal to or higher than todays". Closest I could find in the first paper was:

(emphasis mine) ... but we know global temperatures have risen significantly in the last 60 years. Do you have evidence that this is not the case in Europe?

The second link was paywalled, but the abstract says northern Sweden experienced "similar levels of summer warmth in the medieval period (MWP, c. CE 900–1100) and the latter half of the 20th century". Hard to pin down the comparison dates, but again, not "equal or higher than today".

The third link says that some reconstructions of northern Sweden and Finland specifically have indeed been up to 0.6C warmer 2000 years ago, when compared to the 1951-1980 mean (rather than today's warmer temperatures), but also says that proxy reconstructions can vary wildly, by 1.5-3C, depending on which Scandinavian record is used, and finishes with:

So basically, it was certainly fairly warm in Europe during certain past periods, but the evidence is not reliable enough to say exactly how warm, and no paper supports the claim that it's "equal or higher than todays" temperatures. In any case, Europe in general (and Sweden/Finland in particular) are only one part of the global picture; temperatures were relatively low elsewhere in the world even during the MWP.

It is literally free from China to AU as well; most Chinese/HK vendors ship here for free these days, and to most other destinations.

Those high prices are from the US to Australia; why is that? US international postage prices seem huge to us - more than shipping from AU to the US. Amazon (when it deigns to ship here) are often much cheaper, like $9-$20, but that's still more than e.g. from the UK, let alone China.

Guess who sets out those principles of international respect for property, businesses etc? The same WTO that you want shut down.

The US agreed in 1995 to abide by the WTO's principles and rules. If they no longer want to, they're free to withdraw, but they can't expect other nations to respect the rules if they won't.

Exactly what Antigua is saying. There's earnings to be made by violating US copyrights.

Don't like it? National sovereignty; too bad.

What makes you think US-passed laws have anything to do with Antigua and Barbuda, a foreign nation with its own laws? US laws aren't being "overruled", they simply don't apply outside the US.

There are international organisations such as the WTO and WIPO that set trade rules that both these nations have each agreed to abide by. The US is free to lodge a dispute with them, but they might not get very far considering it was the US who violated those rules in the first place.

And of course, the US has no power to "shut down" the WTO. They can continue to ignore it and keep violating WTO rules where it suits them, but then more nations will do simply the same and follow in Antigua/Barbuda's footsteps.

If the US wants others to follow the rules and respect its copyrights, it will have to follow the rules itself.

Buses don't provide door-to-door, non-stop service. Taxis do - but of course now you have to cover the whole cost of the driver by yourself.

This same argument is also used by the countless wrong people too.

Sure, it does happen - but only after a) the method and conclusions are shown to be rock-solid, b) confirming evidence is found by third parties, and c) the existing body of evidence is also explained in the new context. This does not happen commonly - it's far more often that attempts to challenge the status quo fail one or all of the above, and are quickly forgotten.

And how often has that minority been wrong?

And when Scientists A and C point out errors in Scientist B's critique, who do you believe then? You have no idea even of how much you don't know in the complex field of climatology, yet you're still certain you can "easily" identify errors that the paper's authors, their peer reviewers and the great bulk of climatologists somehow missed completely. Or perhaps you're just selecting the conclusions you want to believe.

My answer stands :-)

I'm not capable of evaluating the science at that level. Neither are you, unless you have a PhD and years of work in climate science that you haven't mentioned. We don't have the training or the experience, we haven't been reading all the relevant literature for the last decade, we don't even know what we would need to know to do that. The conclusions sound reasonable to me, but so do the critiques - and so do the counter-critiques. How is a layman supposed to tell who's the most accurate? It's not high-school level stuff.

I assume you're referring to Fyfe et al (2013). And no, I have no problem with it. The models are clearly failing to robustly predict surface temperature variability, and if you read the paper itself, you'll see that it offers a number of possible reasons for this, including the ENSO and AMO oscillations, stratospheric aerosols, model base factors like climate sensitivity, or just unusual natural variability. There's a lot of factors involved, and nobody's claiming that the science is perfect yet, not even close. But we do know, for example, that ocean warming (where 90% of the heat imbalance goes) is continuing unabated, as does ocean acidification. Surface temperatures, while important to humans, are only a small part of the overall rising trend - and they can fluctuate up just as quickly as down.

What I do have a problem with, is the prodigious assumptive leap that a paper like Fyfe's somehow provides evidence that all climate science is therefore junk, that AGW must therefore be insignificant, or even that the 180-year global warming trend has suddenly ceased. This paper does not begin to suggest that, merely that our surface temperature models need more work, nothing more. Meanwhile, other peer reviewed papers like Santer et al (2013) conclude unequivocally that "Our results... underscore the dominant role human activities have played in recent climate change." (I can cite half a dozen others that say the same, if you want).

Not ignoring (I've read some of Dr Lindzen's papers, and others); just giving more weight to the far greater numbers of practicing climate scientists who support the IPCC's conclusions. Dr Lindzen and the others you mention are very much in the minority, according to numerous studies from many different parties, and of course the IPCC's own many authors, backed by their reviews of the last 5 years of climate papers. If you want to call listening to a 97% majority "cherry-picking", I don't really know how to respond.

It's not consensus of uninformed opinions, it's confirmation of expert results. I'm sure you're smart enough to realise that, so I can only imagine you don't want to.

When a scientist publishes a paper, especially one that contradicts current thinking, we don't immediately throw out all our textbooks; first, other scientists try to confirm their results. Particularly in complex fields, there is debate - are the conclusions actually supported by the data? Are there any questionable assumptions, are the techniques applied appropriate, are there any important factors that have been overlooked, are the interpretations of the data reasonable, that sort of thing. Peer review catches the obvious errors, but particularly for papers that challenge the status quo, the biggest question is usually, how do you reconcile this result with the existing body of evidence? Declaring everybody else to be "wrong" doesn't get you far; you have to find other data that confirms your own results, and you have to explain how all that existing counter-evidence doesn't apply to your conclusions. If you can do that convincingly, other scientists will support your work. If you can't, your results are considered suspect and are assumed to have a flaw, at least until more confirmation can be found. After all, if two observations disagree then either they're observing different things, or one is just wrong.

This is a crucial part of the scientific process, as much as peer review. It's what saves us from crackpots and wasting time on free-energy machines, it protects us from inadvertently flawed results, and it's also what keeps the majority of science and engineering focused and on track. We can't all be experts in every field, so we defer to those that are. I personally don't have the expertise or experience to properly judge Dr Lindzen's work, but his colleagues do - and if the vast majority of them still aren't convinced by his claims after 15 years, then it's fairly safe to for the lay person to assume that his claims (and those of the handful of scientists who continue to deny the results of the thousands of other climatologists) are most probably either flawed, or just don't apply.

Of course, if you still believe that Scientist A's pet theory is right when Scientists B through Z have all produced peer-reviewed results that disagree, you either have to believe your own judgement is superior to theirs (hint: it isn't), or that they're all in a huge conspiracy to supress the truth. I'll leave you to decide which is more likely.

Dr Lindzen is not listed as a lead or contributing author of any AR5 chapter, though a few of his recent papers are cited and discussed.

You might want to re-read this bit:

Dr Lindzen's claims about climate change have so far failed to convince most of his colleagues. While I sincerely hope he turns out to be correct, most climate scientists disagree with him - and the conclusions of AR5's broad review of recent science papers reflect that (as do numerous other surveys and studies). A summary of the results of thousands of peer-reviewed studies carries considerably more scientific weight than a lone dissenting voice with unconvincing evidence. Further, choosing to believe a single scientist's opinion while dismissing nearly all other climate scientists' opinions is a prime example of selection bias.

Your comment is really just more evidence of what I was saying.

Then maybe you should be looking more closely at the actual science, as the IPCC AR5 review upgraded their assessment of the majority of climate change being human-caused to "extremely likely" (95%+ probability). And while a few specific effects of climate change are now considered less likely, others such as polar ice melt have been outstripping projections.

Be careful about cherry picking your science, or letting others do so for you. Read the AR5 executive summary for yourself; it's by far the most comprehensive review of the actual science. And its conclusions are not that everything's fine - quite the opposite.

It's cheaper because the oil tycoons aren't paying for all the costs of burning the stuff (they're actually getting huge tax breaks instead).

Ah yes, detailed, studies conclude that mitigating climate change will save us trillions by 2100, but you prefer to believe some guy on YouTube who naïvely extrapolates a number he pulled out of thin air (exactly where did he get that ridiculous starting figure from anyway?). You're right about the "simple" part.

Bet you didn't know that when you reduce child mortality rates, population growth rates actually go down, not up.