(yoda voice) So sure of yourself are you? The "Little Ice Age" was an unusually cold period for Europe and North America, which is designated as happening from about 1300 to 1870 AD. The expression "moving the goal posts" refers to association football (aka soccer), which has been played in Europe since the 400's BC and was standardized in the 1800's AD.

Hey, fun exercise: Without googling it, can you say how many years ago you think it was to what is commonly referred to as the "Little Ice Age"?

I wouldn't kill a turtle myself, but I do eat beef and other delicious meats regularly. According to the Snopes article, the incident depicted is credibly alleged to be a legal hunting kill in Louisiana wherein the hunter ate the meat. Snopes provides evidence that it wasn't a casual killing with a sawsall like the hysterical Facebook post claimed, but rather a couple of 22 bullets in the turtle's head. What's depicted is the butchering process -- which by the way is just as ugly when it's a cow, we're just not used to seeing it.

So simmer down a bit!

I guess there may be people who deny that there ever was an ice age. They are in a very different category from the likes of Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, and the M&M's, who accept climate change, and even accept that humans affect climate change to an unknown degree, as they question claims of anthropogenic catastrophe.

What would be unusual is if climate change wasn't happening. When I hear the phrase "climate change denier" (which I know you didn't use, so just putting this out there), I wonder if anybody even exists who fits that description.

That may be true. However, I dispute that carbon sensitivity estimations based on computer simulations and projections should be considered scientific evidence, nor taken particularly seriously until and unless they are verified from Mother Nature.

FTFY. In fact, you can plug any kind of dogma in there and the formula works.

On the contrary, we can argue with people all we like. Of course, the Slashdot comments section is just an online forum where (for the most part) non-scientists are playing a sort of team sport of advocating the view they think is correct. In a few cases trolling, but probably not that many.

The people who are doing the real scientific advancement aren't arguing with people at all per se, but interacting with ideas and testing them with data and analysis.

Good grief. I think the word you're searching for is "convince". And even that is dubious, at least based on how I see the term "denier" indiscriminately used in the real world. Forcing conformity is not how science gets moved forward.

For example, M&M are frequently labeled as "bad" "deniers" who just need to be quiet and go away. But in fact, they have contributed insightful criticisms to the field, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. There's a fair amount of noise on climateaudit.org, but there's also a useful signal to be found in there.

I am loving reading all these responses explaining how people avoid distractions, even while succumbing to the distraction of posting on reading and posting on Slashdot.

(Yeah yeah, I know, maybe they're in a different time zone... I would bet money the majority are still in their working hours. Including myself.)

She always said if we didn't give it an extra second to stop zapping before we opened the door, we'd all die of cancer. I'm going to have to tell her about this for Mother's Day. :)

Here's an article with a counterpoint to your view.

You won't hear any disagreement from me.

I disagree there. American healthcare compares favorably with European healthcare when you take everything into account. We have some states that are doing better than others, just like you have some countries in Europe that are doing better than others. Some of your European countries have some very rotten aspects in government and in other societal areas. The PIIGS nations come to mind.

So you disagree with the statement "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". You're entitled to your opinion, and I think mine is on the side of history.

By what metric? I understand that emergency room visits have increased under Obamacare, which was one thing it was supposed to reduce. I'm sure there are some people with pre-existing conditions who get cheaper care under the ACA, however until the dust settles it's not clear at what cost. If you drag the whole system down to help some people, the value is certainly debatable.

Government has to get involved when people do bad stuff. That doesn't mean that the government should decide how much our doctors get paid. There is lots of lovely gray space in the middle between the stark black and white of extreme positions.

I disagree. Government is force/power/compulsion. It does not inherently seek the good of the populace. The more you hand over to the government, the less recourse you will have when faced with incompetence, corruption, and overall indifference to the needs of ordinary people.

I worked in the medical software industry for about 4 years. Funny enough, I actually wrote an ICD9 lookup UI. Medical software is mostly pathetic and dysfunctional, but government isn't the solution -- holding private companies accountable is the solution.