No, look at the work involved. There is simply no way to do that, it takes too many compute hours

I'm calling you on this. Do it. Produce, or show someone elses results, that reproduce the historical record matching a current climate model, that doesn't show 1.5-6 degrees climate sensitivity for GHG doubling.
You may take as input to your model: (1) bathymetry and topography (2) land use, (3) ocean and atmosphere starting conditions, eg. the Levitus dataset, (4) volcanic and aerosol inputs, (5) solar output for the 1950-2000 period, ie. the inputs that went into the CMIP5 intercomparison project. Do it to at least a 5 degree global resolution, 5 vertical layers atmosphere, 5 ocean, monthly time resolution.

People dismiss models as "you can make a model do what you want", but no, you can't. We've done model intercomparison projects, comparing model output to observed records. NOBODY HAS MANAGED TO PUT TOGETHER A NON-GHG BASED MODEL THAT MATCHES THE OBSERVATIONS.

To be taken seriously, your model also needs to match the paleontological record, or give a plausible account thereof: ie. match the mean and variance in temperature records, globally and to at least a continental resolution.

Yes, but it is and will be probabilistic. See for example this on the Moscow heat waves, for example, and the discussions at RealClimate. Attribution studies are very expensive (in time and money, for computing ensembles), but are a key body of work over the last few years, and there is a section of the upcoming IPCC AR5 report summarizing it. The IPCC reports are
the best summary of the science, even though they are very conservative.

Yes, and I didn't go into details. I didn't mention desertification or deforestation, for example, but you're right about synergistic effects. For example I've been working providing data to a group at NUI Maynooth" studying the effects on forests: the (measured and predicted) lengthing growing season leads to multiple generations of tree-predating insects surviving. Some species may have difficulty surviving this, so foresters need to know 30 years in advance what species to plant.

Yes. The numbers I've seen say that the shortfall in wheat due to the Russian heatwave in 2010 equalled the crop production in Europe diverted to make ethanol under EU policy for 5% ethanol mix, for example.

Non-scientific, yes. The terms "sceptic", "denialist","AGW believer",etc are not pro- or anti-scientific, they're political.
And I will not shy from the politics. There are simply no proper sceptics left in the field. Ten, twenty years ago sceptics had some valid questions that needed answering: discrepancies in satellite records, ocean heat, Lindzens "cloud halo" theories, for example. But over the last decade or so, they've all been answered, with the best sceptics coming up with new evidence or results (eg. this), or quietly leaving the field. The remainder are simply denialists: unmoved and simply repeating the same disproved lines, not attempting to answer the questions scientifically but simply stall political changes they don't want.

Yes. For ACC vs bad farming practices, I'll leave that to ag. scientists, but here in Ireland for example we've seen a bad year, with yields down 20% or so (preliminary) due to bad weather: heavy rainfall. Now we've seen an increase in the rainfall similar to that predicted by our climate models (though not in details: we see a step-change in the rainfall in the 1970s for example I don't think the models have reproduced, but we have not enough climate/ocean measurements from that time to properly initalize the models, so I don't think we'll ever simulate the climate of the 1950s-1990s to within measurement error).
Could we scientifically attribute the rainfall this year to ACC? we could run a large ensemble model (such as the UK Met office did for Russia, 2010) but it would be exteremely expensive in computational time and scientist time, and would still lead a probabilistic result that denialists would dismiss. The preference instead is to concentrate our efforts on developing seasonal forecasting, and weather prediction for extreme events, to prepare and produce useful results for our changing world.

I prefer the term "Anthropogenic Climate Change", because I think Global Warming gives a too-soft impression of whats happening.

Yes, the world is warming, on average, but what kills is not the average temperature rising by one or two degrees, its drought,
extreme events such as storms, ocean acidification, etc. The danger is that people think we're heading for a Mediterranean climate here in N Europe, etc. and that global warming might not be a bad thing for chilly Ireland, for example, when massive droughts and crop failures (across Europe and elsewhere) are starting to threaten global food supplies.

Its ironic that the denialists also prefer the term climate change, because it sounds milder, but thats just the scale of the education exercise ahead of us.

Yes. You failed to enumerate and list every issue

Correct. I don't think it is possible to enumerate every issue, but your claim presumes otherwise.

Science proceeds by falsification. In the example of gravity - the work of Copernicus / Kepler / Newton disproved the existing Heliocentric view.
Newtons theory was/is an extraordinarily effective theory: it matched observations and produced predictions that came true for the next
three hundred years. Yes, it was superceded by Einsteins work, but in practice Engineers and Scientists use Newtons theory to this day for
almost all work. Hence, no I wouldn't say Newton was "spectacularly wrong", especially given the evidence available.

Because you can (almost) never prove a theory true, it looks dangerously possible to be dismissive of any idea you don't like.
But this isn't the case. Consider anthropogenic climate change (ACC): while our existing theories of climate are provisional, the opposing idea that there is no ACC is wrong. There is no theory that explains the observations without ACC.

Ok, by "faith" I mean accepting /believing without evidence. (belief is another dangerous word: I don't think scientists and religious mean the same thing by it, and I try to avoid it). Particle physicists didn't have "faith" it would be found. They provisionally accepted the hypothesis in order to investigate and test it. Holding and testing hypotheses are not faith; the "belief" is provisional and explicitly not accepted yet.

Nope, I've not looked at all the evidence. Vast swathes of phenomenology for example (the changes in species extent / growing seasons, etc due to climate change) I've accepted from my biologist colleagues without examining in any detail.
But others: I have explicitly examined the evidence, and been involved in doing so, for example in precipitation and temperature change in Ireland.
I've read all the reviews I can (eg the IPCC reports) and made a deliberate point of examining all the contrary evidence and papers I can and found them wanting. There was a sufficiently small volume that yes, it is possible to read it all. And over the last decade or so, its just about all been disproven.

In the larger picture: there is no countervailing theory. There is no theory or hypothesis that explains the observations without human-induced climate change. Our theories do predict the evidence, within observational and measurement error to the point that they are, I think, effective theories: that is, you can use them for policy purposes. Yes, I'm painfully aware of the limitations of the theories and models (working on them on a daily basis) and they will be improved. But "spectacularly wrong", as in unfit for use, no.

Many, but only one atom theory.

The atom theory is that matter is made up of atoms, finite quanta that cannot be infinitely subdivided.
Hence, you cannot have less than one atom of sodium, etc. The antithesis was that you could, that you could
infinitely divide the amount of a substance and still maintain that substance.

That atoms have subdivisions in themselves (protons, electrons, neutrons), does not negate the theory as originally stated.

Why?

The trouble with string theory is the lack of ability to falsify (at this stage). A beautiful theory is worth exploring, and you cut the theorists some slack for a while to develop it and come up with experiments that could test it. By now, we're getting impatient.

Climate change is wholly different. There are hundreds of thousands of datasets empirically backing up the predictions made from hundred-year old science (the physics of greenhouse cases from Tyndall dates back to the 19th century).

No.
Evidence, please?
Can you show that people have been "almost always" wrong on every issue? On gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, on quantum mechanics, on the atom theory of nature, on evolution, on ...
You can point to individual anecodatal points, but "almost always" and "spectacularly wrong" on every issue is a very strong statement.

Also, "faith" has no place in science. I provisionally accept lots of things, based on the scientific consensus of my colleagues. Especially with the overwhelming amount of evidence to investigate. Contrary evidence trumps consensus, but in the case of climate change, it isn't there.

Why? you can have clean rivers in Urban areas if you try.

For example, we now have trout returning to two main rivers in Dublin, Ireland (the Liffey and the Tolka, I believe).
Increasingly people are swimming (again?) in urban rivers in Europe. can be done.

Maybe not?

Methane on its own doesn't have a smell. For safety, another gas like methanethiol is typically added, so that people can detect leaks.
Perhaps these leaks are pure methane?

Wrong way round, folks.

Guess who lobbied to ensure the US weather data was made "public" (ie. available to Accuweather, local TV networks, etc.)?

There is a nice little story in Ireland about the wren being the king of birds. All the birds got together and had a competition to see who was best.
They decided the matter by a seeing who could fly the highest. The Eagle thought it would win easily, but when it got as high as it could, the little wren, which had been sitting on the eagles shoulder, jumped a foot higher and won.

Similarly with public and private weather services. The vast bulk of the work is done by the public services - building expensive
satellites, observational networks, computer model development, etc. The results are then made public, and the private sector squeezes
some added value out (by adding better graphics, presentation, etc.) and sells the product.

Now if you can do this and make money selling a product people want, fine. But don't kid anybody that the private sector
is a drop-in replacement and better than the public sector one.

Estimates are it takes 1-5 M/ mile of coastline to evacuate before a hurricane.

Improved observations from the 1970s cut the estimates for where a hurricane will make landfall from ~300miles to ~50 miles radius,
(24 hours out, I think; I'm not an American, but remembering numbers quoted from a US colleague in the business).

So, better forecasts cut the cost of evacuating from a hurricane by ~100 Million a time, easy to save 12 gigabucks a decade.

Yes, we do measure this. Every met service I know of (e.g. NOAA) has to explain its budget.
I'm not sure of the US numbers, but in the UK the return on investment in meteorology is ~x11 fold, according to external auditors.

If Fox News was reliably bad, you could simply take their headlines and invert them to find out the truth. In order to be completely useless it actually has to get things right occasionally.

Toleration of people and their rights to autonomy.

I'm intolerant of _actions_, because these impinge on other people, and hence need to be justified.

Ideas: no. The world is full of bad ideas, many of which I've had myself. We need to examine and criticize ideas, examine their consequences, etc. No ideas (such as religions) get a free ride. Having held many bad ideas in the past, I don't hold that against people. We're all seeking after truth and a better life.

As for "general intolerance of all things Southern", the key point you're looking for is prejudice: treat people as individuals, look for their humanity, rather than one of a class. Once you're willing to dismiss people for being racists/black/jew, that way lies the ovens.

Because, as stated by Google, it isn't.

I will use Google and get / give a degraded service in Privacy mode by giving them less information, possibly getting more ads from Google and a less-targeted response.

With Google, the idea (the implicit "contract") was that your data was available and used by Google for targetted advertising, but not passed to third parties. I don't mind Google knowing of my fondness for Twinkies, and my purchasing of them, but I _do_ mind if my health insurer knows, for example.

Easy, Potato came before Sarge :-)

But Debian helps answer the original question: when Debian was first being developed, the pre-stable code was in a directory on an ftp site labelled "1.0". Unfortunately people didn't realise it wasn't ready yet, and got burned.

So after this, Debian came up with the naming system, with "Buzz" being the first. When it was ready for release, a symlink
1.1 -> buzz was added, and Debian 1.1 was born.

Yet people prefer the names.

Part of the reason names are preferable is that an OS consists of components that will be updated-in-time. Its not a static piece of software, but a "release" you "track". If you're OS is "Debian squeeze" then when Debian squeeze is updated with fixes, it remains "squeeze", (but a precise version number may be updated).