Yo mama!

One could even say it's the opiate of the masses.

Ah, it took me a while to find it. Under Filter preferences... there's a checkbox for "Allow some non-intrusive advertising." It was already checked when I first found it -- the documentation says it's enabled by default. It doesn't seem to allow much advertising through, yet. Maybe if more advertisers read about the feature and sign the Acceptible Ads Manifesto that will change.

I never thought of that as the reason that Firefox became popular (and why Mozilla was quickly becoming popular before that). Back then, Mozilla's built-in popup blocker blocked nearly all popups. IE didn't have any corresponding feature? That sure would be a compelling reason to switch browsers!

When I read the article, the thought I had was that I installed AdBlock Plus only to disable the popups that Firefox didn't block with its built-in blocker when popups evolved to get around it. Is there still not an ad blocker that blocks only the most annoying ads such as popups?

Who said anything about panic? Anyway, you're using linear extrapolation to estimate future sea level rise, because it gives you results you like. The actual estimates of future sea level rise are far larger than your naive and optimistic guess.

This is exactly what I referred to above. When "skeptics" can't argue the issue, they dismiss the evidence they don't want by labeling it "propaganda". You can also take a look at my signature.

That's called the temperature escalator.

Most of the heat is going into the oceans and causing the sea level to rise due to thermal expansion. Much of the rest of the heat is continuing to melt the ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctic.

I don't think it's climatologists who are the ones dismissing results they don't want. Actually, everyone would love to see that carbon dioxide emissions cause very little warming, but that's just not what the bulk of the data shows.

When applied to other animals, the term is "breed". Do you agree that different breeds of dogs have different physical characteristics, right? Remember that dogs of different breeds can mate and produce fertile offspring, so they are not different species.

I was taught that using marijuana leads to heroin use. When you see many people around you that do not adhere to that model, you start disregarding the information as BS. After realizing how ridiculous some of the information presented about drugs was, I disregarded it all, so it actually backfired. The purpose of drug programs should be to inform students of the real consequences of drug use, not to make up horror stories to scare students.

The whole notion of a "gateway drug" is the misconception that correlation implies causation. Just because someone used caffiene, nicotine, alcohol, or marijuana before moving on to more powerful drugs does not mean that they caused the use of more powerful drugs. You could ban all of those drugs, and some other drug would become the first one users try.

I went on to watch a debate between Denning and Roy Spencer. I found Spencer's talk to be intriguing, but too optimistic:
1) He says that by his calculations, climate sensitivity is about 1.3 degrees Celsius, and could be lower. But he doesn't mention is could be higher, also.
2) He says that there has been no warming in the past decade or so, but doesn't address recent sea level rise and ice melt that does indicate warming.
3) He says he believes carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will not triple and may not even double, but offers no reasoning to support his beliefs.
The truth is that no one knows exactly what will happen, and Dr. Spencer could turn out to be right. But he gives no reason to be so optimistic. He just is. What if he's wrong? I remain skeptical of his beliefs.