I don't bother to find out about the available deductions. I don't mind paying some more taxes - that money also ends up benefiting me and others, I don't care I don't directly control how.

If you define intelligence as the ability to function in a society, then there's no wonder (and no merit) in finding that this correlates with success in functioning in a society!

I recall intelligence being defined as the capability of functioning in a meaningful way in new situations, such that it doesn't depend on stuff you learned before. This still incorporates a wide variety of traits (and genetic effects), but at least clearly rules out "knowledge".

I like to think Intelligence is measured in IQ (certainly many people assume that in their work), and thus intelligence is what the tests measure. That's the most exact definition you can get ;-). And the tests deliberately try to not measure knowledge.

If I recall correctly, the most successful tend to have an IQ like 120. Higher than that, and the "success" starts to drop. But then, there's also problems (and very serious ones) in the ways we measure success!

Underground temperature mirrors with a delay that of the air above it. Somewhere where you're likely to need a snow shelter, and have enough snow to do it, the ground's probably at or below freezing (otherwise it would melt the snow away). The temperature doesn't change very much, unless you're prepared to dig many meters of dirt.

The reason it might be convenient to dig to the ground is that your body heat won't melt snow and make everything wet. That said, I've been (shortly) trained to make a snow shelter, and we did not dig to the ground but rather had a snow floor. That might be useful for its insulating properties - lying down on freezing ground makes you very, very cold indeed pretty quickly.

You're assuming "parental achievement" equals "intelligence". This, to my knowledge, is not true. Yes, probably some values of "intelligence" help, but intelligence brings its problems too, and it's also obvious that charisma, strength, agility etc. also help "achievement" a great deal. So yes, while "achievement" seems to be hereditary to a significant degree, that doesn't say much about intelligence.

Intelligence definitely depends on genes. A pine tree is not as intelligent as I am, and the difference can be said to be in the genes. But there's not many sane conclusions to make. Shoe size also obviously depends on genes, but I still have a different size than my parents. I'm also different height, look different etc etc.

I think that probably most of variation in intelligence, as measured by Mensa in logic tests, doesn't come from genetics, though.

Nope. Nothing says it was the same policemen having both ideas. Besides, someone could prefer no filming, but still resort to filming oneself while filming remains legal.

You almost came to the right conclusion yourself. A drop-in replacement for oil does not exist now, although such are being developed in America and Europe. Finding such a "replacement" is very important. How could we support that kind of science and business? A carbon tax would work, wouldn't it? Energy's getting more and more expensive anyway, and if the rises in gas prices this far haven't "crippled the economy", then why would future rises do that?

No matter what we do, price of fossil fuels is going up. That is a requirement for using the tar sand reserves, as extracting oil from those is very expensive.

Well, the effect of humans depends on what humans do. What many people don't seem to realize is that different IPCC scenarios postulate different anthropogenic CO2 output. If the rate of pollution is soon stabilized and then slowly decreased, we're looking at something like 2 C in the next 100 years. If greenhouse gas emission rate increases exponentially (as this far), we're looking at something like 4 C. The arctic will probably warm double as much.

I've seen it in conferences, that if all fossil fuel use was stopped right now, the warming impact is expected to continue for at least 1000 years.

In my understanding, this would be mostly because oceanic circulation is so slow, one cycle of the thermohaline circulation taking 1600 years at max. As such, the oceans take thousands of years to warm up all the way (and in the meanwhile, they're net heat sinks).

The IPCC is a panel of experts on climate change. There's a couple thousand scientists contributing to IPCC reports, and only a handful of them have been found to make a mistake. The "climategate" guys were freed from all charges, investigations found they did nothing wrong. IPCC still is the most credible - nay, near the only credible - reviewer of climate science.

Actually, we have computer images that show the Earth's surface temperature, show it growing over time, and most importantly we can reproduce the effect of CO2 on longwave radiation in a lab. These cases are actually remarkably similar. In both cases, computer simulation is needed to determine how much of the lab findings would be expected in reality.

The one difference is that the ozone hole images are very clear, while our temperature image is noisy. That is to be expected, as satellites only see a very thin surface, and thermometers also only measure air temperature right around the thermometer. The heat capacity of the whole atmosphere is roughly equal to a three-meter layer of ocean.

I wasn't saying 2.5% was unsustainable. I bet some people are saying that, but I think they say that because they'd rather use that money for something else.

"Most greenies" might be advocating such things in order to pull in some direction. It's a widely accepted idea that if you want a 2% raise, you should ask for 4% and then negotiate. There was even a name for this, but I forget.

So we shouldn't have saved the ozone layer from CFCs, because nobody was certain about it? Because in science, nothing is ever really certain.

Sorry, you're wrong. He is saying different things.

We know some things for certain. Global average climate has changed by a measurable, albeit small, amount. We know that emitting CO2 changes the climate. It is happening alright, and unless there are huge volcanic eruptions or other catastrophic natural disasters, it will keep happening. The rate of its happening has been projected to be quite modest, by IPCC, in 2007. Even before, the best scientific scenarios have been realistic - and more and more realistic all the time. Certainly we don't know exactly what the climate is doing, but our idea is getting better and better.

It seems to me that James Lovelock has just taken 20 years to admit he was wrong in the eighties.

I agree with you that we shouldn't dismantle civilization. Let's instead make a small effort, and put 5% of GDP into minimizing our contribution to climate change. That'd be a small contribution, hardly noticable, but would already do something.

Well, I agree with your point. But six years is a good time to let scientific papers simmer. Less than that is not enough time for other scientists to evaluate the correctness and value of some paper.