"Except acid rain was a fraud. " Care to source any of your contrarian assertions? While you're at it, perhaps you'll provide alternate explanations for decreases in pH of Adirondack lakes through the 60s and 70s until NOx and SOx limits were enforced on coal-powered plants. Regarding species extinction, surely any nominally intelligent person can grasp the qualitative difference when extinction rates are orders of magnitude higher than at any other time in human history.

By "kids", do you mean they can see the little swimmers inside of the tiny genitalia?

Scientists are universally interested in protecting science (disclosure; IAAS). The problem is not in sharing data with other scientists (i.e., those trained in data analysis and objectivity), it's sharing the data with "cynics" who have a conclusion they'd like to cherry-pick supporting data for. It won't pass peer review, but that won't stop an ideologue from posting his "analysis" on the web, etc. and feeding non-objective BS into the policy debate.

Your comment would be enlightening if it dealt with the reality of feedlot production, wherein animals are not fed grass, but row crops. All ruminants can digest cellulose; not just cows, but the native deer, elk, bison, etc. that some range cattle operations harm through forage competition and usurpation of water sources. An efficient allocation of resources would eliminate grain-fed livestock, but make use of non-arable grasslands for meat production -preferably by native ungulates. This would necessitate a drastic reduction in the consumption of meat in the American diet, incidentally providing health benefits.

The reason scientists are likely to have a better understanding of reality is that they understand what the scientific method is. Atmospheric scientists, geophysicists, climate modelers, etc. have had their work subjected to the rigors of peer-review. A scientist understands that this level of scrutiny is what improves the quality of knowledge (and brought civilization into the Enlightenment). While creationists like to tout Mike Behe and global warming deniers roll-out somebody with a Ph.D. as their "proof" that scientists disagree, most non-scientists have no clue how much critique goes into "scientific consensus." We hear that evolution is "just a theory" -never mind that a theory is a hypothesis that has survived rigorous challenge before attaining that status.

Climatologists are physical scientists. Thus the personal anecdote of the "tree hugger circuit" has no relevance. Sounds like your wife has a "tree-hugger" degree and probably works for the Park Service. I am a wildlife biologist, worked for years in tech. jobs in 4 states before finally landing a good job, and my colleagues have been a mix, some excellent scientists, some not.

There is a huge difference between having a degree in "conservation" and doing real science, which the majority of people seem to be ignorant of. The core of science is not the subject matter, or how many letters someone has after his/her name, but critical review of ideas by colleagues and the process of subjecting work to peer-review. This is often brutal, depending on how contentious the ideas are (and how penile your anonymous reviewers are). Though not perfect, the process of peer review is the best humanity has come up with for critical analysis of ideas. This is why it's laughable that any weight is afforded to the arguments of those who challenge scientific consensus without basing arguments in similar scientific rigor.

The helpful people at ESRI protect their monopoly in GIS software with a method of copy protection based on your system clock. If you ever set your Windows time >3 hrs. into the future (say, to test how an app. with unique calendaring will behave on New Year's Day), the GIS software checks three system files and finds a modification date in the future. Now your $2,500 software will not run because it's convinced that you're trying to fool an annual license (regardless of the fact that you have paid for and are trying to run a "permanent" software license). ESRI's solution? Reinstall Windows and everything else and never change your system date! Fortunately, after wasting half a day determining what the issue is, you can find an undocumented workaround to change the file mod. dates.

The key though is that you have to start with a Mac then configure a Windows PC to the same specs as Apple doesn't offer nearly as many configurations as PC OEMs.

Yes, that's often true -except for the current example which looks at a Mac configured like the PC.