...as much as the intelligentsia want to whine about it, the bulk of the US uses imperial systems in their daily lives.

There is NO compelling need to mandate a switch. None. The bulk of the people in the US who need metric, or need to convert units, or deal with the rest of the world can use either one without an issue (and already do).

For you true utilitarians out there, then, who firmly believe that we should switch to metric because it would simplify massive world systems immeasurably if everyone was simply on the same standard...I'll switch to officially metric the moment you all switch officially to English. Because the benefits of monolingualism are PRECISELY the same (or greater) as the stridently-cried reasons for Metrification.

...blind people are stupid?

That's going to be a hard sell.

Apparently there's no word for "Zip gun" in Australian.

So, are we going to see protests by "the 99%" on the front steps of Apple?

Maybe "Occupy Cupertino"?

One thing, at least they'd be able to protest AND be near Apple "geniuses" in case they have problems with their ipad-blogging-of-their-protest-experience, or the playing of "we shall overcome" using downloaded music from the iStore.

Most Americans wouldn't have joined WW2 (at least until Pearl Harbor).

Most people don't know which came first, the Revolutionary War or the Civil War.

Most states have passed anti-gay, one-man/one-woman marriage laws.

Most people generally fear change of any sort.

There's a reason we're not a democracy, we're a democratic republic. "Most people" are rather dumb.

Thank you.
I noted immediately that the goalpost-shifting was taking place WITHIN THE ARTICLE SUMMARY already.

Title: "97% of Climate Science Papers Agree Global Warming Is Man-made"
Implication: Global warming is CAUSED by humans.
Text: "The papers were evaluated and categorized by how they implicitly or explicitly endorsed humans as a contributing cause of global warming."

X is a contributing cause != X is the cause.

I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that humans are contributing SOMETHING to global warming (or, I guess the term is "climate change").

It's a great bloody step to go from there to blaming humans as the main (or even a significant) driver, and assuming we should all pay additional carbon taxes for the air we exhale, or buy into Al Gore's carbon credits ponzi business.

Honestly, I have a real job; I don't have time to fucking analyze every bloody news release for weasel-words and hedged bets. But looking at the sloppy thinking (or deliberate goalpost-shifting) in just a few sentences suggests to me that again, the whole AGW thing is pretty dubious from the start.

Of course, that's the begged creed at the base of the AGW mantra: we want nothing to change so it stays at (what we think is) "perfect for us".

Aside from the everpresent possibility that some massive supernova x-ray wavefront is racing towards us undetected at light speed and will sterilize the planet in the next moment, the root question is: why SHOULD it stay this way, so nice for us? There's nothing particularly human-favoring about the universe, the entire span of humanity's existence might be nothing more on the scale of the galaxy than a single bright little ephemeral flicker of a cinder floating above the the flames of a bonfire, where a *blip* of conditions favorable to us happened to exist, by accident.

As long as we've perfected this, why not just grow them a little more, for meat?

At this point, it's probably easier to list the things global warming isn't affecting.

As opposed to the other mainstream media, who merely assume that the climate of a 5-billion-year-old planet will be catastrophically ruined by driving SUVs, and that the root of every bad thing that's happened in history can be pinned to blame some white guy, somewhere (after 1776, it would be an AMERICAN white guy).

Hey, we all have our preconceptions, right?

...why in HELL would anyone "pirate" porn?

My goodness, I have a hard time understanding how stroke mags can even stay in business, much less the paywall sites. I truly can't comprehend anyone willing to break a law over something available ubiquitously for free, in fact it's hard to AVOID porn on the net.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, google redtube, youporn. There is not enough time in the world to exhaust their current library of free porn, much less even catch up with the volume added every day.

"....lesbian...."

"...not ashamed to rub one out to porn with the shades up..."

Where do you live, again?

We may have solved some of the porn-piracy problem right there.

This statistic, as presented, proves pretty much nothing.

Look, I'll cheerfully agree that our congresspeople are largely nicely-dressed whores who apparently will vote whichever way they're funded, but the statistics presented here are so confused as to be nearly meaningless.

The total given by those in favor may have been 40x that given against.
Then again, this could be (viewed objectively) simply a groundswell of opinion in favor.

I look at my senators (both D-MN):
Amy Klobuchar took $532,457 from those in favor, $16,298 from those opposed. ~30x as much.
Al Franken took $858,186:$11,400 almost 90x.
Two SOLID yes votes, as they vote mindless lockstep with their party.

Yet Jeff Flake (R-AZ), he received $588,966 $2,800 - a staggering 200x in favor, and voted "NO".

Mark Kirk (R-IL) $1,076,621to $28,200 or some 35x in favor, another "NO" vote.

So it doesn't seem that the wierdly-presented statistic of how much more one guy got from one side vs the other controls which way they voted.

I'd argue from opensecrets.org that the link between money and legislation is so obvious that it's hard to imagine that anyone could present it in a way that's NOT conclusive...like maplight managed to....

As I'd posted Beck's link to a number of threads on AGW, I wanted to post my response to some other links as well:

I just want to say thanks to some /. posters, in particular for the realclimate links (Rabett is a little too snarky for me) - specifically http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of-greenhouse-gas-concentrations/ [realclimate.org] [realclimate.org] .
The article is interesting, as is especially the commentary, in which people raise a number of well-informed questions and get well-informed answers.

I'm trying to honestly evaluate the claims of AGW as best I can as a layman. I'm not a climate scientist, and I'll admit, I have been made suspicious by the quasi-religious tone of the exercise (starting with Mr Gore) and the unquestioning adulatory tenor of its supporters (a Nobel and Academy Award for him, really?).

Anyway, I sincerely appreciate anything that increases my understanding of the science and details.

As a layman, it seems irrefutable that there is warming taking place. It seems that CO2 has recently spiked, and that makes anecdotal sense given the intense and constant consumption of hydrocarbons since industrialization.

However...the point of the AGW creed is not merely to prove warming or CO2. It is, in fact, to assert:
1) that the sole (or at least dominant cause) for global warming (later amended to 'changing climate' - hah) is human activity, AND
2) that this is an unmitigated catastrophe, AND
3) the only solution is expanding government control of the activities of individuals "for their own good".

#1 seems at least partially true.
#2 may certainly be true in the short run for people in coastal cities, but let's be honest, these very-human things were never established in their current locations based on their durability/safety, and in long enough timescales the survivability of anything approaches zero. Nothing is permanent, not even stuff that we deem "really important or inconvenient to change". That it's true in the medium- or long-terms is absolutely not proved, particularly not in the case of the most adaptable species this planet has ever seen (AFAIK).
#3 certainly doesn't logically follow either of the others, particularly considering some of the people volunteering (out of their own good nature) to be the ones making the decisions.

Further...the point of the AGW creed is not merely to prove warming or CO2. It is, in fact, to assert:
1) that the sole (or at least dominant cause) for global warming (later amended to 'changing climate' - hah) is human activity, AND
2) that this is an unmitigated catastrophe, AND
3) the only solution is expanding government control of the activities of individuals "for their own good".

#1 seems at least partially true.
#2 may certainly be true in the short run for people in coastal cities, but let's be honest, these very-human things were never established in their current locations based on their durability/safety, and in long enough timescales the survivability of anything approaches zero. Nothing is permanent, not even stuff that we deem "really important or inconvenient to change". That it's true in the medium- or long-terms is absolutely not proved, particularly not in the case of the most adaptable species this planet has ever seen (AFAIK).
#3 certainly doesn't logically follow either of the others, particularly considering some of the people volunteering (out of their own good nature) to be the ones making the decisions.