You might want to check out those pacific island communities that are literally flooded at high tides *NOW*

Uh, it's not an either or situation...

Yes, yes it is. It's what's called a Feedback Loop. Take a balanced seesaw with 1 lb on one side and 10 lbs on the other at distances that make the forces equal.

Now move the 1lb weight outward a bit or add a some weight. Once the 10lb ball starts rolling it's going to be 10x harder to stop.

Now multiply by the scale of an atmosphere and it's *really* a bad idea to play chicken with that type of situation.

If we nudge water vapor to increase more heat, it keeps getting stronger as more water evaporates due to the higher temps...

Indeed. So is reading. Ever heard of ice cores? They have the ACTUAL ATMOSPHERIC GAS from all those years trapped in them to be measured. No guessing, no assumptions, the ACTUAL GAS.

so instead do it next to a volcano?

Just kidding, the juxtaposition just sounds hilarious :)

sheesh. 640 kilayears should be enough for anybody

Yes and Jim Crow laws were the exact same thing for the legal code. That's my point.

Freely giving up your privacy is far far far cry from being forced to do it.

Yes it was. Do you want the laws specifically written so that some people can get out of them and others can't? Granted there's some of that there now, but remotely on the level of the tax code.

Watch Rand conveniently NOT filibuster this. Maybe that will teach the Libertarians that he ain't one of them...

Laws have to be somewhat abstract because if you try to to make it cover everything possible, you get the US Tax Code spaghetti crap.

There was just a case of a Maryland woman who was ticketed in DC for driving with expired tags.

The problem? Someone in Maryland fat fingered a DELETE action and deleted her tags instead of the ones they meant to delete. Since she was deleted she got no renewal reminder.

Now we scale this up to, no I'm sorry Mr. Smith, you don't exist, therefore you must be trying to subvert the system.

No they aren't. Our founding principles are that we let some guilty people go free precisely because that's preferable than to possibly imprison innocent people. People using Fake IDs are an acceptable condition of not doing 'Papers please' checks on every law abiding citizen on every street corner.

Version Control. We should know WHICH politician(s) added this clause. If no one owns up to it, it gets stripped from the Bill. We need names on this type of crap.

It's called a 'loss leader' not 'synergy'. Googling around it seems that iTunes is starting to have some measurable share of Apple's profits, but it was clearly not something they intended to make money on. Once they became the entrenched standard they started renegotiating with the major labels, but it's purpose was to give people a good easy 'Apple' way to use the iPod.