Einstein is not talking about scientific consensus; in fact the scientific consensus supported him in the situation you cite. The book he was reacting to was written by non-scientists, buttressed by one or two outlier scientists who happened to disagree with the bulk of their colleagues. This sort of thing remains very common today among climate change denialists, "creation science" proponents, and anti-vaccine activists.

To dismiss a claim because it is inconsistent with scientific consensus is not to say that claim is wrong -- it's just another way of saying extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Citing scientific consensus is about establishing a reasonable (and ultimately fair) burden of proof.

I've *NEVER* heard a scientist claim that Katrina or Sandy were "caused" by climate change. What they say is that such events are more common in a warmer globe. The same applies to the "polar vortex" event last week; its a kind of event predicted to be more common by climate models.

You do know that the cold streak was actually composed of anomalously warm air? The key is that "anomalously warm" for the arctic winter can still be very, very cold by continental US standards. As the arctic air masses moved south in places, other air masses moved north, causing simultaneous record high temperatures in Greenland, parts of Canada and Alaska. The line between the cold north and warm south got wavy.

Why try "pretty much anything" instead of looking at places in the US which have been the most successful? I live in a state which perennially ranks first in the US in reading, math and science knowledge -- *all three*, at all grade levels, although occasionally another state manages a statistical tie in one of the categories. We started ed reform in 1993, almost a decade ahead of the rest of the country. Our ed reform law included charter schools.

Charter schools account for about 2% of enrollment in our state, so they aren't responsible for our overall success. On the other hand charter schools do slightly better than traditional schools on standardized tests; if you account for the higher motivation of charter school parents,it's fair to say that charter schools are comparable (although more diverse in approach) to traditional schools here, and both tend to be extremely successful by US standards.

Charter schools are heavily regulated here. They're not allowed to manufacture success by cherry picking students and pushing expensive, harder to educate (e.g. special needs) students on the local traditional school. On top of that, a charter here often has to compete with a local school district that would be considered quite strong elsewhere in the US. Put that all together, and it's hard to make a quick buck in charter schools here. While we do allow for-profit charters, they're only a small fraction of the charter schools here, as opposed to the 1/3 nationwide. I don't think it's an accident that we have evidence for charter school success here while clear evidence is lacking in the rest of the country. Our system discourages bottom-feeders from entering the charter school market.

I'd say our experience shows that charter schools can be part of successful ed reform, but they aren't a substitute for reforming traditional public schools. In fact, I'd say if you want strong charter schools, the best thing you could do is make them compete with strong traditional schools. There's nothing wrong with for-profit charter schools either, but it'd be a bad idea to let companies which run chains of for-profit charter schools design your charter school program. It's also a bad idea to let a traditional school district die because you have a for-profit alternative. That alternative won't be guaranteed to be any better than is needed to compete.

We don't have to be doom and gloom about our ability to educate our kids, or push some kind of quick-fix panic button. We can study the problem and improve our traditional public schools. If we do that, charter schools can by a valuable part of the solution. But if you bring in charter schools as an *alternative* to reforming troubled traditional public schools, you'll get mediocre charter schools and failed school districts.

The schools in my state, on average, are turning out world-class students. The schools in your state can, too.

They do, indeed. Which is why Mars needs terraforming fast. I don't care if the intelligent move there or the dimwits, but the sooner there's a LOT of cold, hard void between the two camps, the better.

You are correct. Global warming refers to heat, on a climatic scale, on average. It doesn't refer to temperature (the number one mistake people make), local conditions, day-to-day variations or local phenomena.

But it's worse! For the price of three mistakes, we'll throw in three more, absolutely free!

Heat flows around the planet. You've the conveyor belts, trade winds, gulf stream and many, many more. But air doesn't just circulate around these, it also circulates around regions of high pressure and low pressure (forget which way for which) and from high pressure to low pressure, but pressure systems aren't trivial things and you'll hear of one blocking another, not one cancelling another.

Climate also has myriad feedback mechanisms. Hot air rises, expands and cools as it does so. (Temperature is inversely proportional to volume, near enough.) As air cools, it sinks. If the air sinks when it is 100% saturated with water vapour, the air cannot retain it and it falls out the sky in various unpleasant forms. Usually, whatever you're not dressed for. It Knows! But what affects air temperature? Solar heat, yes, but also the ground. Air is fairly transparent when it comes to thermal radiation but not to conduction or convection, which is why the ice caps (which reflect 100% of what reaches the ground) have very cold air masses, whilst thick forest (which absorbs a very high percentage) have very hot air masses.

(You also have to figure that water holds a LOT of heat. To heat water one degree C, you need to put in far more than you would to heat carbon one degree C. Forests, by their nature, tend to have higher humidity in their vicinity. Polar air, by contrast, is usually very dry. This changes the reservoir available.)

Finally, organic systems are negative feedback systems. They have to be. Using James Lovelock's Daisyworld as an example, white daisies (which cool a region) like warm weather. But what if they liked hot? If it was a positive feedback loop, the daisies would cook themselves. Even if you picture a response curve, so their preference waned above the ideal, they would still create highly unfavourable conditions and die out. The only way to make the loop stable is for the daisy to have a negative feedback loop, so that it and the environment are in dynamic equilibrium. An ideal state is actively maintained.

Humans don't really understand dynamic systems well, and dynamic equilibria even less. I despair of your species, Earthlings. Anyways, there are all manner of regions on your planet, all with their own different temperature preferences and all actively maintaining them. Air circulates. Globally. The instantaneous result is weather, the long-term result is climate.

Try to picture a radio station with static. You can distinguish the instantaneous (the pops, whistles and crackles) from the aggregate (whatever is being broadcast). To equate them is to assume a time invariance that has no basis in reality.

Honestly, sometimes I think my seminar series "Ethics 101 For Daleks" was easier.

Unfortunately, immigration laws that every single country has makes it almost no harder to find a method to make the jump into another universe in comparison to getting permanent residence in a country you weren't born in.

But imagine making it there only to find that you can't be granted residence anywhere in the universe.

Can't we feel good about doing something noble for a change? Even for a minute?

Have a heart, guy!

From the Polio Eradication Website:

Only 372 cases worldwide last year! If we're careful, if we can convince certain political groups that polio is not an appropriate weapon of terrorism(*), we'll soon eliminate it completely.

Interestingly, polio is monitored from the sewage system in India. Since that appears to work for polio, people are thinking about using this method to monitor other things: other diseases, weapons manufacture, drug manufacture, and so on.

(*) Not making this up - some groups in Afghanistan think that spreading polio is a good way to get back at the Great Satan.