Strange example.

In the next season of "COPS": A young officer arrives on scene to investigate a 395 (alleged horking). Bad-Boys plays during the opening credits.

A grainy view of Doug and Bob can be seen on the dash-cam, staticky audio can just be overheard.

Officer: "Before this horking took place gentlemen would you be so kind to tell me why exactly had you removed all your clothes?"
Doug: "mmme .. dkj"
Officer: "Sorry Sir, I didn't understand that"
Bob: "sdk.. eh!"
Officer: "I did understand that Sir! However I will pretend I did not, and remind you that I am an agent of the law and what you propose is illegal in 12 states" ......

How rude you yanks are, us europeans don't have to learn from YOUR mistakes.

We are perfectly capable of making our own mistakes while repeating your technological ideas 10-years later and at twice the cost.

Don't feel too bad there mate. Us TA's normally don't concern ourselves with deciphering handwriting anyway. Generally we mark assignments quickly between rounds at the pub, in reality your grade is based on a roll of a dice and two coin-flips not the content of your essay.

We always thought it was a great way to save time. Must admit the latest bank collapses has cast some doubt on this system though...

Yes but modern people have better food storage, eat 3-4 times what is necessary for survival, discard 100s of calories out of habit and have fat-stocks that are much greater than prevoius generations. I mean if we had to eat boiled shoe out of desparation imagine the resources a modern city has tucked away :)

I would also debate the more-fragile transport chains. We in the "west" are so far from starvation we don't even know what it looks like, its just a boogyman our ancestors had to deal with. Did anyone in hurricane Katrina die of starvation?

Except the distribution itself can also change as feedback mechanisms with different time-scales each react to the new equilibrium. No that we will reach a new equilibrium anytime soon if CO2 does turn out to be a major climate-forcer.

This is not a case of a brave few denialists with nothing but their wits being cornered and forced to fight the good fight:

Mineral Extraction Industry + Oil Extraction Industry + Auto/Aero/shipping Industries + Fossil Fuel Energy Sector + Agriculture & Forestry Sectors + The populations general apathy and inertia against change

>>

any feasable Global Warming Industry (I mean where the F*** do these guys make their profits)

When talking about human things like "sexual freedoms", "the corruption of those who lead" or the "rudness of youth" your right. But when considering environmental destruction, species loss, population growth or technological change and sheer ability of man then for the last 500 years each generation really has been unique. And in that uniqueness we will stumble, sometimes doing good sometimes bad.

Despite all our current problems and those we try to predict for the future, unless your of blue-blood most people look back at history and are thankful for the state of today. When we worry about the future we meerly wish to maintain or improve on this situation IMHO. Although there will also always be doomsayers.

Jeesh guys, at the very least can one side pick a player who's name doesn't begin with "M".

Mann, McIntyre and McKitrick, plus all the abbreviating! How is a sheeple like me supposed to understand your arguments if we can't tell who is wearing the white hat and who wears the black?

And yet London and its surrounds hardly ever get any snow anymore - witness how unprepared they were for the 5cm they got this year. I don't think river speed can be the only cause.

The climate in England has changed since 1500's, as it did between 1500 and 1000. This is what happens naturally to some extent, the question is what extent. We are currently in a period of warmth for the better, the reasons behind this are debatable (and may have more than one cause).

Do you know what the average height in the Netherlands is? Yet Dutch carparks don't look like American ones..

Conservation "just happens" only if current markets result in a prices that accurately reflect the short and long-term costs of each input (as well as associated health costs and final product disposal).

Current environmentalism (of the non knee-jerk variety) is based around the concern that these conditions are not always being met.

As an example, for historical reasons American car manufacturers generaly produce bigger cars than those of the rest of the world. Despite multiple generations of new models coming onto the market it's obvious price alone hasn't sufficiently been a factor in promoting conservatoin within the US-auto industry. Not sure why.

FIRE = conversion of sugars/lipids --> CO2

So I would say life survives on this reaction on grand scale. They just do it efficiently and without generating masses of waste heat.

Someone mentioned geothermal as a source - perhaps you could also argue that thermal-vent communities rely on this?

Agree that grandparent is totally off though. Hydro is another unutilised example, entire countries run on this source yet no lifeform sits in fast-flowing streams with a mini-turbine generating food. Not sure why

Umm, corrupt Italian police break the law, circumventing safety and endangering lives by deliberately increasing fines for profit. Non-corrupt police notice and fix the problem.

- This article may not provide the police bashing people are after here folks.

Large parts of England and Europe used to be malaria ridden, as did parts of america. While personal hygine isn't 100% preventative of disease, at a socital level hygiene is a major factor. Chlorea, leprosy, malaria, the plague, all are included in Western history. Apart from river blindness, sleeping sickness, dengue fever and yellow fever we've known most tropic diseases at home, and we had a few the tropics never knew.

It is not that the "tropics" are more disease prone or harder to build a society in than elsewhere. It is merely that for historical reasons (or luck) the current sucessful branches of modern society have invested more effort in solving "non-tropical" diseases - now the world need to broadern that umbrella.

It's China, do we not have historical coverage of the last 3000+ years?

It's when a damn doesn't let it out slowly that you have a problem ;)