Do a survey at any green movement rally, and see what percentage of these people are anti-nuclear and anti-GM, or support "alternative" medicine over the conventional (scientific) kind. How many anti-vaxxers would you expect to find in the crowd?

None of this reduces the validity of AGW of course, but it does put paid to the notion that people follow this cause because they are more scientifically rational... indeed, there seems to be a general fear of technology in the green movement (and to be clear, I'm not talking about the scientists here, as much as the supporters).

In short, my global warming skepticism, though a minority view amongst scientists (and I accept that it IS a minority view) is still scientifically based... most of the green movements support of the "consensus" view is not scientifically based at all - it just happens to conform to their world-view.

Minority scientific opinion <> pseudoscience

Interesting, first poster says:

This was pretty funny, and not surprisingly, was modded so... then the followup posts this comment:

For some reason - that was modded troll? I found the second one as equally amusing, and fail to see how the second was any more trollish than the first - particularly when the first even referred to tea-party protesters as "tea-baggers"

Kind of true, but training helps, that's why pigeon racing is a sport - different training methods produce different results (though breeding helps too, of course). In war, they were often trained to find a "moving home"... an ability that is certainly needs training

You'd be mistaken... it certainly never achieved it's lofty goals of rendering nuclear weapons impotent, but it did help hasten the demise of the USSR as they were pushed to economic collapse.

Ah - homeopathy!

Actually - that is quite sensible. Only tld's which are in demand are likely to make money. The problem, of course, is that there is nothing remotely free market about the tender process - and the tld's authorised are just insane (though .info is a bit more useful and "less spammy" than .biz)

And surely, that last eclipse on Heroes was the longest, rather than this one - certainly more than a few measly minutes! Not to mention the global coverage! (And please don't complain about spoilers... after the decline since season 1, you can't possibly complain)

In theory, it wouldn't really bother me as long as the characters sounded the same - that's one of the benefits of cartoons - that the "actors" never age on screen, so you can repeatedly recast the voices and keep the show going for decades... but in reality, the voice actors have grown into the role and provide numerous nuances that make up part of who the characters are. Replacing them all at once would certainly be noticeable, IMO.

People need to settle down though. Pretending that they're never going to watch if one one the voice actors is replaced doesn't fool anyone - you will still watch (at least at first), and you know it. Yes, I'm worried - but the voice actors aren't the whole show. Painting the producers as the big greedy corporates playing hardball is a bit one-side - the voice actors are playing the same game, which is as it should be... I suspect they will come to some agreement in the end.

Which is to say, that it has everything to do with global warming... not whether it's happening, but certainly in how we should react - which is kinda the whole point of the climate change movement in the first place.

I know - I wasn't referring exclusively to your post... sorry for the confusion.

And on that note, my point stands... to get a handle on the whole climate change issue requires a range of discipline which includes physics and economics (in fact, the latter is very important in determining costs of action vs inaction, etc).

That's a pity, because it's an important discipline when it comes to AGW. Think of all the questions concerning warming:

• Is it getting warmer?
• If yes, what's causing it?
• What will the costs be? (are there some winners as well as losers?)
• Can we reduce it - at least partially?
• If so, what does that cost - and is it greater than the savings (or cost of adapting)?
  etc...

At least two of those are economic questions rather than scientific... so even if you accept that there is a "scientific consensus" on the topic of AGW, the matter still isn't over - and that's where economics comes in handy.

Perhaps... but then of course, you can just close down any debate by declaring the opposition uninformed - something that seems to happen a lot with AGW.

You think education can't exist without government? Or that research wouldn't happen? About the only two you got right were police and common defense.

And the Internet thing is just hilarious... if government hadn't been creating monopolies, and stamping out competition in communications sector, we'd have had an internet analogue (though perhaps different) decades sooner.

We progress in spite of government, not because of it

What does, in your opinion?

The problem with "climate science" is that it really does require a broad application of disciplines - suggesting that someone with a degree in physics in not a scientist, or not qualified to report on GW is absurd. As for economics, this is an even more important discipline when it comes to determining what action, if any, should be taken (eg, cost benefit analysis of various approaches, etc).

So, no different to Google then?

Doing a comparison in my current window, Google is indeed more compressed, but both show 8 non-ad results before I scroll down (Google is more compressed, so gets extra ads at top... and Bing seems to have a "Best match" category in addition to ads). Searching for something more commercially competitive (like "web hosting") produces more ads (for both engines), but again, I can see 8 not ads on each.

That said, it will take some work to oust Google as #1 search engine... competition can't hurt though