The cake is a lie.

The problem with algebra is that it is, in the US, often taught so badly. Read Liping Ma on how math in the US is taught differently from every other country. In other countries the teachers focus on ideas, the US, all too often, on rote memorization. "Don't ask why, just invert and multiply," was one teacher's slogan. A survey of textbooks by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics found that of all the textbooks used in the US, the only one they gave a passing grade to was a translation of a textbook used in Singapore. As a government study of several years back concluded, the US is committing unilaterial intellectual disarmament.

Global temperatures go up and down. Right now they are going up. We've build agraculture, infrastructure, and cities based on the climate of the past few hundred years. The cost of doing something about global warming is high. The cost of doing nothing is higher.