I'm sick of this poor grammar on the erudite Slashdot!

"Leave NASA and they're limited and continuously dwindling funds for space research, or we're going to be left in the dust "

It's not "we're", it's "weir"!

BS. You apparently think conservatives are some kind of cartoon character. I'm a conservative, and this study has serious weight to me. As stated at the end of TFA, there remains a major problem of "what do we do about it?" .

I'm pretty convinced the distribution of people's opinions form a smooth curve (think lumpy Gaussian). The fraction of people believing in AGW will increase because a believable scientific skeptic (i.e. someone with a traditional scientific attitude) looked at the data like a skeptic should, and found AGW credible. His lack of conflict-of-interest and straightforward questions about AGW reassure conservatives.

Skeptical conservatives got their hackles up when AGW was promptly used to justify immense increase in government power. Since governments have killed 100 million people, don't bother trying to scare me into granting them more power without convincing me that it's worth the risk.

Where's the study that shows government power is less lethal than AGW? Let's talk about ways to ensure that.

Since they threaten safety, lasers should be illegal to own. That position would at least be consistent with all the other legislative overreactions.

Your argument is very confused when it comes to the value of information. Specifically, the information concerning discounts. On the one hand, that info is very valuable because it can influence the cost of goods & services. On the other hand, you want it to be given away freely (or taken away by the force of government). Not sure how this jives with your personal definition of capitalism - I suspect you haven't thought of the disconnect.

Prison changes the "cost function" we use to make decisions. Punishment is to be avoided; if ( Benefit - (Risk * Punishment) ) is negative for an individual, they won't take that undesired action. It matters only a little from society's perspective if the guy is rehabilitated. He's only one crook. The many dissuaded from crime are the real payoff.