The First Church of Polydeism in Toledo has many FSM adherents in attendance, I'm sure. https://www.facebook.com/First... Is church attendance now to be mandatory? The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster http://www.barnesandnoble.com/... is published and has 2938 reviews on GoodReads. How you define "serious" is certainly not going to pass Constitutional muster. Virtually everyone that is "positively disposed" to the FSM, whether an official adherent or not, certainly believes that the tenets of the faith would be HUGELY better than ANY of the alternatives. If you want to see a large gathering of the faithful, might I propose the Reason Rally, June 2-5 in Washington D.C.? http://reasonrally.org/

So we can solve global warming by making driving such a PITA that no one will do it. Sounds like a plan...

One of the first things we should build on the moon is a magnetic launcher. Using rocket fuel to boost from the moon on a regular basis is crazy. If we were to build a powerful magnetic launcher, we could also "throw things" at incoming objects that threaten earth to adjust their orbits.

Actually, "Except that doesn't tell the whole story. In fact, there were at least a dozen tiebreakers — and "Sen. Sanders won at least a handful," an Iowa Democratic Party official told NPR." from http://www.npr.org/2016/02/02/... But it does make a good story. Before you flame me, I'm actually a big Bernie fan. But false stories don't strengthen any argument!

I had an office in Costa Rica for a while. IIRC, its address was: "Banco Costa Rica, Tropicana sur, 100 metres esta, la casa esquinera con el porton negro" or "From the Banco Costa Rica Tropicana Sur branch, go 100 meters to the east. It's the house on the corner with the black gate." You don't dare repaint the gate... Many addresses downtown are specified relative to "La Coca Cola" - the old Coca Cola bottling plant, which has been closed for years, and is now a bus terminal! They actually have street names, but virtually never use them. This has been several years, so things may have changed.

One other advantage of nuclear is that it would assist in a "nuclear winter" - whether from nuclear or natural causes (volcano, meteorite strike, etc.) At least SOME of our power should be independent of direct sunlight or predicable wind. Ash would also play havoc with hydro.

If they unplug the GPS, that implies CONSCIOUS defiance of the law. That implies go to jail.

I sympathize with the desire to say that science is being "extended". The problem is that although anyone with critical thinking skills understands that scientific "laws" or "theories" may be incorrect in an absolutist sense, they are still not only useful, but can reasonably be relied upon to make predictions. That is especially true if the domain in which those predictions lie is an area that has been explored frequently in the past. All scientists understand that it is the extension of those concepts into untested domains that might expose issues (quantum physics and relativity being excellent examples).

The problem comes in talking to the unwashed masses. When they hear "wrong", it is a biblical "wrong". We can't use anything that science tells us, because sometimes, it turns out to be incorrect. That is why this line of argument can be so destructive. While it is tempting to believe that the /. crowd is above that line of "reasoning", I think that we have plenty of empirical evidence that it is not (vaccines, GMOs and climate change being great examples of those).

Apparently, knowledge of ancient religions does not equate to movie expertise... "Who ya gonna call?"

Exactly. Build a long evacuated tube (ET3 style - www.et3.com) and run it up the side of a mountain. Eliminate most of the atmospheric drag and all of the centripetal force issues that this one has. Make the run-up long enough and you can accelerate slowly enough to allow people inside. You could probably get by with very low-power rockets for the last phase (like Spaceship One.)

Potentially, there could have been some albedo change that affected the ice melt. However, the prevailing winds from Iceland (jet stream) were to the east, while Greenland is to the west. That's why Europe was so badly affected. On the subject of volcanic eruptions, however, their effect is much more short-term than AGW, but generally the net effect is cooling, not warming. For a recent historical example, do a search on "The Year Without a Summer" Caused by the 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, the next year saw the start of a "mini ice age". The northeastern US had snow and frozen lakes in July (prompting a massive move toward the west). Europe suffered extensive crop failures and public unrest due to the cold weather. The cooling is caused by ash in the atmosphere that reflects sunlight, or more seriously, but sulfur that is blasted into the upper atmosphere where it reacts with ozone. The resulting sulfur dioxide causes the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight and causes this cooling. The effect took 50 years or more to subside in the 1815 example. Read more at Suite101: The Year Without a Summer 1816: Caused by the 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia http://www.suite101.com/content/the-year-without-a-summer-1816-a54675#ixzz1BsG44VRD A number of people have suggested injecting sulfur into the upper atmosphere to combat AGW, but this "BandAid" fix could have completely unpredictable results, especially with regards to the ozone layer. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789622