Of course, corporations are people, so you are actually calling for the death of our corporate brothers and sisters. How Could you say such a thing you genocidal maniac?

I had an interesting conversation with a climate scientist on a flight a couple years back and he had a point that stuck with me. Weather events like storms generally form a bell curve of intensities. The theory of global warming predicts that there will be more moisture and energy in the storms. If this were the case, we would expect the bell curve to shift in the direction of more energetic storms. Since the really extreme storms are very rare to start with, any increase in probability makes those types of events far more common relative to their very low baseline probability. So he suggested that rare and extreme events are precisely where to look if you wanted to see evidence of the effects of global warming. Of course the shape of the bell curve could also change so this won't prove anything if you are skeptical of global warming. In that case recommend strategy 2 for determining if AGW is real... Wait a couple years. If it really is happening, it will become Very Clear at some point in the near future. Hopefully it becomes clear before we cross over any horrific tipping points like the clathrate gun or massive crop failures in Midwest America. (Remember those reverse sinkholes in Siberia a few years back... Just saying)

World record typhoons year after year, 500 year droughts, 139 deg F record high tempratures, 14 months of global heat record in a row... "How far is Al Gore going to take this global warming hoax?"

Time for strategic voting. If you are conservative and in a deep blue state like CA, vote for the libertarian. Conversely, if you are liberal / progressive in a deep red state, vote for the Green Party. Those votes font matter for your regular party because your candidate isn't likely to win the state no matter what. However, those votes are VERY helpful to the other parties.

It would be nice to know if the person we may vote into office has engaged in tax evasion or if they actually pay what they owe. It's also a nice opportunity to remind people just how rigged the tax system is and on insanely optimistic days I can even imagine people caring enough to demand a change, but those days are getting rare). Of course, if the person gets good accountants and lawyers they could probably hide quite a bit of shady dealing, and I assume most do. So at the end of the day the tax returns help voters identify the criminals that are sloppy or dumb. We only want smart organized criminals running our country.

The adjustments for the heat island effect moves the temperature DOWN from the recorded value and it is there to calibrate the temprature readings. Without calibration, you can't trust the reading, but how do you figure the data is 'cooked' when the calibration follows standard methodology and the final calibrated result is LOWER than the un-calibrated measurement? The headline should be 'The Data is Chilled and we still have a problem'.

The abstract of the paper you linked to does not mention global cooling at any point in the future. It does mention surface cooling in the southern ocean due to meltwater and 'induced dynamics' (which isn't spelled out precisely in the abstract, but appears mean some sort of mixing between the surface and deeper ocean layers). It also mentioned that there will be cooling in Europe due to the Atlantic circulation shutting down. This would stop the current that brings warm water up the eastern seaboard of the US and then turns out to the North Atlantic. Without this warm water flow, Arctic storms are not warmed before they reach Europe and so it gets very cold there. With the extra humidity due to higher average tempratures, the warm air from the Mediterranean will produce intense snow storms when hit by these Arctic fronts. Recent evidence seems to show Atlantic current is already weakening and the recent severe snow storms that have hit England and France could be a preview pf the future. most importantly these two areas of cooling do not equal a reversal of global warming in any way. Ask any climate scientist about climate change (human induced or natural) and they will say that some areas may become hotter than before and some may become cooler. The computer models are getting better and result in pretty dire conclusions. Unfortunately they have inaccuracies and so far they have pretty much underestimated the situation. We are seeing results in the news that climate scientists thought may be from 5 to 50 years away. Perhaps there is something in the main article that contradicts the abstract, but I think This can be ruled out in a paper that actually survives peer review and gets published in a reputable journal. Remember, scientists absolutely love to prove that their peers are wrong because THAT IS HOW THEY ADVANCE IN THEIR FIELD. (If human induced climate change was a conspiracy and someone could prove it, the would be as popular as Einstein).

Overall I think GM food could be done well and would be a benefit to society. However, they have been some terrible examples so far. There is a lot of fear of GM foods, but when your body digests food from a GM crop, the DNA is broken down into mononucleotides. The original structure of the DNA is lost and resulting mononucleotides would be the same weather the original food was from a GM and Non-GMsource (because DNA is DNA). I have not heard of, or seen any studies showing any difference at this level. But this is where a lot of the fear-mongering over GM foods reside. For the vast majority of people there should be no adverse impact fromGM foods. If you live in the US and have had corn chips without getting sick, congratulations you are (most likely) living proof that GM foods can be safe for humans. So the DNA is not an issue, but the proteins created by the DNA must also be digested and metabolized and this could be an issue for people with food allergies. People can be deathly alergic to some proteins, e.g. peanuts. This presents a significant problem for GM foods, especially with trans-genic modifications. Trans-genic modifications take a DNA sequence from one species and put in a completely unrelated species. If you were allergic to fish or eggs, it may not be enough to stick to a vegetarian diet. It is possible that a GM crop could use a DNA sequence from a food you are allergic to and put it in a food you would never expect the allergen to occur. Here in the US there is NO labeling requirement and this makes it devilishly hard to trace back from an allergic reaction to the food that actually made you sick. I think it is a good idea to require GM foods to be labled and without labels, I personally think it is reasonable to oppose them outright. I really would love to see a process that allowed consumers to find out a bit more about the GM foods, specifically what species were used for the DNA in the GM food. This would allow people who do have food allergies to protect themselves. But I think this is unlikely in the world of I.P. and trade secrets. The second issue I have with GM crops is the environmental impact caused by certain crops. For example BT corn contains A DNA sequence from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis which allows the plants to produce a protein lethal to common pest insects. In essence the plant makes it's own insecticide. Some early studies showed that the pollen contained significant quantities of the protein and since corn is wind pollinated the possibility of unintended consequences is substantial. More recent studies have dismissed most of the concerns. Still, I'm hesitant to declare victory because we are seeing a loss of Monarch butterflies and song birds in America. There are surely many contributing factors and the presence of GM crops may not be a direct cause of these losses. However it is quite possible that this is a contributing factor. A similar case can be made for GM crops that make the plants resistant to herbicides. The ecological concerns are harder to prove because the environment does not limit itself to a single cause when producing the effects. But sorting out multiple causes is very hard and so most studies try to reduce complex systems down to simple, repeatable, mechanisms. The one thing that is clear, the law of unintended consequences does not appear to have any difficulty scaling to the level of human activity. As we do more and bigger thing, we get more and bigger consequences. It this keeps up, it may some day be a good idea to choose precaution over profit, but I fear this too is unlikely.

It would be fine if the usage of herbicides was reduced, but their use has gone up. Spraying is now happening earlier in the season. Due to higher levels of surface moisture in spring, the herbicides are not drying and staying put. Instead they are running off or evaporating with the water. The herbicides are now showing up as an air pollutant in much higher concentrations than before. (This does not happen as much when the spray can dry on the plants.) You can't take fixed solutions and expect them to be effective against nature. Selection happens, and the super weeds will survive and soon thrive. This is exactly parallel to the growing catastrophe of antibiotic resistant diseases we're about to enjoy. I'm ok with GMOs in theory, it is a powerful tool. However, roundup ready and BT crops have devistating consequences that we can barely understand. They radically alter huge ecosystems, and how Mother Nature is going to balance the equation is anybody's guess. Think birds & DDT, or Ozone & CFCs, or sunscreen & coral, because that's the kind of unexpected bomerang effect our connected world comes up with when we start jerking the levers around. So yes, I would like the label, not because I'm afraid of eatin it, that's the tip of the iceberg for me.

Hardware back doors have already been identified in sensitive equipment as reported in slashdot before. http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/05/28/1454222/backdoor-found-in-china-made-us-military-chip So, yes this is a good idea.