There is a scientific topic that Pres Trump will bring to the forefront that, I believe, will physically split the country into two factions. I think it's possible that, due to which side of the controversy people side on, it will determine whether or people near you (or you) literally stay or go. I hope I'm wrong. I really do.

That's interesting.

Nice! I have several from different teacher stores but none up right now.

I have a poster of the scientific method hanging in my office. Why? It's my museum piece...

Humans can have a significant effect in some circumstances. The western plains in America were created by Amerindian tribes burning away old forests, allowing the grasslands to dominate, and the bison population to explode into the tens of millions. Five hundred years later, American frontiersmen reversed this by killing bison into near extinction. However, animal populations are terribly fragile compared to the enormous energy of planetary weather systems. The most power the entire human race can wield is more than five orders of magnitude less than the natural forces around us.

There are inevitably changing climate conditions due to solar influence, regardless of what humans do. Clean air and water are logical, desirable goals, as is improved efficiency in generating and distributing power, but attempting to create mass hysteria over a perceived need to institute radical changes that result in much harm and little benefit isn't a productive path to follow.

" Interestingly, jurors with more education did not demand such evidence, but accepted the prosecutors' claims."
Do criminologists know why this is?

"Humans have an effect, but it's like mouse fart in a hurricane."
What caused the current mass extinction event? It coincides with the appearance of behaviorally modern humans. This is when humankind quickly spread around the globe and the other similar species of genus Homo disappeared. Maybe some other cause (I fancy the Monolith) caused one of the many species of Homo to take over the earth and caused the current mass extinction. But I think humans caused the mass extinction. When we harnessed the power of chemical bonds and population exploded, changes to the earth accelerate. There's obviously some limit where human activities would affect one another. Even some pre-agricultural peoples knew about concepts of over-hunting an area. To me it's absurd to say human activities could not influence the earth in away that affects other people.

I think that quote was from Dr. Stadler in Atlas Shrugged, attempting to defend his role in the creation of the State Science Institute. The implication was that, in Stadler's view, science could not survive in a free market and needed to be "protected" from the unwashed masses by government sponsorship. We can now see the results of that attitude. Science has been co-opted by governments to increase their power, just as Ayn Rand predicted.

I'm confused by the phrase "fat comforts", and you haven't linked to anything that might explain it.

It seems to me that the climate-alarmists aren't trying to keep comforts of their own, but rather to take ours away.

Oh yeah? Then we must have been clacking rocks together in a cave a decade ago...

Snow in the Sahara Desert...http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/

When I participated in a study called "Weather War," it was highly classified. We used a different set of very precise climate models (the same used to predict a nuclear winter). The goal was to see if we could affect a local microclimate change that would work to our advantage, such as creating a storm that would ground the enemy's aircraft. That's a far cry from global climate alteration, but from the results of our study I got an idea of how little we could do that would significantly affect even a local weather pattern.

Part of the problem is the enormous energy present in the atmospheric and oceanic environments. A class 5 hurricane, like Camille (1969) was the expression of over 250 megatons of TNT equivalent energy, or five times the biggest hydrogen bomb ever exploded. That gave us a distinct message that it would take more brute force than we could muster to accomplish the study's goal.

We next tried the "Butterfly Effect," approaching the problem from creating a reactive environment that would trigger the desired result. We applied a broad variety of chemical precursors, including a broad variety of carbon fuel combustion polluter/stimulator elements, but even using an unrealistic static atmosphere/ocean model, the results were insignificant, even with millions of tons expended. The conclusion we had to reach, to the disappointment of our commanders, was that the Earth's environment was too robust, even on a local scale to be significantly affected by human action.

The one thing we found that did have a noticeable affect on local microclimate was water vapor. As an example, Phoenix, Arizona has been turned from a dry desert climate to a humid, muggy one, thanks to the mad profusion of constantly watered golf courses in the metropolitan area. Aside from that, nothing much else worked. Solar effects on Earth's geomagnetic field are enormous, and the source of nearly all climate change. Humans have an effect, but it's like mouse fart in a hurricane.

They seem to be growing everything. I've seen some systems that are growing grain!...does require a lot of space.
If the blithering idiots would get their heads out of their butts, they could look back in history to find what area's of earth were conducive to growing crops during the last Grand Solar Minimum. We very well might start looking to the desert areas which some now are beginning to green up and use them for the land intensive crops.

Funny thing, it wouldn't take a miracle nor a big government program...just the truth and verbal encouragement.

The common culture is no longer about gods and spirits, but about advanced technology. As myth, it serves the same narrative purpose, but is different in being real. I just googled "experiment star trek transporter" and got this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetec...

You cannot do that with Zeus or the Faiery Queen.

Three of my criminology professors ran a statistical study of The CSI Effect. (Google for "barak shelton kim csi effect".) Prosecutors complained that juries demanded sometimes ridiculous kinds of "physical evidence" because of TV shows like CSI. What the professors found was a general "tech effect" in society. Interestingly, jurors with more education did not demand such evidence, but accepted the prosecutors' claims.

There's lot of negativism and even hopelessness here among people who foresee and even want "the end of the world." But I see things getting generally better for everyone over time. We may yet have transient catastrophes, but the path to the stars is easy to see.

" if the return on implementing a proposed climate change regulation can't be economically justified, it shouldn't be implemented. "
It's unfortunate we even have to say this. To me this is a property issue. The preponderance of the evidence is that human activities are doing things costly to other humans. We don't want to stop activities that are a net gain, that create $10 and destroy $8. But we can't have rationalize and bury our heads in the sand saying, "Maybe all the science is all wrong and it's not harming anyone." The thing is that's right. By it's very nature, science may be wrong. There may be wonderful evidence that we can burn all CxHy in the blink of an eye geologically speaking and have it have no costs for humans now or in the future. It could happen. But we can't bank on wishful thinking. We have to work out the best estimate and charge people for the cost of their actions. I don't even agree with climate change "regulation" that has hard limits. We need taxes, some form of cap and trade, at least until the geoengineering is there. The whole thing is economic. There are 7 billion people wanting to pursue an affluent life by serving one another in fair trades. We need to make them whole when we trash their stuff.

I don't understand how what you're saying relates to this, but I certainly commend you for original thinking. :)

Manufacturing food indoors offers some advantages , avoiding crop loss due to frost, wind, Floods or droughts pests
Likely requiring an inexpensive abandoned factory. Growing an organic specialty type of food like tomatoes (high yield) or potatoes, strawberries.

I forget what started it, but an upcoming merit test was mentioned and someone taunted us, "You guys are going to fail the Kobyashi Maru." and we said together that we were going to reprogram the computer tonight. That's a different paradigm than quoting the Iliad.

See my reply to Circuit Guy. Apparently, America leads the world because 28% of adults have an understanding of basic science (or a basic understanding of science). We wish that it were more, of course, but compare it to the previous ages of history.

Also, it does not matter what so-called "average" person believes. They do not make history. And the Flynn Effect says that the "average" IQ is increasing. It just means that more geniuses are being born. There was a time when a genius might be born once in three generations within a tribe of 300. Now the 25% smartest people in China are more people than there are in the USA. Thus, we enjoy an advanced civilization.

Sure, there are people who live for WWE wrestling and do not know the name of Richard Feynman. But those people do not matter. The fact is that we are living in a Renaissance of extraordinary talent.

Easy as it is to agree with the gist, you were cogent in pointing out the economic standard. It is a fact of objective philosophy that it is immoral to implement something that is economically inefficient. The moral and the practical are integrated, not dichotomized.

For "the environment" I substitute your local microclimate. We know that planting more trees improves the energy considerations of a city. Copying Portland, Oregon, Ann Arbor put in porous street surfacing that traps rain water in the ground rather than running it off into the rivers and beyond. From there the granularity get finer, down to the individual. Your home is better off for the tree. But it is not an instant solution; it depends on long-range planning, which can be in short supply.

Finally, on a tangent, actually, in the "Legal Tender" discussion, the processes of "bench-made law" came up. It is the Anglo-American system that the legislature passes enabling laws, but that the courts fit the law to the case at hand. In countries following the Napoleonic or Continental or Bologna or "Civil Law" way, the legislature spells out the law in deep detail and the courts just fit the case to the law. Many libertarians prefer bench-made law, but it does open the door to that "judicial activism" that other republicans abhor.

So maybe we will have a placebo effect goin on...everyone in bathing suits swimming in feet of snow!...all cause they believe it is warming.

I think we could talk about how we should be growing our food inside; greenhouses and hydroponically, without mentioning warming Or cooling or why. Maybe they'd listen.
Seems, believe it or not, that many business are sprouting up in Jersey, nyc and...wait, wait for it...chicago!, that are growing food indoors.

" the apparent decline of religion"
For this question you have to look not at the numbers of religious people but how many of them take the religion literally. I suspect that has been trending downward for a thousand years.

"Approximately 28 percent of American adults currently qualify as scientifically literate"
I wonder how that compares to 100 years ago. Scientific literacy has obviously increased since the Dark Ages, but I suspect it has increased more recently I don't have any data though to back it up.

"You honestly think the average person understands this?"
Much much more by far than other times in human history. It's not even comparable. It's a revolution of increased understanding.

"The point he made is that fossil fuels are easy to transport: can of gasoline; bucket of coal; you can't do that with wind. "

Indeed, the transportability of liquid fuels, combined with a solid energy density is their major advantage. Even on another planet, if you want the most energy for mass, or energy for portability, liquid fuels are what you'll be producing. Even if you have a nuclear reactor or a large solar array, using it to produce liquid fuel for an internal combustion engine is much more effective than batteries.

Consider "The Martian" as an example. While I highly recommend the book over the movie (you lose so much context), a more reasonable rover rollout would have not used battery->wheels. The mass of the batteries is much larger than the mass of a martian atmo -> liquid fuel reactor and a lightweight ICE. Even if you used the liquid fuel to power a generator you'd have come out ahead. For terrestrial counterparts look to modern diesel locomotives, in which the diesel motors drive generators to power electrical motors; or the Chevy Volt which has a small motor to generate electricity to drive the wheels.

Despite what loonies want us all to believe, liquid fuel won out because it was more effective.

http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/ on this sight is a video about " waking up" it is very similar to your described experience. Let me know what you think if interested.