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Who is to say warmer won't be better?

Climatologists studying hurricanes. There is a direct correlation between the level of surface sea temperature near the equator and the intensity of hurricanes. Warmer sea water will mean more intense hurricanes.

Increase in Major Hurricanes Linked to Warmer Seas

Severe Hurricanes Increasing, Study Finds

Small increases in sea temperature, he added, can "exponentially provide more and more fuel for the hurricanes."

is the response about why the EADS approach will be one of the more expensive, poorly designed and engineered.
"Like other spaceship concepts that takeoff from a runway (XCOR and Rocketplane) or those that do rocket-powered vertical launches, the EADS vehicle will weigh more than twice as much (per passenger) as SpaceShipTwo and require more than twice the rocket impulse," Rutan told me. "This relates to significant increases in operational costs," he added, also noting that failure modes on ascent tend to be more risky at low altitudes. "The non-recurring development cost of a suborbital spaceship that has rocket and jet engines -- both of which leave the atmosphere and experience reentry -- will be far more than our SpaceShipTwo program," he said.

To be honest, I'd read some study that showed men with longer ring finges are more likely to have explosive tempers and beat their wives:

http://www.livescience.com/health/050203_finger_le ngth.html

It is a perhaps not especially strong correlation, but it is there. Also, a smalle 2D:4D ratio has been shown to make men more aggressive. I guess this is where the dumb aggressive jock bully vs. frail submissive brainiac dichotomy comes from.

SAT Scores, aggression and penis size

Self-cleaning fabrics could revolutionize the sport apparel industry. The technology, created by scientists working for the U.S. Air Force, has already been used to create t-shirts and underwear that can be worn hygenically for weeks without washing.

The new technology attaches nanoparticles to clothing fibers using microwaves. Then, chemicals that can repel water, oil and bacteria are directly bound to the nanoparticles. These two elements combine to create a protective coating on the fibers of the material.

This coating both kills bacteria, and forces liquids to bead and run off.

The U.S. military spent more than $20 million to develop the fabric, deriving from research originally intended to protect soldiers from biological weapons.

Incidentally, I mentioned those articles -- here's my collection. Let's get them out there to help build our industry.

They range in subject matters that assist me, with the majority being security related.

http://www.nbc4.com/money/11588165/detail.html
http://www.nbc4.com/money/11588165/detail.html
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71032-0.html
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Artic le&cid=1135552209280&call_pageid=971358637177
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050704.gtkirwanjul4/BNStory/specialScienceandHe alth/
http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=176198
http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060619 _hyperactive_bob.html
http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/factsheets/ fs_faq.html
http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/open-source/open-sourc e-legal
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ty/privacy/story/0,10801,108101,00.html
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&article Id=9004274&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_feat
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=f6f 548f7-9dfd-49f4-9ff8-8ae8f4a2e2fd
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr 2006/tc20060417_996365.htm?campaign_id=bier_tca
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_37 /b4000401.htm?chan=tc&campaign_id=bier_tcst0
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1 781895,00.html
http://panko.cba.hawaii.edu/ssr/Mypapers/whatknow. htm

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060316_hurr icane_sst.html

The human eye is an analogue device, and does not see in frames.

That's something I'm actually wondering about. But if it is the case, then explain to me why I sometimes see car wheels going backwards IRL (not on TV)?

Here's an interesting article:

(...)
One proposes that the visual cortex, much like a movie camera, processes perceptual input in temporal packets, taking a series of snapshots and then creating a continuous scene. Perhaps our brain processes these still images as it does frames in a movie, and our perceptual mistake results from a limited frame rate.
(...)

So it seems that your eye might, in fact, see in frames.

I would love to know just how similar the proteins were. Here is interesting research showing how the human and chicken genomes are also very similar. http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/chicken_gen ome_041208.html Not sure what the T-Rex data proves, other than lots of creatures have a similar genetic composition to a chicken. Guess this means that I'm "related" to a T-rex too, since I apparently came from a chicken...could explain my short arms and overbite. I'm more interested in the fact that T-Rex soft tissue can survive for, supposedly, 65M years...

He's not dead and he was born in 1940.

Maybe you meant some other Don Imus.

We all know Slashdotters are technically advanced, so maybe you really are from the future. Or not.

IMO, Yeah.

I have no problem with eating beef, but chimps are much smarter than cows. Actually, I'd say being able to recognize themselves in the mirror is as a good a litmus test for self awareness in non human animals as any.

I.e. all humans have human rights. Chimps, dolphins, whales have Great Ape Project style rights based on behavioural complexity. Elephants have Great Ape Project style rights too because they pass the mirror test.

International

A study published in Science, compared attitudes about evolution from the United States, 32 European countries (including Turkey) and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%). Public acceptance of evolution is most prevalent in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden at 80% of the population.

That's probably because back then there wasn't so much money around. Or alternatively, you could insert any other nose joke here :)

The images shown in the story are quite informative. Apparently, the http://images.livescience.com/images/070323_dino_s cale_02.jpg people's noses were much larger back then, too.

Fingerprints might be a good way to get a good first pass for suspects, but in general the public has way too much confidence in how well the retrieved prints identify culprits.

Indeed, one study suggests over 1,000 fingerprint matching errors a year.

Fingerprint matching is bad science.

What the hell are you talking about?

I don't know how more clearly to state this. The fact that global mean relative humidity remains constant to first order has nothing to do with CO2, or with the Sun

LoL.. If you don't know what the hell i am talking about then why are you trying to object to it so hard?

And this is the point. The global mean reletive humididty isn't staying constant!. This is were the models are wrong when it comes to the sun. And judging by the paper you keep refering to as the only way water ahouls belooked at, if the global mean reletive humidity increased by as little as 1/2 a percent increase, it could have a net effect of double that of the incresed Co2 emision's effects. Now this is something not to be scoffed at. For one, watervapor has a greater impact on the greenhouse effect and there is tons more water vapor in the air. And a brighter sun causing more evaporation raising this mean level by 1% could more then account for the increased temperature. But more importantly, it falls in line with the idea of global dimming because the natural controlto it is cloud formation which reflects sunligh.

Incidentally, there are higher order corrections and the relative humidity does vary slightly with temperature, but once again, it depends on temperature, not on solar irradiance.

I don't know. I always though that when you turn the heat up on the stove, the watter boils quicker. Shame on me for getting this wrong. And no i am not trying to say the sun is boiling anything. The sun is a driving factor in evaporation. The more intense this factor the more evaporation occures. Eventualy a certain humidity will be reached and it will be harder for water to evaporate.

We are looking at three seperate factore here. One, how fast the water evaporates with the increases solar intensity. Two, How much this rises the reletive humidity and to what extent is raises it. And three, What kind of greenhouse effect is this process adding. Of course there are more but those are the top three we need to be concerned with.

This is false. The laws of physics do not have a special term for "solar irradiance" in them; evaporation depends only on thermodynamic variables such as temperature, pressure, etc.

Sure there are vaiables. And the sun has an efect on two that you just mentioned. And the only thign false about it is your insistance that they don't matter.

The "intent of climate models" is to simulate the climate. Period.

No, the intent is to check the theories against a simulation of the climate. The models in themself aren't wrong. The way they function is. here is a report describing this entirely. And once the models were changed, they found that it was greater of an effect then expected. This leads us directly into this discusion. Here is a link explaining it a little further. Adn don't give me the they say only 30% bull. The fact is that the russia guys are working from the corections expected to correct the current models and stumbled unto what uncovered this. So you see, It is science working how science is intended to work. Not sitting back with something set in stone because thats the way "the good book says so". I'm not exactly sure why it is so hard for you to except change here? And even if you don't except it, Why are you trying so hard to stop others from exploring it?

This is wrong in multiple ways in the same sentence. You are not improving.

1. The "hockey stick" graph has nothing to do with climate models or the physics that goes into them.
2. Mann's hockey stick graph has not been debunked. On the contrary, two independent studies by the NRC and the NAS found that the overall hockey stick result is correct, although

One thing I found to be unusual, and possibly more worth examining, is how the areas illustrated in the article map are almost precisely the same shape as the major continents. See http://images.livescience.com/images/070228_beijin g_anom_02.jpg

Seems kinda weird, possibly a leftover effect from previous tectonic shifts?

There have been studies that support your theory.

There might also be another explanation for the "crazy guy" phenomenon. According to many articles, half of mankind is infected by a parasite, Toxoplasma, that is known to radically alter the behavior of rats. It's also suspected of creating schizophrenia-like symptoms in some human subjects who are either more sensitive or highly infected.

So it's entirely possible that some cases of "unruly teen" behavior might be linked to a parasitic infection. A blood test is $30 and the cure is a couple of cheap pills. Next time I have an episode of road rage, I'm getting tested.

Read up about it. It is both fascinating and disturbing. And it could save someone you know.

Driving needs too be a phone free situation, hands free phone or not. Studies on the subject have shown that hands free phones are little better for driving than a hand held unit. http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060629_cel l_phones.html

Just increase the rate of global warming. The warmer atmosphere will expand further into space, and all the junk will re-enter and burn up.

Paradoxically, just the opposite is occurring. The thermosphere (topmost layer of the atmosphere) gets thinner as carbon dioxide increases, which only makes space junk stay in orbit longer. In light of our dependence on satellites for so many of our modern conveniences (GPS, satellite TV, etc.), the Chinese missile test was a painfully shortsighted and frankly idiotic thing to do.

You can't expect someone to understand something if their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.

Sounds like we need more plankton.

Indeed, in no small part because the acidification of the oceans from increased CO2 (quite independent of the warming effects) is dissolving the calcareous exoskeletons of many varieties of sea life, the base structure of coral, and much more. The reduction in CO3-- ions compared to HCO3- reduces their access to building material in the first place.

Note that we are not on the verge of running out of oil.

The "peak oil" claim is not that we are about to have no oil. It is that the world's production rate of oil is about to peak and decline (just as the USA's production peaked in 1971 and declined, and any individual oilfield of significance you care to name). What this means is that prices will be much higher and more volatile, and the key to managing energy costs is cutting demand.

I doubt we are on any verge of the ability of the earth to absorb co2 either.

Tell it to the climate scientists who are measuring uncomfortable trends like rapidly rising methane emissions from former permafrost in Siberia, and the rumored rise in methane alerts from tanker detection systems along undersea gorges such as the one at the Hudson River. Former sinks are becoming sources.

Whats more, all that fossil fuel carbon came out of the atmosphere to begin with anyway. Burning it just returns it back to the atmosphere to be absorbed again by life for the cycle.

Coal strata mostly date from the carboniferous, about 300 million years ago. Oil and oil shale dates as far back as the Cambrian, over 500 million years ago. This carbon has been out of circulation for as much as half a billion years, and no extant ecosystem or living species is adapted to the conditions which prevailed at that time.

As I mentioned before, the last time we had a surge in atmospheric CO2 (end of the Paleocene) we had a mass extinction. What sort of delusion lets you think that it wouldn't do the same thing all over again?

If you want to get technical, O2 is the real culprit.

I highlighted that in case anyone reading this had doubts that you are delusional or dishonest.

As for man and his technology - we're a tertiary effect at best

Humans with mere axes and muscle-powered saws denuded the forests of Michigan in just a few years. (One consequence was the extinction of the Michigan Grayling, which required cold water in streams protected from direct sun. These ceased to exist, and the fish along with them.)

That was over a century ago (the fish finally died out in the 1930's). Since the late 19th century, our ability to change the environment has increased many-fold. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 tracks human emissions. In short, anyone who says what you're saying is either lying or delusional.

If it suited the alarmist industry, we'd be back to expecting the next ice age and probably trying to put lamp black on the glaciers to melt them - like they wanted to do back in the 1970s.

You are confusing a media-driven phenomenon of the time with scientific discussion which never claimed that glaciation was about to recur; this shows the shallowness of your knowledge. The scientists were looking at the historic climate cycles and noting that the current orbital fo

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedis play/img_display.php?pic=ig35_snowflakes_10_02.jpg &cap=

If that's a snowflake it really is amazing - of course I haven't actually looked at millions of them as individuals either, so maybe it is a normal snowflake...

But is sure looks out of place.

And blue. Very blue.

I was sure I saw this one months ago and sure enough-

http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/061211 _bacteria_bot.html

Nothing like more tired Wired...

http://www.livescience.com/blogs/author/leonarddav id

says it fragmented into hundreds of pieces, effectively denying anyone else access to that orbit.

I don't think he was saying we should stop sun cycles. Honestly I can't tell if your trying to be funny or not. I think he was saying even if it was the sun cycles we should still curb our emmsisions because its not helping the matter. There are other things to consider when you look at the emissions from industry, look at smog filled cities where it just stinks, or the sun is getting blocked out.

Especially where we are right now where there is no proof that the CO2 Emmsions are not causing the problem. Most people believe they are, the smog isn't helping anyone. There for it would seem logical to you know maybe cut it down a little bit.

So ignoring the leaky basement metaphore I think you missed, emmisions should be cut down regardless. Lack of sun from haze from emmisions can have devistating effects on vegitation which will lead to wildlife. I think one thing we can say is that most of these gasses are trapped in our atmosphere and its causing adverse effects one way or anouther.

And if you look worldwide, rather than at just the Atlantic, they were, this last season.

The Atlantic didn't have many hurricanes, which is usual in an El Nino year.

My scientists said the Washington Post is a bunch of old ladies griping about their bridge games. :)

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060713_glob al_warming.html

According to Wikipedia, corona discharge is one method used by ozone generators. Home air purifiers that use ozonolysis have been shown to cause unhealthy levels of ozone. This device is a lot smaller than an air purifier designed to circulate air throughout an entire room. But still, I wonder how much ozone is actually generated by it.

As the owner of two African Grey parrots, I have to give props to Alex's inclusion on the list. The bird developed the use of a "zero-like" concept and abuses grad students. Pepperberg was actually able to document statistically that "Alex is ornery."

Pepperberg is also teaching Alex to surf a parrot Internet and convert visual cues to phonemes which can be assembled by Alex into recognizable words. Pepperberg, always one for rigor, will not say that she is teaching Alex to read.

But a lot of it is subconscious.
Google "human ovulation smell" or scent or whatever. (That should be relatively worksafe, as opposed to, say "sniffing panties" which is how the original research was done, AFAIK.)
Here's a recent article about how men can tell when women are ovulating.
Here's a lit review from 2001, discussing just how good humans are at detecting pheromones, unconsciously.
(I can't help but wonder what 'subconscious' means in this sense: if you smell vomit and want desperately to leave the airplane, is that subconscious? is a dog smelling my hamburger and coming over to say hi subconscious? there are lots of areas where behavior is affected by things that a person might not be fully aware of, but if asked might be able to remember -- is that conscious? For instance, when I'm riding my bike down the path and see someone walking along talking to nobody, is it a crazy person or is it a person that's talking on a cellphone? I mostly determine that by some intuitive sense about how the person is moving: lurching around, uncoordinated movement -- but I don't *think* about it. I just know. But afterwards, I have a conscious realization: that person {is|isn't} crazy. Read "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell for more about that.)

Anyway, there have been studies done since the '70's, IIRC, exploring how good humans are at smelling things: slow, but still very good.

Sounds very similar and very old

Thursday, December 02, 2004 05:00 PM http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,118815-page,1/ar ticle.html
01 February, 2005 7:00 a.m http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_skin_ printing.html
Wednesday, 19th January 2005 http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/143/ 143230_tailormade_skin_from_ink_printer.html

Come on get with it, i have already built my clone army using disposable printers thought it was common knowledge.

Statistically, sex offenders have a very high commit-it-again rate.

Complete BS. http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060516_predat or_panic.html

For what we know, sex offenders are like other offenders ; many are just your once-in-a-lifetime (because they had oppotunity or whatever) type, a few are true maniacs in the medical meaning of the word. While the first type desserve a sentence, and don't need more attention than anybody else afterward, and probably less than a DIU convict, the latter type are mentaly ill persons, and they need constant medical attention instead of jail ; and they should be held in hospital until proven safe for release. Jail only prevent them from accessing adequate cure for their condition. The social pressure for a trial is in fact at the root of their early release (because neither a judge nor a jury is a qualified MD). This is medieval justice at its near best, if you don't count capital punishment.

Some voted him in because of non-science issues like Supreme Court nominations and anti-abortion stance. (Please don't say abortion isn an issue of science - it's an issue of metaphysics and ethics.)

No, abortion is a simple question of science and public health. Abortions are due to (a) a lack of reliable, scientific, high-school sexual education (or even a lack of education in general) including an ethical outlook on procreation and gender relationships, and: (b) a lack of available medical products, such as the pill, condoms, RU-486 (etc) to the general public. Uninformed, sexually active adults and teen-agers then become pregnant, and are unable to terminate the pregnancy before egg implantation, due to the fact that RU-486 is extremely hard to obtain in most of the States.

Check the stats: most countries where sexual education are a part of a normal school curriculum (Scandinavia, Germany, etc) have a much lower rate of abortion than the USA. Therefore, basic biological science is a way to avoid unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Considering that an unwanted pregnancy can seriously mess your life up -- especially for teen-agers -- I consider abortion the least bad solution anyway. Feel free to disagree with me on that (and I am sure you will).

Many of us who voted for him realized we were getting some good things (Justice nominations, etc.) and accepted that being at the cost of known bad things (leaning toward corporate interests), and never realized how bad a deal we were getting (settlement with Microsoft, ignoring global warming research, lying about and invading Iraq, caving to terrorists by trading away our liberties and refusal to torture, etc.)

Considering the fact that George W. Bush already had strong psychopathic tendencies long before the 2000 election, as well as a history of alcohol abuse (and, possibily, drug abuse), I consider your argument to be extremely weak. And that's putting it politely.

The fact is, when it comes to your country, you should always, always, always make an informed decision. Regardless of your religious affiliation. Voting for someone with a history of, shall we say, substance abuse, disregard for human life and violent behaviour is not exactly what I'd call an informed decision. No matter what you believe.

There's nothing anti-science about intelligent design. Intelligent design is just saying, "Hey, the universe seems pretty well ordered. What are the chances of that?" It's a metaphysical inquiry that's informed by science. There's no problem with teaching that (or don't you want students to question assumptions, such as reductionistic Darwinism (aka Epicurianism)?) You're probably upset with the teaching of a 6,000 year old earth based on the book of Genesis. I agree that that's a hard one to reconcile with carbon dating, etc., but that's truly a step beyond intelligent design.

Oh my, oh my. Where to begin?

• First of all, if I remember well, I never talked about Intelligent Design in my original post. I wonder why you have to drag this question in this discussion... But I am nit-picking, I guess.
• Second, if you think the Universe is pretty well ordered, I think you should read a lot more about science. Subjects like, let's see... basic biology, chaos theory,

Is this the collider that could possibly create a black hole that would destroy the planet?

I don't think there is really much to worry about. I have read a few articles on the subject and it seems highly unlikely anything catastrophic could happen if small black holes are created. Here are some quotes from one interesting article http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060919_b lack_holes.html:

"Stephen Hawking calculated all black holes should emit radiation, and that tiny black holes should lose more mass than they absorb, evaporating within a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, before they could gobble up any significant amount of matter"

and

"Still, let's assume that even if Hawking is a genius, he's wrong, and that such black holes are more stable," Landsberg said. Nearly all of the black holes will be traveling fast enough from the accelerator to escape Earth's gravity. "Even if you produced 10 million black holes a year, only 10 would basically get trapped, orbiting around its center," Landsberg said.

"However, such trapped black holes are so tiny, they could pass through a block of iron the distance from the Earth to the Moon and not hit anything. They would each take about 100 hours to gobble up one proton.

At that rate, even if one did not take into account the fact that each black hole would slow down every time it gobbled up a proton, and thus suck down matter at an even slower rate, "about 100 protons would be destroyed every year by such a black hole, so it would take much more than the age of universe to destroy even one milligram of Earth material," Landsberg concluded. "It's quite hard to destroy the Earth."

So, if Hawking is right we should be safe and even if he is wrong it sounds like we should still be safe. Of course nobody knows for sure which is somewhat scary but I don't think it means we should scrap the whole project in this particular case.

A case in point is the Web. people seem to forget that the WWW was created for particle physicists to share information, as such there are lot of academia sites on there and knowledgable info - if you know how and where to look. The fact that doctors can google cases and find answers speaks alot about the dissemination of knowledge on the web. You just have to know how to get at it and simple critical skills come in handy there.

Someone i was having a discussion with the other day raised the question: considering all the information we have today are we becoming smarter or merely more informed. hmmmm... I'll leave that as an pondering exercise to the the /. reader.

The body's energy systems are all closely associated with physical systems - each of the chakras corresponds with a gland: thymus, pituitary, etc.

Whatever. The important thing is that the cessation of phantom pain -- a sensation produced by the mind without input from the body -- is *real*. If gently rubbing thin air makes the mind decide the pain isn't there any more, great -- but that probably wouldn't work for me. But stick my arm in a box and give me a 3D simulation of it, and I bet you anything I'll be cured right away. Apparently, it's all about immersion in the experience.

For some reason, I'm put in mind of putting a knife under the bed, to cut the pain of childbirth. Seems like we're back to the best parts of 5,000-year-old medicine, right down to the leeches.

Reports in the late 1980s found the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface had declined by 4 to 6 percent since 1960. Suddenly, around 1990, that appears to have reversed.
"When we looked at the more recent data, lo and behold, the trend went the other way," said Charles Long, senior scientist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Reports in the late 1980s found the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface had declined by 4 to 6 percent since 1960. Suddenly, around 1990, that appears to have reversed.
"When we looked at the more recent data, lo and behold, the trend went the other way," said Charles Long, senior scientist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Are you perhaps thinking of the occipital bun: Neanderthal Hybrid? The bump may represent differential brain growth or just be a place for muscle attachment.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but a good percentage of scientists believe in God. I would assume that that would mean that they consider God and their scientific theories to "coexist", or else they are very good at handling cognitive dissonance.

And I suppose it's true that science doesn't "need" God, but maybe that's just because they haven't exhausted all the other theories yet. Where did the matter come from that comprised the tiny, dense point universe before the big bang? Right now, any answer to that question is equally religious to saying "God put it there."

And did the poster ever look to find out why that date became later and later? Maybe 'cause a lot of alarmist screamed "It's the end of the world!" So we did something about it. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s0600 3.htm (it is the summary of fuel efficiency trends spanning from the 1970s to the present) Also, it is hard to deny confirmable evidence, like if the oceans are fine, why are the dead zones getting larger?http://www.livescience.com/environment/0610 19_ap_dead_zones.html Maybe not all is well... Maybe we should do something now, rather than wait for an mass extinction event. (I just love the words 'extinction event.' Doesn't it just roll off the tongue?)

Basically, extremophiles are organisms that can survive at both extermes of the temperature spectrum. There is another article over at LiveScience that covers the basics for those not familiar.

can somebody find the direct quote for me?

Asked about the environment, Hawking, who suffers from a degenerative disease, uses a wheelchair and speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer, said he was "very worried about global warming."

He said he was afraid that Earth "might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid."

Elevated estrogen and estrogen mimicking substances have made it into our rivers and streams, causing signs of hermaphroditism in fish. Scientists have discovered a wide range of other drugs in our drinking water, from pain killers to birth control pills to antidepressants. High levels of rocket fuel toxins have been found in mothers' milk. My city still uses lead piping to transfer most of its water, and they alkalinize the water to reduce lead levels to "acceptable" levels, even though scientists have pretty much shown that the only acceptable lead level is no lead at all.

It's not entirely clear what, if any, effects these substances have on developing children. Personally, I'd rather be safe than sorry and remove these contaminants from my water.

Although researchers often use human cells in mice (remember the ear they grew on the back of a mouse?), you're certainly correct in saying that this isn't exactly accurate in predicting human outcomes. I think your idea of having a comparative study with mice stem cells is a good one, although it might be difficult considering the difficulty of finding the dopamine producing cells in very small embryonic mice.

Ooops. Still, I can try to salvage something.

The graph may be for the wrong event, but we still do have a general scientific consensus that the Permian extinction involved warming.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/050120_grea t_dying.html

Referring to

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308 /5720/398?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT= &fulltext=permian+warming&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0& resourcetype=HWCIT

Now, as for the other spike... It doesn't show in the extinctions graph because that is a marine fossil diversity graph. The disruption appears to have mostly occurred for land creatures, but is still mentioned in numerous other article referring to it.

Yeah, it's an embarrassing error, but my general point still stands. There's no justification for saying that warming events are always good, and extinction events are always cooling.

Producing a gallon of ethanol gas from corn requires 95 percent less petroleum than producing a gallon from fossil fuels, a new study finds, ... Ethanol could be even more energy efficient and 95 percent free of greenhouse gas emissions, Kammen said, if produced from woody plants instead of corn. "It is better to use various inputs to grow corn and make ethanol and use that in your cars than it is to use the gasoline and fossil fuels directly," said Daniel Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley. Ethanol Fuel More Advantageous Than Thought

2.) Tying a trend to warmer temperatures based on older data from the early 1900's is suspect at best. Good, reliable, accurate scientific equipment that measures the temperature wasn't readily available until recently (late 1900's).

There are numerous proxies for temperature. Ice core studies use the proportion of deuterium to hydrogen in the ice is a sound local temperature proxy, since the water with deuterium in it requires more heat to evaporate it. This proxy correlates well with temperature measurements.

A mercury thermometer can measure relative temperature to within 0.1C. These have been around since 1714.

3.) The sun's activity has increased by approx. 10% in the last 15 years. In other words, it's getting hotter.

Indeed no. About 0.07%. (Yes that's not 7% and a typo, that's 7 parts in every 10 000.)

Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 10 years.

100 years.

5.) Jupitor is experiencing the same climate change that Earth is.

No, the earth is experiencing global warming. Jupiter is experiencing a redistribution of temperature. (from your link: As a result, areas around the equator become warmer, while the poles can start to cool down.)

6.) Mars is experiencing the same climate change that Earth is.

Possibly. I don't think that observed changes on Mars over the past 7 years are a good reason to ignore the measured and predicted effect on increasing greenhouse gasses here on earth over the past 100.

Is it possible that the warmer temperatures that Earth is experiencing are caused by cyclical natural phenomena?

No it's not. CO2 levels are the highest in several million years, and temperatures are hotter than any time in the Holocene, which represents 7 ice-age cycles. This is new, and we know why it's happening, because the physics of greenhouse gasses is well understood.