Slashdot Mirror

Yes, those truly are "missing links" ;)

Nice fine nonetheless, here are the "non-missing links":

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/04 05_060405_fish.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/ph otogalleries/tetrapod/index.html

Its gratifying every time one of these "missing links" is found. My favorite is probably the lobe-finned fishes:

Of course the creationists will just deny these anyway, but then again, they would never argued about this for so long if they were rational to begin with.

Its gratifying every time one of these "missing links" is found. My favorite is probably the lobe-finned fishes:

Of course the creationists will just deny these anyway, but then again, they would never argued about this for so long if they were rational to begin with.

2) How many "cities" are built on permafrost?

Quite a few apparently. Not talking about New York type metropolis centers but still, when you add all those little villages and towns, that's quite a few inhabitants. Try driving on a road that used to be permafrost and now it is melted, that should be fun.

Again another reference for you enjoyment: Sinking Alaska

Have you heard of Dowson city? Well here it is then.

This applies even more so to Siberia probably, it's just that we don't hear about it in the American media as much. It is understandable that our scientists and journalists are concerned with our continent first. I was surprised when Slashdot picked up a story about Siberia here

Have you actually BEEN to northern Canada?

Have YOU BEEN to Siberia?

...read page two of that article. Abdussamatov is a nutcase, and neither recent overall warming of Mars nor any attribution to increased solar output are serious scientifc propositions.

It might be drinkable but in no case accessible. haven't read this article but the one on digg said that water is 400-800 miles beneath the surface. I doubt we can make a well that deep. here is the link if u r interested: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0227-ocean-asia.html

The only reason for this to be done in China is that in any civilised country the public will torch the lab doing this and they will be right to do so. In fact this will be one of the very few cases where I will happily side up with the animal rights people.

This is presumably how come State University of New York no longer has a biology lab. Wait. I missed that news. Perhaps it didn't happen.

Today if you want. In fact yesterday. The only reason for this to be done in China is that in any civilised country the public will torch the lab doing this and they will be right to do so. In fact this will be one of the very few cases where I will happily side up with the animal rights people.

The exact same of research has been done in the State University of New York. See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 01_020501_roborats.html/. Except the target animal was mice instead of pigeon. People were not torching that lab and they will not torch this one.

"Like most of the un-funny posts to this article already"
--I really wish it was possibly to filter out the posts modded "Funny". It would reduce the noise on /. so much that it might even be worth reading again. Everybody wants to crack one liners. It's all complete drivel. I guess when people have nothing intelligent to say, they rely on trying to be funny.

"The problem stems from the Killer Bees infiltrating a colony of another type of bee and wiping out the colony. Since the killer bees do exhibit the same food gathering and other critical behaviors to pollination, the lost colonys have a bigger impact. I can see the fungus, virus, pesticide and other aspects causing problems in climates farther north but I would not doubt that Killer Bees could be a large contributing factor to this problem."
--I doubt it, if it was case of Killer Bees wiping out a colony, I would think that there would be evidence. ie: thousands of dead bees around the hive. From what I have read (this article and another few a couple weeks ago) the bees are just "disappearing", no sign of what happened. Here is a link somebody else posted on another blog: National Geographic: Bees Battle Hornets from Hell

All of this should eventually match up with the Genographic Project: https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/at las.html

Are you anti-semitic? Not only do show no respect for Jewish beliefs, but you want his son to get HIV?

Better article from NatGeo. Also has a video. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0222-chimps-spears.html

mplayer http://fjord.nationalgeographic.com/news/070222-ch imp-video.asf

Look at the 'photos of all the glaciers in the world. They are all in rapid retreat. Here are some of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It's scary. I live pretty close to sea level, but about 5 miles inland, and I hope I'll be moving house before the sea level rise makes it compulsory.

You can see it here at nationalgeographic.com http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0606/featur e4/gallery5.html

100% of Americans love GWB
100% of Americans love Fox News

So it's only half of 'em? Gee, almost no-one, a puny minority of mere 150 million. Nossiree, nobody should be allowed to joke about that.

100% of Americans know absolutely nothing about geography, politics, or history

100%? No. Enough that the stereotypes are largely justified? Hell yes.
COME ON, 20% you can't find the goddamn PACIFIC OCEAN! Single largest thing on the planet? Can't find on the map? CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT SHIT?
How long before they start spouting "world being round is only a theory"?

First, paitning your roof white is one of the stupidest things you could do.

      Where do you think all of that reflected radiation ends up? Its does not end up back in space, it ends up heating the surrounding air molecules, hence the atmosphere. So if you do want to heat the atmosphere even faster and more efficiently, reflect more radiated solar energy back into it.

      Instead what you want is a heat sink. Materials that absorb and release heat over long periods of time to affect a gradual dissapation of this acquired heat or maybe materials that can convert this energy to some useful energy in addition to that. Absorption not reflection would be the way since reflected solar radiation is not going to escape the atmosphere once its penetrated it, only facilitate in its heating.

      Now that we have that out of the way, forget all of that nonsense and realize this, Global Warming is due to a host of natural and dynamic earth process and here is just one of them demonstrated and anyone with a lick of sense can understand, weaker magnetic field around earth = increased solar radiation penetrating the lower layers of the atmosphere so forget Al Gore and the New World Order known as the UN, here is one piece in a mega-complex collection of climate affecting factors and it has not even flipped yet and when it does, how long does it take, how much of the earth will be left unprotected etc-

  "Instabilities such as this, Olson added, are causing Earth's magnetic field to weaken. Today the field is about 10 percent weaker than it was when German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss first began measuring it in 1845. Some scientists speculate the field is headed for a reversal."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/09 27_040927_field_flip.html

Ok, so I'm utterly late on this one... and this comment is likely never to see the light of day. Oh, well

Has anyone ever proposed a correlation between the changing magnetic fields to that of this supposed global warming (or climate change as they like to call it when it gets cold in the northern hemisphere.)

I'm not saying there isn't a climate change happening, but it seems to me that if the northern ice caps are receding, but the southern ice cap is expanding... this might have something to do with the earth's magnetic field preparing for a magnetic flip.

I know it is not for me to question the central tenets of the one true faith, but actually I think you will find that pirates are on the increase these days...

Please explain the following:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/06 17_020618_croc.html
************
The desert crocodiles have adapted to the changing environment in northern Africa; 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, what is now desert was probably lush savannah and grasslands. Today the Sahara is hot and arid, the land sandy, rainfall minimal, and vegetation sparse.

"The extension of range almost certainly reflects climatic changes," said Ross. "We know that even in Roman times, the Sahara was much wetter and greener than it is now. As these places slowly dried up, remnant populations became isolated from the other crocodiles on the continent. How these populations adapted to the changing conditions is most interesting."
***************
Ok so what happened here? Imagine if today the Sahara was drying up. The media and politicians would be saying the world end is near and everything is going to dry up and be burnt like a twig. Yet here we are 10,000 years later still alive...

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that the global O2 output from the plants on land was only about half of the total generated. The other half of the O2 generation on this planet is from phytoplankton found in the oceans. Since this stuff is also food for the oceans, maybe we should be looking to the oceans to help solve our current problems. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/06 07_040607_phytoplankton.html

I beg to differ:

"I know what I want to do," [Warren Buffet] said, "and it makes sense to get going." On that spring day his plan was uncertain in some of its details; today it is essentially complete. And it is typical Buffett: rational, original, breaking the mold of how extremely rich people donate money.

Buffett has pledged to gradually give 85% of his Berkshire stock to five foundations. A dominant five-sixths of the shares will go to the world's largest philanthropic organization, the $30 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose principals are close friends of Buffett's (a connection that began in 1991, when a mutual friend introduced Buffett and Bill Gates).

The Gateses credit Buffett, says Bill, with having "inspired" their thinking about giving money back to society. Their foundation's activities, internationally famous, are focused on world health -- fighting such diseases as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis -- and on improving U.S. libraries and high schools. Warren Buffett gives away his fortune

In 2001 the Geographic was reporting:

The Gates Foundation has committed more than U.S. $100 million so far: $50 million to launch a malaria vaccine initiative; $40 million to a malaria research program at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; and $25 million to Medicines for Malaria Venture, a public-private project promoting malaria drug treatments. Bill Gates Fortune Used to Wage War on Malaria

Yes, this is most likely done through Y chromosome research. The Genographic project uses Y chromosome (male lineage) and mitochondria (female lineage) to determine human origins.

Let me draw a parallel: Sulfate aerosols. Twenty years ago... BAD! Spend five billion dollars on a five million dollar problem by requiring major changes to industry by amending the clean air act. Now, twenty years later, the same environmental crowd that fought against sulfates so vigorously tell us sulfate aerosols are keeping global temperatures down and should be intentionally put into the atmosphere. Keep in mind, they don't want to lift clean air act restrictions. They want to spend more money (pocket more grants) seeding it with jet airplanes, balloons and artillery cannons... I still haven't heard how this is supposed to avoid the production of acid rain, but there it is, staring you in the face. Twenty years ago, you would have told me to stuff my sulfate conspiracy theories too, I suppose.

Um, yes. Sulfate aerosols are bad. Do you dispute that? A single scientist (yes, he's a nobel laureate) is now proposing injecting them into the atmosphere. And you equate that with the "same environmental crowd" how? Are you even listening to yourself?

So you say a temperature switcheroo in a few decades is impossible?

Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying - barring, of course, some obvious change such as putting a space sunshade in orbit (not that I expect that to happen).

Suppose they just throw up a two or three page "debunking" over at realclimate and continue on their merry way. Would that pass your sniff test?

No. No it would not.

As for your final comment, let me point out that you are citing the same Pat Michaels that, despite receiving large sums of money from the coal industry, has recently said:

Well, since the human warming got initiated, or began--which most people would view somewhere around the mid-1970s--the rate of global temperature rise has been remarkably constant. It's uncanny how constant it is. And it's about .17 degrees Celsius per decade, or about 1.7 degrees per century.

His "solution" of course is to just wait around for the problem to fix itself:

That number is significantly low, and it suggests to me that this becomes a self-limiting issue in the following way: 100 years from now, the technology that runs our society, and powers our society, is going to be radically different than it is today. It will almost certainly be a more efficient, maybe not even a carbon-based fuel society.

How convenient that his solution is good for the people who recently gave him so much money. Just a coincidence though, I'm sure.

As for previous IPCC predictions being alarmist, I'll send you to this link which points out that the 2001 IPCC was too conservative, if anything. (Although the temperature increases did stay within the bounds given, they were on the high end of the predictions.)

No climatologist - not Pat Michaels and not Richard Lindzen - is denying that anthropogenic global warming is happening. The only dispute is to how hot and how quickly - oh, and what to call it.

I'm too tired to Google so I'll grant you the numbers as you don't seem the type to make stuff up.

Here's a short article that discusses it. I hate to have anyone trust me, because although I'm not the type to just make stuff up, I am the type that sometimes gets things wrong. :) For example, it's the C13/C12 ratio, not the C13/C14 ratio.

Are the higher CO2 levels caused by SUV's and private planes, or the shrinking of the rain forests around the world? Either way, what can we do?

Well, the two issues are related and somewhat difficult to separate. See, the C13/C14 ratios I was talking about tell you the ratio of CO2 gases in the air that came from fossil fuels. However, one might argue that those fossil fuels stay in the atmosphere longer because of the shrinking rain forests. The short answer is: (1) Stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere (or at least stop dumping as much), and (2) Stop cutting down trees in the rain forest. (This is a "global" you, of course. I suspect that you, personally, have cut down very few trees in the rain forest. Not more than 1 or 2 dozen, I'd wager.)

Since water vapor is a much more effective green house gas than CO2, won't ideas like fuel cells, which have water vapor as exhaust, make the problem worse?

Not really. Water, unlike CO2, saturates quite readily in our atmosphere. Then, it rains. (When's the last time you remember it "raining" (or even sublimating) CO2?) You can't add more water to the atmosphere without warming the atmosphere first. Of course, I assume you see the feedback inherent in that system. As we heat the atmosphere, it can (and will) hold more water - thus allowing it to hold more water. Luckily, it's a limited (i.e., sublinear) feedback, so it won't "tip", like some alarmists might claim.

Won't more CO2 be beneficial to plant life around the world, causing more plants to grow... thus releasing more O2 and balancing things back out.

Some plants will benefit from increased CO2, and others will not. Most will. The net effect is, in fact, expected to generate a negative feedback. Just like with the water vapor I mentioned in my previous paragraph, it's also sublinear. (Here's an interesting article on what might happen with some of our food crops. Yes, there's a lot of speculation, but it is interesting.)

I'm not saying that'll happen, but who knows? I guess no one does for sure, which is why I don't want to trade my Toyota in for a bicycle just yet!

See, here's my problem. It's easy for us (as humans) to go from "I don't understand" to "no one understands". And, yes, no one can be 100% sure. However, people who have spent their full time career understanding what will happen should be given some deference here. Granted, trading in your Toyota for a bicycle won't fix the problem - largely because you're only one individual. This is a problem that needs to be tackled collectively. (Ayn Rand fans might attack me here.)

Here's the thing, though. (And I know far less about economics than I do about climatology. At least with climatology, I can fall back on my physics background which is at least somewhat relevant.) When one person decides to ride his bike to work, it's a huge sacrifice. One reason is that our society is not built around such an idea. If you ride you bike on ordinary roads, people driving their cars will get upset with you for clogging up traffic. In fact, by clogging up traffic you might actually be making things worse. Personally, I walk to work - but that's because I can. Charlottesville (not suprisingly) is much more friendly towards pedestrians (and bike riders - although there are still many places where riding a bike in C'ville is not recommended). Anyways, my

I'll bet you almost anything that nobody has carried out even a basic archaeological survey of the area

National Geographic had a whole hour long special on this subject that I watched about 4 or 5 months ago. As the article below states, there was MORE than one set of bones found, while the girl mentioned in today's articles was the only COMPLETE skeleton, there was several other partial bone sets recovered that were equally comparable in size. Also in the documentary they rebuilt the skull and sent it to several specialists, who confirmed that it was in fact not a case of microcephallis. So todays articles seem like old news, AND they're confusing everyone by not mentioning the other bone sets recovered on site. What I haven't seen anyone address is whether they could have been premordial dwarfs... but considering how few of those there are in the world, the likelyhood of several being found in the save small island seems rare, but not unpossible. ~Mentions multiple skeletons... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/10 27_041027_homo_floresiensis.html and the video description http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/20 05/03/explorer_hobbit.html

National Geographic had a whole hour long special on this subject that I watched about 4 or 5 months ago. As the article below states, there was MORE than one set of bones found, while the girl mentioned in today's articles was the only COMPLETE skeleton, there was several other partial bone sets recovered that were equally comparable in size. Also in the documentary they rebuilt the skull and sent it to several specialists, who confirmed that it was in fact not a case of microcephallis. So todays articles seem like old news, AND they're confusing everyone by not mentioning the other bone sets recovered on site. What I haven't seen anyone address is whether they could have been premordial dwarfs... but considering how few of those there are in the world, the likelyhood of several being found in the save small island seems rare, but not unpossible. ~Mentions multiple skeletons... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/10 27_041027_homo_floresiensis.html and the video description http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/20 05/03/explorer_hobbit.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/11 10_051110_warming.html
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data. html
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/ causes12.jsp

These are only some of the links you get when you google water vapor and global warming. You might want to read them.

National Geographic has better pics. View the photo gallery.

>Global warming is probably the most controversial scientific subject today

No. It's not. For scientists, anyway. It is only in the media. And, FWIW, only in the US. Everywhere else in the world people who deny global warming are viewed as nutcases. See a pattern here? I do.
Remember the USCD study by Naomi Oreskes in 2004? There were exactly 0 papers in peer reviewed journals over 10 years that did not accept global warming as a fact. All that scientists quibble over is how much of it is man-made, and the consensus is somewhere over 50%.
See e.g. this National Geographic article.
The case is closed. Kinda like scientists vs. the bible 300 years ago, and some *still* argue about that one.

Do you happen to know the source of the data for that picture? I know the U.S. operates some very large phased-array radars that track hundreds of thousands of objects.

The article states they grabbed LAUNCHES. I'm not sure that has much to do with their space program.

There are many launch bases in the world. Launch locations include Kaoru, French Gianna, Japan, China (at one time), and Hawaii. The bases are used to launch many types of commercial satellites. Private companies transport spacecraft all over the world to be launched. While the number of launches from Kaoru might be higher than the U.S. or elsewhere, the spacecraft being launched are mostly from other countries.

The Russian Antonov is the largest commercial plane in the world and this plays a role as well. It has 4 independent cranes can load next-gen sized spacecraft and the plane itself can house the entire launch campaign including employees. Companies like Space Systems/Loral have been leaving for launches out of Moffet Field for years.

It all boils down to cost. They produce cheaper rides, cheaper launches, and quality transportation. Therefore they launch more rockets. It also takes less fuel to get to orbit from Russia. I highly doubt these numbers represent anything special.

..and yes, we are messy.

Now if only the ice were getting thinner in Greenland, we'd have something to worry about. Unfortunately for you global warming scaremongers, that isn't the case. It seems the ice has been getting thicker in Greenland over the past decade or so.

Your link mentions a thickness increase in the interior only; there's a decrease on the margins. NASA says:

Greenland's low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, while the high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall.

Another study and that NASA report points to an overall decrease in ice.

There is a wide variety of documented evidence that fits in a larger web of evidence.

If you can't read the record and accept documented evidence then I couldn't prove the ocean was made of water by throwing you in it.

In the area of artwork:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_art
The oldest surviving art forms include small sculptures and paintings on rocks and in caves. There are very few known examples of art that date earlier than 40,000 years ago,

Weapons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon
Some of the earliest evidence for arrows are from ca. 20,000 BC in the Levant (the so-called 'Geometric Kebaran' period), made with several very small sharp pieces of stone embedded in an arrowshaft.

Buildings:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/662794.stm
"It does sound important," says Chris Stringer, head of the human origins group at London's Natural History Museum. "If this is correctly dated and correctly interpreted, it is the first good evidence from 500,000 years ago of a hut structure made by these people."

Before the discovery, the oldest remains of a structure were those at Terra Amata in France, from around 200,000 to 400,000 years ago.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/x/wxk116/habit at/

Genetics:
DNA analysis traced human ancestry back to an African "Eve," setting off debate about how modern humans evolved. While there was general agreement that Homo erectus dispersed from Africa across Asia between 1 and 2 million years ago, what happened next remained a question. The "out-of-Africa" hypothesis contended that modern humans developed in Africa and migrated from there recently, driving H. erectus into extinction. Proponents of a "multiregional" hypothesis held that H. erectus populations evolved into modern humans in many regions, and that these groups later bred with each other and with groups that emigrated from Africa. The Eve study examined mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed only by mothers to their offspring. The researchers, Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and the late Allan Wilson, estimated that the ancestor of all surviving mt DNA types lived between 140,000 and 290,000 years ago. When did the migrations from Africa take place? They dated the oldest cluster of mtDNA types with no modern African representation to between 90,000 and 180,000 years ago. These populations might have left Africa at about that time, but the mtDNA data could not determine exactly when.

Tools:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/01 14_040114_siberianhumans.html
Russian researchers have found a wealth of hunting tools, which date back 31,000 years, along central Siberia's Yana River. The artifacts include hundreds of stone tools and flakes, as well as spear foreshafts made of rhinoceros horn and mammoth tusk.

Each of these pieces of evidence taken individually falsifies the assertion that it is true that man has only existed for 10,000 years.
There are hundreds, thousands, likely tens of thousands (more!) of pieces of evidence like this.

---

Either god is evil or twisted and wants us to ignore the actual evidence we see and believe some old books in preference over hard evidence or god is going to accept that we don't believe old books that are clearly wrong or there is no god anyway.

This 'news' is four years old...btw, i found your ancestor Ancient Apelike Fossil Not Human Ancestor

Nicely trolled, sir. You've begged the question quite nicely, and you'd have effectively sand-bagged any reasoned response, except you forgot something: Your understanding doesn't matter.

Apparently, nobody's understanding matters.

I know a few things about global warming but I'm hardly a scientist. I do know what to look for when I'm gaging expertise, and total ignorance of evidence and blindly calling everyone a 'troll' who disagrees with you will definitely get your idea flushed down my mind's toilet.

The studies on this subject are not actually all that hard to read. When all is said and done, temperatures have only risen 0.6 degrees in the past 100 years. Yes I know it doesn't matter what happens globally, but in specific and dangerous locations like Greenland (whose ice loss we now know was exaggerated ).

This is all in addition to the standard gripes I have with the sensationalism and lies coming from the media, and the near silence of the scientific community unless confronted by inquisitive people. Peer review doesn't work if nobody's willing to speak. Essentially, the reported findings of the world's largest climate experiment stated "11 degrees"... the data really pointed to 3 degrees. "Peer review" was silent until a journalist ASKED them. Listen to the radio show link (earlier in this paragraph), it's chilling (note my brand new global warming pun!).

So what? It will be neither the first nor the last mass extinction. Nature has recovered everytime, and the Earth has been shaken quite a few times.

We(Humans) have become the caretakers of the world environment through our technology and population growth. I believe it even says something about this in the bible. If we don't care about our environment - in which we live - than may we go extinct as well, since we will deserve nothing less.
Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048 Seafood May Be Gone by 2048

If anything, it seems that biological diversity has been increasing except for some minor human-induced damage in the last two or three centuries.

Unless you're talking about the increase of invasive species, i have no idea where you're getting this.

We can't be sentimental about nature.

How irritating ;/

It isn't a person,

It supports the life around us.

and humans are different from animals

Not so different...many examples of this can be seen on the daily news.

As some of the other reponses noted, global warming does not mean more land or crops. As the temperature rises, climate patterns change, usually making dry places more dry and wet places more wet. This means increased flooding for the wet places and droughts for the dry. It's hard to grow most of our current produce staples in either of those environments.

On the topic of more habitable lands, that seems pretty ridiculous to me. If the sea level rises, earth's total land mass will decrease significantly, displacing millions to hundreds of millions of people. With that many "refugees", areas that were once habitable would become wastelands while trying to support them. When you say more habitable lands, I'm guessing you're talking about frozen areas becoming habitable because of increased temperatures. The problem there is again due to droughts. Most of the frozen places on earth get little rainfall. It's hard to say how increased temperatures in these areas would affect rainfall, but if they follow patterns in other places, they wouldn't be habitable. Even if they do become habitable, we now have to completely relocate or rebuild our infrastructures for manufacturing, agricultural, and basically every other aspect of modern life.

Let's finally look at what would happen if the the sea level rose and new land becomes habitable due to global warming. Assuming none of the other problems I have mentioned are major factors and that everyone who is displaced by the oceans (Florida, most of Western Europe, China along the Yellow River, most of India along the delta, islands across the world, etc) is able to safely move farther inland. They would need to continue to move inland due to the massive hurricanes/typhoons that would be destroying anything built along the coast, which would considerably decrease the amount of habitable land. Living in Africa or around the Equator would be pretty much out of the question due to the increased heat in the summer, again leaving less space for people.

Now, if you had said that you think global warming might be good because hundreds of millions of people will die, giving our global economy and political systems a chance to rebuild itself from scratch due to anarchy, revolutions, and war, then that's a different story.

Myth: The stones of the Pyramids are fitted so tightly that you can't slide a credit card between them.
Reality: Not true. Some stones have mortar, some don't--and you can easily slide a credit card between them.
- http://www.nationalgeographic.com/egyptjournal/fac ts.html

This makes me wonder... It would make sense for some gaps to be intentionally left between blocks to provide flexibility, but I think it also sounds reasonable that they were using some sort of process at least similar to what you describe to lay mortar. Perhaps the missing mortar was the result of human error? Maybe they did not use mortar in the process when using formed blocks because pouring them in place created a bond? I have also read somewhere (can't find a link) that the collapse of the Meidum pyramid was due to the poor quality of the binding material. If the binding material in the big pyramid was different, then maybe the Meidum pyramid's collapse resulted in them needing to change their recipe for mortar?

Slaves didn't build the pyramids. That would explain the no pictograph part.

According to a link in the article that you linked to, the melting of Greenland's ice sheet alone would raise ocean levels by 7 meters.

Beyond that, ocean currents and weather patterns would be affected in ways that we flat-out can't predict. Not to mention that entire ecosystems could conceivably collapse. They're pretty fragile.

No one can prove that any of this will happen. But it's likely, and the stakes are pretty damned high. It's not a gamble most people are willing to take.

OK, pray tell me the worst case rise in ocean level. 1 meter? Wow, I guess we better go back to canoes! If all the ice on the planet melts (hint - that hasn't happened even when it was much hotter than the 10 degrees maximum CO2 warming can provide), you see a 7 meter rise. The most likely scenario is that runaway global warming would cause a 1 meter increase in ocean levels.

There is no 100 ft wall of ocean doom! 7 meters maximum, all stop. New Orleans was lower than that, for goodness sake - and the only reason they had problems is because they skimped on the dikes that they were told that they needed!

I've yet to hear of scientific study of mammals concluding that homosexuality is a natural and acceptable form of procreation.

Do you believe there is sufficient evidence to PROVE the big bang?

How do you scientifically measure your soul?

yet deep inside I have trouble believing our world was a galactic role of the dice.

The odds of our universe coming together the way it has to support our life here on earth are just not good.

Selective reproduction is one thing, but if we came from monkeys why are our DNA closer to that of a dog?

Why has no other monkeys (or fish, or birds, or whatever) turned human in the past (insert whatever number you like) years?

You have demonstrated that you think there is some higher purpose to everything, that there's a final goal, such as humans, or life on Earth as it exists today. You need to stop that, because that's religion talking.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/06 1121-giant-magnet.html

The snake (a reptile) has legs at the start of genesis, we know this as the punishment from god is to have no legs and slither on its belly, a snake with legs is a lizard and the bit with the apple and the tree was pretty terrible, so the snake was in fact a terrible lizard. A quick translation of that is "terrible lizard" so in fact the dinosaurs didn't become extinct it was just that god turned them into snakes.

So, basically you are saying that, in your view, the Bible says that snakes took a similar path, losing their legs, that science is now saying that the dolphin took?

Interesting.

Or an Andean villager or an Ethiopian highlander:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/02 24_040225_evolution.html

1) http://www.firstscience.com/site/articles/gribbin. asp/ There's plenty more with a quick google. Ignorance does not mean actual absence of data.

2) Localized data set for a global climate model. Not relevant.

3) Your point that the water problem can be solved by engineering is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Though the original point itself has the problem of using a local datapoint to support a global climate event.

4) I'd say as well that no one said we'd have crop failures now. Give it another 50 years or so. Though deadly heat waves were rampant across the world last year.

5) No one said that local climates are directly to global trends. Not only that, but no paper argued that there'd be a linear increase in hurricane strength in the Golf of Mexico.

6) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/03 25_030325_belizereefs.html/ Google for Coral Bleaching if you want to find out more what causes coral reefs to die. And no, contrary to your whishful thinking, it isn't divers that cause it.

7) In the same article you listed, there's this little quote. "Finally, Joughin says that two nearby West Antarctic glaciers are thinning rapidly, so the trend cannot be extended across the continent." It's at the end of the article, so I can understand why you didn't see it. Just for kicks, from the same site, here's another link: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6962/ Just google for Antarctic Ice sheet for more of the same.

8) Now you're either plain lying, or deliberately ignoring facts. In the 60s, the Ozone layer was fine. For the data, see here: http://www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/part2.html/. Or just google for Ozone layer Antarctic.

I'm glad that people who deny Global Climate Change have such lousy arguments. It means there's plenty of money to be made from them once real issues hit.

1) This is why people prefer global climate change rather than global warming, because it gives people who read only headlines the wrong idea. What that article refers to is thermohaline inversion and the stopping of the Atlantic conveyor belt, which is responsible for a good chunk of the nice coastal temperatures in Europe. For more details, and just because I can, I'll point you to alink that is in the same article you just quoted.

2) The Clean Air act is supposedly responsible for this nice little event. As for whether this would be able to affect the global climate in the level that we're seeing it, I'll refer you to this link.

3) Nice little effort at cherry-picking your events. For an actual event, you can go to Greenland and see how their farming efforts are a little easier now. However, the bad events far outweigh any positives we've gotten so far, primarily because it takes time to profit from change. Until we learn to take advantage of what Global Climate Change can do for us, we'll have seniors dying in droves from heat waves, pipelines and houses buckling due to vanishing permafrost and crops dying in areas that are getting too hot for comfort.

4) Since this is the same exact point as in 2) (complete with link to article that has the same quote), I'll refer you to the link I posted there. Besides, that article is a complete light weight when it comes to determining how much more light has reached the earth, its causes (which, btw, include reduced albedo, which is a side-effect of Global Climate Change) or its impact on what we're seeing.

Try again.