I wish he were more consistent then. H1-B's have restricted rights and are used to force wages downward. A true acolyte of Rand would oppose those restrictions and remove all barriers to immigration.
I can assure you that Ham doesn't understand evolutionary biology, nor does he understand how science works.
Ham and his ilk are not willing to follow the evidence where it leads, and to change his position as a result. He knows the conclusion he wants to come to, and works backwards from there.
I think you are right, but bobbied is right too. Ham knows his own arguments and how to present them in a way that may sound good and deceive the uninformed. He has lots of experience and practice doing it. Complicated truths are often hard to defend in a short space of time allowed for in a debate, but simplistic attacks that may require involved responses are easy to make. Ken Ham's bat-sh-t crazy ideas won't necessarily preclude him from coming off better looking in the debate.
I have posted here as a Christian, gotten some support and some flaming from internet atheists on the site, though not much because I try to be a good slashdot citizen with most of my posts having nothing to do with religion per se. So, I am surprised by the relative balance here and think that most of the posters have been too easy on the Catholic Church and the Pope -- the opposite of what I usually see. Galileo may have been an asshole in some respects and provoked the reaction against him. I don't think it is uncommon in true Geniuses of his type to behave this way. But now a days we do not try our resident Geniuses before a kangaroo court of law or inquisition and force them to plead guilty of crimes that shouldn't be crimes and that they didn't do anyway, recant under the threat of torture, burn their work and publicly condemn them in every university, then sentence them to life imprisonment. (This sentence was commuted to permanent house arrest after the trial.)
As I am sure you know, Android is built on top of Linux. I have one Android phone, but haven't used it as a desktop OS at all. Do you know if it is relatively simple to add free or open source software to the few Android desktop devices now available? It seems to me that so long an Android is not locked down for desktop users that we would gain much that we look for in Linux.
Also, I keep seeing more and more business applications migrating to a web-centric OS neutral model using servers that are Linux based.
Not lied to... it used to be safer simply because widely distributed consumer Linux based devices (and hence malware targeted at those devices) didn't exists a few years ago. With the current changes in the market we will now see a flood of Android and Linux based malware.
It seems to me that you have labeled this as a fallacy known as "appeal to belief" incorrectly. The 97% are not just anybody, but are papers from peer reviewed journals. These are authorities. The argument in this case is an appeal to authority, but it is not a fallacious appeal because in this case, the ones claiming to be authorities in fact are so qualified.
The study is just another case in point demonstrating the strong consensus among climate scientists that AGW is real.
You are quite right. I have always regarded myself as pro-life because I believe that an unborn human with an operating brain and beating heart is a human being and has an inherit right to life. But I parted ways with much of the pro-life community on defining the start of life at conception. My problem is how can we regard a zygote prior to forming a blastocyst as a individual human life when life is so fungible at that stage. I mean, we can split the zygote and get more than one individual in the form of identical twins or triplets. Or two zygotes and become fused and form one individual who is a chimera.
The logic of regarding zygotes as humans has other pitfalls as well. Since 50% of zygotes fail to implant, then the very act of having a child implicitly involves the slaughter of just as many other humans as are produced by having a child. Does this make all natural birth parents murderers? And now that we know, are they all now premeditated murderers?
had she opted to put this in a glass bottle and screw the metal cap back on like a real deviant some people could have been hurt, that hurls glass out at a pretty good clip and could easily slice some people up. She's a terrorist.
I remember doing similar ridiculous experiments with the "science club" during Junior High. I was an irresponsible jerk, but not a "terrorist". It was a different era so nothing happened to me. This girl was just goofing around in an otherwise very good way -- no intent to harm anyone and no one was harmed. She should get a figurative slap on the hand and move on. The school and the police are being ridiculous.
I can't see how this is correct. My understanding is that the court has leeway to use legislative intent to deal with cases that are either ambiguous or where it does not adequately address a particular area. The original California legislation (section 23123) was passed in 2007. The first iPhone was released in June of that year. The timing alone shows that use of GPA navigation was not addressed in the original legislation (let alone adequately addressed). It also seems that the core regulation in the law, "A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving" is ambiguous (unclear in-exact) when being applied to an activity that involves neither listening nor talking. Also, the examination of judicial intent does include a look at judicial history which seems to me would include amendments to the original law like section 23123.5. If the legislature had intended to ban activities other than traditional phone use, then amending the statute would have been superfluous.
So, no I don't buy that what you say applies in this case.
Thank you. I understand your feeling. People are diverse. Atheists are no different. While some can be friendly and civil to religious believers or theists (like Teller of Penn and Teller), others can be extremely nasty and intolerant. It sounds to me like you have had some discussions looking at arguments from both sides only to have one side slapped down with insults and ad-hominem that made you feel put down even though you are trying to be objective, open minded and agnostic and not taking the theist side at all. It is all too common, and Christians/ theists are guilty of it too. Randi's link is enlightening and reflects a lot of this tension within skepticism where it is clear for the comments that some skeptics believe that a full skeptic does have to be an atheist. But I am still happy to hear Randi's response which is more on the tolerant side of the matter. It is notable to me that he focuses his skepticism most on targets that are of the most benefit to people.
I asked the question regarding whether a Christian could be a skeptic. I called Martin Gardner a "self-described liberal Christian" which I tried to correct in a comment to my original post. He was a theist and was raised as a Christian, but my thinking of him as a liberal Christian was based on a misreading of one of his books where he appealed to "Liberal Christians" or "Philosophical Theists" using both terms. So I confounded them. On further reading it seems clear to me that he rejected religious traditions including Christianity while retaining as stance as a philosophical theist. Randi's answer was both accurate and charitable. He is a great man.
I said, based on some recollection, I think from the book, Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries", that Martin Gardner was a self-professed liberal Christian. But I can't find the reference, so I figure I am wrong on that. My understanding is that he was brought up in a somewhat fundamentalist Methodist home. Perhaps he did have a liberal Christian phase, but I have no evidence for it.
My wife Charlotte and I were a mixed marriage, by the way. She was Jewish, but we were both philosophical theists. When we got married, I wanted to affiliate with a reformed synagogue, but Charlotte refused because she had no beliefs in traditionalJudaism, any more than I have in Christianity. She countered by saying that we could join a Methodist Church, since my background was Methodist. I refused. So we didn’t go to any church, but we profess a kind of philosophical theism which enables me to admire many religious writers like Chesterton.
So Gardner was a philosophical theist, had no beliefs in Christianity.
If this question is selected to be sent, could our slashdot overlords please change "liberal Christian" to "philosophical theist"?
I ask this because I used to regard myself as a Christian skeptic. While I support what you do and much of the work of the skeptical movement, I now no longer make that claim because current skepticism seems joined at the hip with atheism. I am sure you know, one of the early leaders of the skeptic movement, Martin Gardner, was a theist and a self professed liberal Christian. Are people like Martin Gardner welcome in the movement today?
And, as a Christian I thank you for exposing the televangelist faith healing frauds.
I think that the summary created a red herring by using the phrase, "back-up". The article it links too only describes a way to "share and save documents" over the internet. The PC Mag article referenced by Spy Handler above only talked about synchronizing devices across multiple platforms. That is the real purpose for Dropbox -- I regard it as too expensive to use an a cloud storage or backup, though it does do that. Its main use is to allow users to share files across multiple devices. I am guessing that it would not have any kind of cloud storage component at all. So, regarding your points:
1. While random people might host temporarily mappable bits from your devices (as you would theirs), the actual files would not be reassembled or stored on other peoples machines, so random people would not have your file. If you got your file using BitTorrent Sync, you would be getting it from one of your other devices using bit torrent as the method of file transfer.
2. I agree that there is not a lot of risk having files in a Dropbox folder and available online, but the risk is not negligible. Will Dropbox someday fall into the hands of some PHB and MBAs who decide to make more money by sifting your data in order to serve up ads? Would you like to see ads based on your unsavory content popping up? Also, could any of such unsavory content (or copyrighted content) get turned over to over zealous government prosecutors? Also, could based storage may not always be secure -- Dropbox had its infamous failure a few years ago.
You are completely correct. But I hope you understand that the H-1B scam does not do this. H-1B workers are not immigrants. The H-1B program is badly abused to the determent of American workers. Slashdot has covered this before.
This thread is dead I know and I have only now went back to see any replies. I have a couple critics, one which thinks what I said is ridiculous and the other said it was grossly inaccurate to the point of making their jaw drop. First, I want to give them their due. Yes, hillbillies are all over the state. There is an old joke that says that Akron is the capitol of West Virginia. And, it is true that I have over-generalized. The included article was intended to give more information to those who wanted more details.
However, I would suggest that the county map election results for Ohio have vindicated quite strongly that my generalization -- even if it is a bit too general -- is fundamentally accurate. 15 of the 88 counties in Ohio went for Obama. Of the 15, only four were in central or south Ohio. Three of those are the more urban cities of Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati -- but only the core cities. The other 11 are all bunched up along the northern border of the state next to Lake Erie.
What is curious is that Romney's Mormon religion which is monolatrous and technically has Satan as Jesus's spiritual brother must count as very close to Satan worship in any fundamentalist Christian theology. That and lowering taxes on the rich... well there you have it.
Because Ohio is split between north and south much like the rest of the eastern US with the north more liberal and democrat and the south more conservative and republican. The division crosses economic and cultural lines. In southern Ohio you will find lots of people with southern or hillbilly accents while northern Ohio has typical mid-western accents. The southern areas are "bible belt", northern areas not so much. The southern economy is agricultural, rural and resource based (coal), the northern is old industrial (auto & steel). Here's an article on it: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/05/3901108/5-ohios-analyzed-in-swing-state.html. It's a serendipitous mirroring of the red state/ blue state division of the whole USA. That is why it doesn't come together.
2. Regarding Canada's federal debt. As of a year ago Canada's total Public Debt hit $1.1 Trillion, but that was only 57.9 % debt to GDP ratio. That is regarded as low and is perfectly fine. Canada can handle that just fine and still sustain robust economic growth. The US recently exceeded a ratio of 100% debt to GDP ratio. That is bad because when the debt ratio exceeds 85-90 % then economic growth is inhibited significantly.
Canada did the right thing running up the deficit during the recession so as to maintain economic growth. The U.S also had to do the same to keep the recession from expanding into a full blown depression. But Canada had good fundamentals -- a relatively low debt -- so it could run large deficits for a while without undue long term effects. It can lower spending later and bring the deficit down using expanded revenues from future GDP growth. The U.S was not in as good a shape having already run large deficits through out the Bush years. Now we are saddled with a huge debt burden that is sapping our growth dooming us to many years of low growth and high unemployment.
That part has me confused. He's never been a non-believer in AGW.
This is misleading almost to an extreme. Muller was well known for being skeptical of the research. He in particular attacked the "Hockey Stick" (See his article from 2004: Global Warming Bombshell. His criticisms were such that he was universally regarded as a skeptic prior to BEST (see Quotes by Richard Muller, and his skepticism regarding the research was consistent. Note that Watts initially supported BEST, and that work was financed in part by the Koch brothers. Do you think that would be the case if Muller was regarded as being a "warmist"? Your popular technology article appears convincing until you read the linked sources. From those it is clear that your are right sort of, Muller never was a AGW denier per se, but the quotes read in context show that he was highly skeptical of the research which is why he was universally categorized as being one of the AGW skeptics prior to 2010. The point is that he was open minded which is why he changed his mind.
Life is a gift and your misery is in your mind only. External circumstances do not matter, only what you think matters. Do you really want to hurt and destroy the love of your life like this? She would be devastated by this. Do you have a mother, father? Other family? What will this do to them? I know, the death of someone close to you is a pain you can never erase, but if that person had killed themselves it would be so much worse because it would be so senseless. You seem like someone who cares about others, so why would you do so selfish and cowardly an act as this? And cause all this pain to all those who love you? Don't. Get help. You don't have to do this. It gets better.
Muller's claim that he's a "recently converted skeptic", which is a flat-out lie as he has always been a warmist.
Prove it please. This article from 2004: Global Warming Bombshell shows his earlier skeptic bonifides. True, even in this article he is concerned that global warming may be real, but he is skeptical of the research and was repeatedly so (see Quotes by Richard Muller. Remember that he did get support from the Koch Brothers who are not ones who would knowingly fund a "warmist". The main difference between him and most other skeptics was that he did not reject AGW out of hand and had a degree of open mindedness and honestly that lead him to do primary independent research which lead him to change his mind, thus proving that honest global warming skeptic doesn't always have to be a oxymoron.
The Chinese policy is not really one to emulate. Here are some resources explaining why:
1. China’s Population Destiny: The Looming Crisis. This explains the demographic changes (way to many men due to the excessing aborting of girls), and an aging population that will likely cause much of China to become old before they become rich. If that proves to be true and Chinese economic growth stalls then the policy may even prove to be counter productive over a longer time frame since poorer people have higher birthrates.
Rosling's talk also makes it clear that religion has very little effect if any. The main consideration is the economic well being of the population. A prosperous people will have fewer children because they do not rely on the children for their "social security", so there is no need to have as many children as possible to ensure their own future welfare. Also, the children of economically well off people are also well cared for, and expensive, so people have fewer of them.
Of course global waning cannot be denied. A few years ago I was more open minded regarded climate skepticism, but the berkeley study(skeptical science finds evidence for global warming), plus this recent weather has removed all my doubts regarding climate change.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish he were more consistent then. H1-B's have restricted rights and are used to force wages downward. A true acolyte of Rand would oppose those restrictions and remove all barriers to immigration.
I can assure you that Ham doesn't understand evolutionary biology, nor does he understand how science works. Ham and his ilk are not willing to follow the evidence where it leads, and to change his position as a result. He knows the conclusion he wants to come to, and works backwards from there.
I think you are right, but bobbied is right too. Ham knows his own arguments and how to present them in a way that may sound good and deceive the uninformed. He has lots of experience and practice doing it. Complicated truths are often hard to defend in a short space of time allowed for in a debate, but simplistic attacks that may require involved responses are easy to make. Ken Ham's bat-sh-t crazy ideas won't necessarily preclude him from coming off better looking in the debate.
I have posted here as a Christian, gotten some support and some flaming from internet atheists on the site, though not much because I try to be a good slashdot citizen with most of my posts having nothing to do with religion per se. So, I am surprised by the relative balance here and think that most of the posters have been too easy on the Catholic Church and the Pope -- the opposite of what I usually see. Galileo may have been an asshole in some respects and provoked the reaction against him. I don't think it is uncommon in true Geniuses of his type to behave this way. But now a days we do not try our resident Geniuses before a kangaroo court of law or inquisition and force them to plead guilty of crimes that shouldn't be crimes and that they didn't do anyway, recant under the threat of torture, burn their work and publicly condemn them in every university, then sentence them to life imprisonment. (This sentence was commuted to permanent house arrest after the trial.)
As I am sure you know, Android is built on top of Linux. I have one Android phone, but haven't used it as a desktop OS at all. Do you know if it is relatively simple to add free or open source software to the few Android desktop devices now available? It seems to me that so long an Android is not locked down for desktop users that we would gain much that we look for in Linux. Also, I keep seeing more and more business applications migrating to a web-centric OS neutral model using servers that are Linux based.
Not lied to ... it used to be safer simply because widely distributed consumer Linux based devices (and hence malware targeted at those devices) didn't exists a few years ago. With the current changes in the market we will now see a flood of Android and Linux based malware.
Yes, that is what peta,org used to be: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney.
It seems to me that you have labeled this as a fallacy known as "appeal to belief" incorrectly. The 97% are not just anybody, but are papers from peer reviewed journals. These are authorities. The argument in this case is an appeal to authority, but it is not a fallacious appeal because in this case, the ones claiming to be authorities in fact are so qualified.
The study is just another case in point demonstrating the strong consensus among climate scientists that AGW is real.
You are quite right. I have always regarded myself as pro-life because I believe that an unborn human with an operating brain and beating heart is a human being and has an inherit right to life. But I parted ways with much of the pro-life community on defining the start of life at conception. My problem is how can we regard a zygote prior to forming a blastocyst as a individual human life when life is so fungible at that stage. I mean, we can split the zygote and get more than one individual in the form of identical twins or triplets. Or two zygotes and become fused and form one individual who is a chimera. The logic of regarding zygotes as humans has other pitfalls as well. Since 50% of zygotes fail to implant, then the very act of having a child implicitly involves the slaughter of just as many other humans as are produced by having a child. Does this make all natural birth parents murderers? And now that we know, are they all now premeditated murderers?
had she opted to put this in a glass bottle and screw the metal cap back on like a real deviant some people could have been hurt, that hurls glass out at a pretty good clip and could easily slice some people up. She's a terrorist.
I remember doing similar ridiculous experiments with the "science club" during Junior High. I was an irresponsible jerk, but not a "terrorist". It was a different era so nothing happened to me. This girl was just goofing around in an otherwise very good way -- no intent to harm anyone and no one was harmed. She should get a figurative slap on the hand and move on. The school and the police are being ridiculous.
I can't see how this is correct. My understanding is that the court has leeway to use legislative intent to deal with cases that are either ambiguous or where it does not adequately address a particular area. The original California legislation (section 23123) was passed in 2007. The first iPhone was released in June of that year. The timing alone shows that use of GPA navigation was not addressed in the original legislation (let alone adequately addressed). It also seems that the core regulation in the law, "A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving" is ambiguous (unclear in-exact) when being applied to an activity that involves neither listening nor talking. Also, the examination of judicial intent does include a look at judicial history which seems to me would include amendments to the original law like section 23123.5. If the legislature had intended to ban activities other than traditional phone use, then amending the statute would have been superfluous.
So, no I don't buy that what you say applies in this case.
Thank you. I understand your feeling. People are diverse. Atheists are no different. While some can be friendly and civil to religious believers or theists (like Teller of Penn and Teller), others can be extremely nasty and intolerant. It sounds to me like you have had some discussions looking at arguments from both sides only to have one side slapped down with insults and ad-hominem that made you feel put down even though you are trying to be objective, open minded and agnostic and not taking the theist side at all. It is all too common, and Christians/ theists are guilty of it too. Randi's link is enlightening and reflects a lot of this tension within skepticism where it is clear for the comments that some skeptics believe that a full skeptic does have to be an atheist. But I am still happy to hear Randi's response which is more on the tolerant side of the matter. It is notable to me that he focuses his skepticism most on targets that are of the most benefit to people.
I asked the question regarding whether a Christian could be a skeptic. I called Martin Gardner a "self-described liberal Christian" which I tried to correct in a comment to my original post. He was a theist and was raised as a Christian, but my thinking of him as a liberal Christian was based on a misreading of one of his books where he appealed to "Liberal Christians" or "Philosophical Theists" using both terms. So I confounded them. On further reading it seems clear to me that he rejected religious traditions including Christianity while retaining as stance as a philosophical theist. Randi's answer was both accurate and charitable. He is a great man.
I am replying to my own post with a correction.
I said, based on some recollection, I think from the book, Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries", that Martin Gardner was a self-professed liberal Christian. But I can't find the reference, so I figure I am wrong on that. My understanding is that he was brought up in a somewhat fundamentalist Methodist home. Perhaps he did have a liberal Christian phase, but I have no evidence for it.
But I did find this from an online interview:
So Gardner was a philosophical theist, had no beliefs in Christianity.
If this question is selected to be sent, could our slashdot overlords please change "liberal Christian" to "philosophical theist"?
Thanks.
I ask this because I used to regard myself as a Christian skeptic. While I support what you do and much of the work of the skeptical movement, I now no longer make that claim because current skepticism seems joined at the hip with atheism. I am sure you know, one of the early leaders of the skeptic movement, Martin Gardner, was a theist and a self professed liberal Christian. Are people like Martin Gardner welcome in the movement today?
And, as a Christian I thank you for exposing the televangelist faith healing frauds.
1. While random people might host temporarily mappable bits from your devices (as you would theirs), the actual files would not be reassembled or stored on other peoples machines, so random people would not have your file. If you got your file using BitTorrent Sync, you would be getting it from one of your other devices using bit torrent as the method of file transfer.
2. I agree that there is not a lot of risk having files in a Dropbox folder and available online, but the risk is not negligible. Will Dropbox someday fall into the hands of some PHB and MBAs who decide to make more money by sifting your data in order to serve up ads? Would you like to see ads based on your unsavory content popping up? Also, could any of such unsavory content (or copyrighted content) get turned over to over zealous government prosecutors? Also, could based storage may not always be secure -- Dropbox had its infamous failure a few years ago.
You are completely correct. But I hope you understand that the H-1B scam does not do this. H-1B workers are not immigrants. The H-1B program is badly abused to the determent of American workers. Slashdot has covered this before.
Yes. Just above RPG and well behind Logo at 29.
This thread is dead I know and I have only now went back to see any replies. I have a couple critics, one which thinks what I said is ridiculous and the other said it was grossly inaccurate to the point of making their jaw drop. First, I want to give them their due. Yes, hillbillies are all over the state. There is an old joke that says that Akron is the capitol of West Virginia. And, it is true that I have over-generalized. The included article was intended to give more information to those who wanted more details.
However, I would suggest that the county map election results for Ohio have vindicated quite strongly that my generalization -- even if it is a bit too general -- is fundamentally accurate. 15 of the 88 counties in Ohio went for Obama. Of the 15, only four were in central or south Ohio. Three of those are the more urban cities of Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati -- but only the core cities. The other 11 are all bunched up along the northern border of the state next to Lake Erie.
You can see the map for yourself here.
What is curious is that Romney's Mormon religion which is monolatrous and technically has Satan as Jesus's spiritual brother must count as very close to Satan worship in any fundamentalist Christian theology. That and lowering taxes on the rich... well there you have it.
Because Ohio is split between north and south much like the rest of the eastern US with the north more liberal and democrat and the south more conservative and republican. The division crosses economic and cultural lines. In southern Ohio you will find lots of people with southern or hillbilly accents while northern Ohio has typical mid-western accents. The southern areas are "bible belt", northern areas not so much. The southern economy is agricultural, rural and resource based (coal), the northern is old industrial (auto & steel). Here's an article on it: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/05/3901108/5-ohios-analyzed-in-swing-state.html. It's a serendipitous mirroring of the red state/ blue state division of the whole USA. That is why it doesn't come together.
1. The Average Canadian is now richer than the average American.
2. Regarding Canada's federal debt. As of a year ago Canada's total Public Debt hit $1.1 Trillion, but that was only 57.9 % debt to GDP ratio. That is regarded as low and is perfectly fine. Canada can handle that just fine and still sustain robust economic growth. The US recently exceeded a ratio of 100% debt to GDP ratio. That is bad because when the debt ratio exceeds 85-90 % then economic growth is inhibited significantly.
Canada did the right thing running up the deficit during the recession so as to maintain economic growth. The U.S also had to do the same to keep the recession from expanding into a full blown depression. But Canada had good fundamentals -- a relatively low debt -- so it could run large deficits for a while without undue long term effects. It can lower spending later and bring the deficit down using expanded revenues from future GDP growth. The U.S was not in as good a shape having already run large deficits through out the Bush years. Now we are saddled with a huge debt burden that is sapping our growth dooming us to many years of low growth and high unemployment.
This is a list of the ten countries most in debt based on this percentage.
That part has me confused. He's never been a non-believer in AGW.
This is misleading almost to an extreme. Muller was well known for being skeptical of the research. He in particular attacked the "Hockey Stick" (See his article from 2004: Global Warming Bombshell. His criticisms were such that he was universally regarded as a skeptic prior to BEST (see Quotes by Richard Muller, and his skepticism regarding the research was consistent. Note that Watts initially supported BEST, and that work was financed in part by the Koch brothers. Do you think that would be the case if Muller was regarded as being a "warmist"? Your popular technology article appears convincing until you read the linked sources. From those it is clear that your are right sort of, Muller never was a AGW denier per se, but the quotes read in context show that he was highly skeptical of the research which is why he was universally categorized as being one of the AGW skeptics prior to 2010. The point is that he was open minded which is why he changed his mind.
Life is a gift and your misery is in your mind only. External circumstances do not matter, only what you think matters. Do you really want to hurt and destroy the love of your life like this? She would be devastated by this. Do you have a mother, father? Other family? What will this do to them? I know, the death of someone close to you is a pain you can never erase, but if that person had killed themselves it would be so much worse because it would be so senseless. You seem like someone who cares about others, so why would you do so selfish and cowardly an act as this? And cause all this pain to all those who love you? Don't. Get help. You don't have to do this. It gets better.
Muller's claim that he's a "recently converted skeptic", which is a flat-out lie as he has always been a warmist.
Prove it please. This article from 2004: Global Warming Bombshell shows his earlier skeptic bonifides. True, even in this article he is concerned that global warming may be real, but he is skeptical of the research and was repeatedly so (see Quotes by Richard Muller. Remember that he did get support from the Koch Brothers who are not ones who would knowingly fund a "warmist". The main difference between him and most other skeptics was that he did not reject AGW out of hand and had a degree of open mindedness and honestly that lead him to do primary independent research which lead him to change his mind, thus proving that honest global warming skeptic doesn't always have to be a oxymoron.
The Chinese policy is not really one to emulate. Here are some resources explaining why:
1. China’s Population Destiny: The Looming Crisis. This explains the demographic changes (way to many men due to the excessing aborting of girls), and an aging population that will likely cause much of China to become old before they become rich. If that proves to be true and Chinese economic growth stalls then the policy may even prove to be counter productive over a longer time frame since poorer people have higher birthrates.
2. Encourages Voluntary Limits, A June 1998 report from U.S. Embassy Beijing.. This explains that China's policy is not that effective as compared with voluntary efforts.
All this is well explained in the recent Ted talk by Hans Rosling: Hans Rosling: Religions and babies
Rosling's talk also makes it clear that religion has very little effect if any. The main consideration is the economic well being of the population. A prosperous people will have fewer children because they do not rely on the children for their "social security", so there is no need to have as many children as possible to ensure their own future welfare. Also, the children of economically well off people are also well cared for, and expensive, so people have fewer of them.
Of course global waning cannot be denied. A few years ago I was more open minded regarded climate skepticism, but the berkeley study(skeptical science finds evidence for global warming), plus this recent weather has removed all my doubts regarding climate change.