Crazy? Would crazy people have their own museum?

Oh. Their. God.

I might have to make the Toxic teaset for my mom. She has Deadly Nightshade in her yard because the flowers are pretty, and we have discussed how much the very very poisonous seeds look like coffee grounds and under what circumstances that knowledge might be useful...

Would crazy people have their own museum?

I just threw up a little in my mouth.

The other one was an American piece on that global warming movie (the name escapes me) which discussed the division over global warming as people who did or didn't believe in global warming.

An Inconvenient Truth, which addresses this very point in the film itself. There were two large (several hundred articles each) surveys done on articles concerned with global warming -- in the peer-reviewed scientific journals, not ONE article disagreed with the basic premise that human beings are causing massive global climate change. In the popular press, over half of the articles mentioned a "controversy" over that point. It boggles the mind.

Jars, it's scary and true. There are lots of people "over here" who just don't believe that anything unusual is happening. Or specifically, that the really bad stuff is just random crazy weather, not a pattern of overall climate change.

Yesterday we had three power outages due to the heat wave overtaxing the grid. Not in California - in New Jersey. Where it's historically supposed to be cool. I remember New Jersey summers when I was a little girl, and it was not this hot. Not nearly. It used to snow more down South, too, when I was little. I remember white Christmases. Now it hardly snows at all.

The favorite hand wave is "We've only been measuring weather for a couple hundred years, it's probably been this hot before."

n the peer-reviewed scientific journals, not ONE article disagreed with the basic premise that human beings are causing massive global climate change. In the popular press, over half of the articles mentioned a "controversy" over that point. It boggles the mind.

Even the US Army, widely believed to be as conservative as all get-out, accepts that there is massive global climate change and is planning accordingly. (Of course, they are also assuming that the American executive and legislative branches will take no action, a la Kyoto).

But, but! We can TELL what temperature it's been before! With microorganisms! And isotopes! And such! Science can TELL us things, people!

edited because though I think there should be things calld 'mocroorganisms', alas there is not.

Even the US Army, widely believed to be as conservative as all get-out, accepts that there is massive global climate change and is planning accordingly.

Sensible.

(Of course, they are also assuming that the American executive and legislative branches will take no action, a la Kyoto).

Also sensible, evidently. Damnit.

But, but! We can TELL what temperature it's been before! With mocroorganisms! And isotopes! And such! Science can TELL us things, people!

Americans are not so gullible as to believe SCIENCE.