You say, “IF someone asks you a question and you feel like lying, just try saying ‘I don’t want to answer that question’ or ‘I don’t know.’”
Guess what, “I don’t know” is a common lie, and “I don’t want to answer” often leads people to assume something worse than what you’re trying to hide.

“Relationships and communication work better if no one lies.”
So when you receive a bad gift, you say you hate it and ask for the receipt?

I hesitate to call the many writings associated with a religion, religion. Religion is typically the organization that springs up around the teachings, isn’t it?

I would say that you can learn anything from the collected knowledge, written down and otherwise, of humanity passed down through the generations, no matter where or what produced the source.

Secondly, there never has been any inter-governmental panel on evolutionary theory.

Nice link to that other article – very interesting. But that has got almost nothing to do with what I am saying. I am simply pointing out a couple of things (the IPCC’s report-writing process and their predictions) both of which, to me at least, sound suspect. This has got nothing to do with whether or not I am qualified to make a statement about climate change. I am most certainly NOT. (Notice that I have made no such claim anywhere. Reread the post if you like.)

My question is simply why the IPCC cannot better figures/predictions. The implications of a 1.4 degree change and 5.8 degree change are enormously different.

And a more important question is this: why does it take us (as a species) to be afraid of dying or destruction to get moving on something? Why is “fear” the key?

There are perfectly ethical/humanitarian reasons for reducing energy consumption, pollution etc. Why is it that those are not the ones cited, and instead it is “fear” used by politicians that is being used to drive this whole thing?

The most interesting thing for me, as an Indian, in the past two decades have been, you know what, back in the day, living economically (and naturally with a low carbon footprint) was the order of the day, and increasingly India is moving towards becoming a massive per-capita energy consumer (and garbage producer) as the developed nations. The irony is, that in 10-15 years, they will have to start doing a lot “global-warming-aware” stuff to kind-of turn-back things around.

Example: Nobody wants to stop selling cars in India, not in the foreseeable future. Why? because it’s big business lots of money.

Can the Government step in and take some real steps – like building rapid transit infrastructure in all the major cities? It can, but it doesn’t want to. Why? because that would be too easy – solve not only per-capita energy consumption, but also traffic congestion at the same time. What will elections be fought over?

See: as long as you are driving a car (and not taking the bus, train, walking, biking) doesn’t really matter (in the big picture) whether you drive a hybrid or not. Often the choice for a more fuel efficient car comes down to cold facts: it’s cheaper to drive.

Abolish motor-sports, amateur flying – when the planet is in peril – why do people keep insisting on burning fuel for “fun”?

(Are you going to complain I make an impractical suggestion? Well, I suggest you take a walk around your average city block at 3 am at night. See how many lights are ON, and how many of those are actually necessary or essential.

Stating the human problem in a different way: “well, you know, we got resources (money, oil, food, etc.), so we gonna waste it. Why? because we can. Could someone else use these resources? Ah, screw them! These are my hard-earned resources.)

Do you think any of that is going to happen?