I've recently been embroiled in the GW debate, and would like to clarify a couple of things, while posing some radical ideas towards hard-grounded scientific debate on BAUT.

Please bear with me:

1. I'm not AGW. I fully believe it's occurring.

2. I'm doubtful that humans are the primary cause, but believe they may be, but not for producing CO2, but for polluting the oceans (a known sink for CO2).

3. If you could, in the future, combine the threads, first, and see where they lead, before shutting one down.

Yes, GW is a hot topic.

I would ask the administrators to keep in mind that the most advantageous advances in science with respect to humans have often been some of the most hotly contested ones. Most advances in civilization have occurred during wars, including the cold war, rather than in ages of peace.

Please trust me when I say that I like peace! However, history clearly details that key scientific advancements very rarely eminate from peaceful circumstances, a fundamental axiom among anthropologists.

Thus, I would ask you and the owners of this board to widen their lattitude towards controversial subjects, but only within the bounds of reason.

Yes, it may allow for more crackpot buffoonery. However, it also allows for the rare brilliantly introspective individual to poke his take on things.

It's like digging for diamonds - there's an awful lot of rock through which one must dig to get to the gem.

And over the last several years on this board, I've seen a few gems which have later garnered some limelight.

If we quash all dissent and contribution, the only thing this site will accomplish is the simple reinforcement of a very static status quo.

That helps neither us, nor science, nor the rest of the world.

Personally, I'd rather not sit around in a pot of known science humming "we've arrived!" as did the English Academy of Science back in the late 1800's to early 1900's. There's a lot yet to be learned.

In short, I'm proposing that the board owners take a second look at what they're standing on, the vast potential they have to become a central point/forum of innovative ideas (within reason), and a place where key innovations in science bubble to the surface that everone can use.

Nearly always, others who've possessed this capability have tried to get rich off it by charging per article admission (almost all these attempts have failed, most notably in the medical world).

Let's go where no man has gone before with this board. Let's not allow crackpot or unsupported crap to proliferate the site, but let's do allow some controversial subjects, provided they're controversial at the appropriate academic level (like global warming, about which many leading and highly respected climatologists still have serious reservations that it's caused by human activity), and salient arguements, while averting the critical eye from time to time if they become a little "heated."

Put simply, while heated conversation puts some people off, it's a very necessary ingredient to human advancement, well-entrenched within our global culture, and a very valuable construct of humankind.

Put simply, it's good, not bad, as it incites us to rising out of whatever muck and mire in which we're become comfortable.

The wise commander in battle knows this, knowing that passion (adrenaline?) often results in a solution that would not have been possible in a sterile enviroment. This goes hand in hand with "necessity is the mother of all inventions."

I would say that desperation has produced more results throughout mankind than any other motivational factor, and quite often over the last 10,000 years, that desparation has been artificially created by some higher-up who said, "I don't care how you get it done, I want it done yesterday!"

As a result, people figure out a way.

Everything from the pyramids to the seven wonders of the world to the roman road and aquaduct system to rocketry, the moon shots, to weather and spy satellites - how much of this would have been accomplished without this impetus?

I dare say, almost none.

Therefore, let's not channelize on whether controvercial subjects should be a part of the BAUT forums.

Rather, let's realize what we have, here - the Internet's single greatest collection of scientists, interested parties, and innovators, that I've ever seen (and trust me when I say I've looked very hard to find any other forum with anything even closely resembling the talent at BAUT).

This is a wonderful opportunity, akin to the US government's pooling of hundreds of the top scientists in a certain place in the American Southwest, who were told, and ridden, to come up with X.

They did. So can we.

This may not be the vision any of you have for the BAUT forums. Regardless, it's a fair anology as to what this collective pool of talent could come up with should we put our minds to it.

In this spirit, I'm going to be posting some topics and asking some serious questions with some restrictive, but open guidelines, over the next year, tapping on everyone's particular specialty. All I ask is that if you don't know what you're talking about, please don't conjecture.

We'll see where we are in twelve months.

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Fraser is on record in support of the ATM section being a means to find gems.Would you mind sharing one or two of these? If not here, then to me, in a PM?

I think some BAUT members have already contributed to a number of those projects.

That was a mindful. The third time I read it it made sense. I feel I pretty well have to agree with all of it.

__________________
'Sir........, I don't like these numbers.'
'Then hire somebody that can change them!'
("`-/")_.-'"``-.,,
\. . `; -._( );, `)
(v_,)' _ )`-. \ ``'`
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((,.-' ((,/

These statements struck me the most:

__________________
'Sir........, I don't like these numbers.'
'Then hire somebody that can change them!'
("`-/")_.-'"``-.,,
\. . `; -._( );, `)
(v_,)' _ )`-. \ ``'`
_.- _..-/ /((.'
((,.-' ((,/