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This is very flattering -- 3 personal responses to my post, including 2 from the Anti-AGW Rapid Response Team. Thanks animemaster, for the attempt at putting a cheerful face on global warming, but while the Northwest Passage might be useful, I don't think thawing out Northern Canada, Siberia, or Greenland will help us much. For starters, at those high northern lattitudes, even if the soil were fertile, croplands would not get sufficient sunlight to make them productive enough to replace land lost in the more temperate climes to drought and more severe weather caused by rising temperatures. But that's a moot point, since the soil in most of these places is often thin (as in the Canadian shield, where it was scoured by the last ice age)or non-existent (as in Greenland, where the ice sheet sits on bedrock and would wash away any good topsoil the process of melting). Also, areas of land that are currently permafrost won't be very usable for some time, as we can see in parts of Canada and Alaska, where the thaw has resulted in crumbling buildings, roads, and other infrastructure when formerly solid ice becomes boggy ground. To top things off, this melting permafrost will release billions of tons of methane, and even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, adding another positive feedback to the cycle of global warming. On to kstauff... You mean this Dr. Lindzen? -- Ross Gelbspan reported in 1995 that Lindzen "charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC." ("The Heat is On: The warming of the world's climate sparks a blaze of denial," Harper's magazine, December 1995.) Lindzen signed the 1995 Leipzig Declaration. Certainly he has scientific credentials, but I'm just a tad skeptical of his motives. But of course, he wouldn't be politicized by fossil fuel funding the way that evil Al Gore is, right? Honestly, though, I've seen enough of your posts on other topics to know that while you may be independent of Republican dogma, your overall leanings on topics such as healthcare, the military, and of course climate change all lean to the right side of the political spectrum. That's fine, as I readily admit most of my positions (with the exception of the need for space exploration and the utility of nuclear energy) are centrist or left of center. But don't claim to be entirely unbiased yourself, when you prolifically employ the vocabulary of the right to describe anyone disagreeing with your views. Regarding my own view of global warming, I'll say this one, and only one, time. I wasn't a believer in it at the time Kyoto was signed, but before Gore came out with the sensationalistic "An Inconvenient Truth," I'd already decided (yes, independently and for myself), that the preponderance of scientifice evidence from the myriad studies and papers on the topic did indeed support the concept of human industrial activity as a major factor in the warming of average global temperatures. No particular scientist, politiician, or celebrity made me exclaim "Eureka!" at any specific time, but my own judgment led me to conclude by the end of the 1990s that the theory was indeed sound. You can label me as a "sheep" for having an opinion that coincides with the scientific and mainstream media consensus, while patting yourselves on the back for being "independent" when latching on to the pronouncements of one or two of the relative handful of contrarians out there, but it doesn't make your view any more valid than mine when we both consider our thoughts to be our own. Mycellium, it's nice you have kstauff's back, but I you seriously misconstrue my comments if you think I want to censor him. Challenging someone's views, and encouraging others to do so (the staff at this website have from time to time issued their own statements on various topics, as is their right), does not constitute an attempt to limit their freedom of speech. It simply is my own exercise of the same right. Also, it is not damaging to anyone's credibility to point out that Limbaugh and Beck are outside the mainstream of political discourse in this country, and are not worth taking very seriously. After all, Limbaugh's racial views are offensive enough to the majority of African Americans that he can't find an NFL team that would accept him as a co-owner, and Beck was once referred to by Stephen King as "Satan's mentally challenged little brother" for his incendiary rants. If it's any consolation, I don't see much need for following the commentary on MSNBC either, in reaching a sensible opinion on any topic. As I described above, I do prefer to keep an open mind, get as much information as possible, and then reach a conclusion most consistent with the facts. In this case, that conclusion just doesn't agree with your own. Feel free to vent on this posting all you want, but I think I've fulfilled my duty of conscience regarding the discussion of this topic, and anyone else who might be concerned about the threat of global warming can pick up from here. I do have a life, and intend to get back to it now.

Hopefully, this news might spur the current administration to take a more aggressive approach to NASA's planned return to the Moon. With ample resources available in situ, there isn't any real excuse not to begin expanding the human presence off planet, other than lack of political willpower. For those that think we should address all of our problems on Earth before attempting to establish colonies in space, what good will it do us as a species if we fail and civilization (and possibly the human race with it) dies and we don't have a back-up plan? Moving beyond the confines of one world is humanity's only hope of long-term survival, and we now know that we have the resources to do it, beginning with the Moon.

Well, when you've got rhetoric like "global leftist socio-environmentalist movement" in your post, you can pretty much count your credibility out with anyone that isn't a diehard fan of Glenn "Crybaby" Beck or Rush "Pill-Popping" Limbaugh. Also unhelpful are these knee-jerk generalizations of virtually all environmentalists as anti-nuclear, when the originator of the Gai Hypothesis, James Lovelock, is himself a major proponent of nuclear energy as a way of reducing the carbon output of industrialized nations. I realize that the hosts of this website aren't going to take this kind of misinformation to task, but some of us out here are a little tired of having a major source of public information on scientific matters being used as a source of unchallenged anti-science propaganda. There's a reason the editors of Popular Science, Scientific American, Discover, New Scientist, The Journal Nature, and darn near every other reputable scientific publication have not been publicizing much work from the skeptics of human-influenced climate change -- most of them are wingnuts or are in the pockets of major industries that fear short-term loss of profits from having to comply with reduction in greenhouse gas production, and the majority of their work does not pass peer review or meet the professional standards of scientific inquiry. There are certainly those that point out needed modifications to the understanding of climate change, but on the whole, the basic science of climate change as a result of human activity is well established. I now await the inevitable angry response from the anti-global warming crowd, but at least I feel I've spoken up for the quiet majority (I hope) of Popsci readers.

Unfortunately, I have to agree wholeheartedly with kormiko on this one. The robot might actually be programable with more intelligence and personality than most of the pop stars we have today. And the children won't suffer, because if she forgets to wear underwear and gets a Britney Spears-style crotch shot, all you'll see will be wires and servos.

Good common sense post, Joe. Hopefully the current administration will keep your argument in mind when they consider the fate of the Constellation program and America's future presence on the moon. No nation can lay claim to the moon, but I'd like to at least see ours be part of the effort to colonize this century. In addition to your comment about mirrors in orbit, I'd add that any base at the lunar poles seeking to exploit the suspected ice deposits in permanently shadowed craters could also take advantage of the fact that high ground at the poles remains in permanent sunlight. Solar collectors on the rims of shadowed craters would simply need to rotate to follow the sun during the month to supply power to a base in the floor of the crater.