I follow the science part of climate change a bit and I think this is pretty much a spot-on description of what's happening. We take the parts that are agreed upon as the leaping-off point for wild armageddon, for which there isn't scientific consensus. That's actually very unscientific of us. But we love it.

Humans predict the end of the world! It's just what we do.

Number of end-of-the-world predictions in history: 1,000,000,000s

Number that came true: 0

It doesn't feel like conservatism coming out of Washington though. It looks like activism. It may be a reaction to a perceived anti-Christian™ liberalism but the proposed reforms (cuts) to SS, Medicare, and Medicaid drift into opposition to traditional American ways of taking care of the aged, disabled, and the poor. I give credit to McConnell he's saying any reforms have to be bi-partisan. Of course he knows if they touch SS on their own they are toast. Hopefully they won't have a bunch of cooperative Clinton Democrats to work with. The GOP has created quite a messy puzzle for the Dems to solve if they take over.

Depends on your definition of world. Some communities have seen their world end by atomic bomb tests, or huge dams, or eminent domain.

Which they did not foresee. How often are the things we don't worry about, the things that actually get us?

Eugenics was, at best, only a hypothesis. It had no experimental evidence to support its theory. The hypothesis lived because so many do not know the difference even between a scientific conclusion, a hypothesis, and a conclusion only from observation - also called junk science.

Another example: being cold is why people get sick - the common cold. No science makes that conclusion. A conclusion only made from observation. It is not even a good hypothesis. But that same reasoning is also why miracle cures such as Airborne, Coldeeze, and other miracle products exist. Too many still forget what was taught in school science - the difference between a science fact, a hypothesis, and a junk science conclusion.

Global warming has a valid hypothesis supported by simulations. Conclusions are confirmed by experimental evidence. That part is clearly understood. Questions that remain are how much - what are the numbers - and what else may also be contributing or reducing those numbers.

That is science. Eugenics never even got a good hypothesis. Conclusions were completely based only in observation - a classic source of junk science reasoning.

Boo. I also have "pet issues" with politics, but I didn't drag them out as absolute truths that supersede the common ground we agreed on.

Yeah I was listening to a podcast with Jonathan Haidt and I realized what was wrong with our common ground statement.

you can too, Haidt is really insightful about this sort of stuff

Haidt's first TED talk in which he explains the moral roots behind all politics