Consider my error a gracious gesture to you insignificant being. In the grand scheme of things they (and you) don't matter.

Go hug a tree or save a polar bear. Better yet save a child from abortion.

This is a very interesting question that I've thought quite a lot about during my life (to myself, not in any sort of professional capacity).

The conclusions that I have come to (so far) are:
I think that, yes, religion in general terms IS a significant (but it is a stretch to say the ONLY) restraint on a pretty large number of people. Which is a prospect that I personally have a negative and pessimistic reaction to, similar to what it sounds like you do.

However, I think that there are lots of mitigating circumstances. First, many different religions currently provide that restraint to people. And in the past, many many more religions provided it to even more people. Many of those different religions have been very very different. Some have been near polar opposites. That proves that if your goal is restraining people from being utterly evil, and someone suggests that religion has made or is making a noble effort towards that (like your uncle), the positive aspects they are cheering for are not unique to any single religion, or dogma, or whatever.

If one accepts that many many diverse and completely different religions can potentially have the positive effects that we're looking for, then the actual source of those effects can not be something specific to any one religion. Instead, it has to be something that is held in common by all such religions.

Religions are so diverse and different, it might be hard to imagine something that they have in common. No specific god is held in common, even though all the Abrahamic religions might arguably share that aspect. Not even the simple idea of a god or gods or creator is far from universal; Buddhists revere no god.

Yet I believe that there is one easily overlooked thing that all religions DO have in common. Humanity. They all come from flawed but usually well-meaning people.

However, atheists hold that humanity in common with religions as well. And that makes me believe that if we understand humanity better, either through psychology, or empathy, or whatever, we can achieve the positive effects of religions without the religions themselves. Certainly without the stone-age dogmatic nonsense -- which tends to have arguably as many if not more BAD effects as good. This actually gives me great hope for humanity; rather the opposite to the conclusion that I came to originally when pondering the question.

There may always be people who have no empathy, and for whom nothing would serve to restrain them from what humanity at large would easily identify as great evil. No religion will handle such individuals any better than no religion ... so I guess I don't lose any sleep over that.

I think there is already evidence of its negative consequences. Check out the movie Gasland. It shows people near a fracking site being able to light the water coming out of their tap on fire. I do agree with your point on the politicizing of this issue (and a million others) and that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. We are too polarized and there's not enough fact seeking and sometimes refusing to believe the facts. I see the companies portraying this as safe trying to set a belief level and that then allows them to be more profitable through the externalities they create, but at the expense of the public. This has been going on forever in almost every industry and is just a normal trait of capitalism. Not to say that is right. Since you're between the two sides, does that make you a shilpie?

In my opinion - and i think Brand's too, though i don't want to put words in his mouth - the motivation to act based upon nothing but profit is the largest and most significant drain on happiness and especially the advancement of us as a people. We need a revolution of principle, a revolution of the mind, we cannot keep on doing what we are doing when it is so clearly not working.

We have been pouring the results of our productivity into bank balances for so long now. If our productivity was represented by food instead of money, we would have been putting corn into a hole in the ground for 30 years and wondering why people are hungry. In a system based on corn, prosperity of a nation is based upon the free and active flow of corn.

I ask this question of you, because i don't know the answer. Do you think that we can continue pouring our productivity into big holes that other people sit on for "whenever they might need it?" Is it reasonable to build a system based on flow, but let huge clumps of it gather and expect everything to keep running quickly and without turbulence?

It just doesn't work anymore. The very rich don't realise it yet because they can afford to pay to avoid it, the quite rich notice it when they sit in traffic for example, but eventually things will become so clogged up that they will have no choice but to notice that there are no quality schools, hospitals, roads, airports, shops nor people to do their shopping, cleaning, cooking and driving. We all benefit, including the rich, if money is put into improving our infrastructure and facilities. We all benefit when productivity is flowing freely and quickly through the system. The opposite of that is called a depression, and it's when people don't have confidence in spending their money... we know that, we accept it, people were repeating it during the recession. How come we can't recognise the polar opposite? We're in a semi-permanent state of inverse depression, where those at the top don't have the means to spend their money, so it doesn't move.

This is an idea that needs to come from grassroots, everyone needs to come together somehow and unify over this idea. Because you can't blame any one individual for taking advantage of their fortunate position on the uneven playing field, or for fighting for a better position on the field. We all need to agree that the playing field has to be even, otherwise eventually the playing field will not be worth using.

I cannot stand this poisonous idea that you cannot ask a company for tax and here's my argument against that:
A lot of people live in the UK and a lot of people want to buy coffee and other assorted goods (starbucks, amazon). Even including tax, there is a lot of money to be made selling to these people. Let's say there is 2 billion pounds in profit available to be made by someone. That's still profit to be made by someone, and whoever offers that service to them under the correct rules makes that money.

The problem is that there's 4 billion to be made without tax, and it's cheaper to buy the politician for a billion to ensure you get the tax breaks. That is the poisoned system that psycho-capitalism has eventually produced... And it's so naive to think otherwise... so naive to think that those with billions of pounds wouldn't buy economists and lawyers, tout the favourable theories, generally spend top money on creating the right environment to make more money. Whether you think more or less tax is a good idea, surely have to agree that whatever the rules are, we adhere to them, or the system that we so carefully designed it around will fail.

Why are people so reticent to believe that we're being duped? No, surely not, it's the government, they can't possibly be lying to us. They stood in front of us, bare-faced, and told us they weren't torturing people, they had intelligence about WMDs, they weren't spying on us all. They prove themselves to be deceitful but like toddlers we trust the adult.

If there are enough idiots shouting loud enough to take media hostage over political correctness, I'm pretty sure there are enough idiots to shout loud enough for the polar opposite.

Virtue lies in the middle.

Either no one thinks of Canada, or the animator couldn't draw igloos or polar bears.

I know it is a parody and I do find it funny(somewhat), but I have to ask about some hypocrisy here:
How is this not racist? Where is the usual vitriol that gets tossed at similar videos that lampoon other races? Can you imagine if they did a video titled "Blacks - Controlling the hoods until 2050 when we'll finally feel equal, 2060 maybe."
Seems to me that videos and "Jokes" like this just further add to the racial divide and create polarization.

Nice....
...but unfortunately, I saw that episode (Nature on PBS?) and that polar bear starved to death. It had already been swimming for days before finding land, but was too weak to catch a calf.
It didn't look like a shortage of walruses, but polar bears are having a hard time of it. I can see why too, those walruses are TOUGH. It didn't seem the bear punctured skin. The walrus, on the other hand, did, leaving the bear unable to hunt at all. :-(
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but that's what really happened there.

Snoop was only on the wrong side because that bear was white. ;-)

My understanding, and I am not a scientist, has been that the oceans are most responsible for conveying heat from warmer equatorial regions towards cooler polar regions.

If diluting the ocean's waters makes those currents *better* at transferring heat, then would the heating of the polar regions accelerate as freshwater is added to the oceans and salinity is diluted? If this was the case why would warm periods between ice ages ever stop short of melting polar ice caps completely? And what causes ice ages to come and go?

That is easily the most beautiful "small world" (or polar) panorama video I've ever seen.

Your video, Hating on Phil Fish, the polarizing FEZ developer, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

What floors me is how consistently you robotically bestow comment down-votes, casually and flippantly, as the wishfully 'un-dull', for everything you decide is such sophistic drivel disguised as intelligent chagrin or rather, some profound insight, which is anything that isn't in lock step with your myopic, disturbed, politicized, polarized, and always threatening world view.
It must really suck ass to live as you do, constantly threatened by nearly everything and everyone with absolutely no idea how to effectively change that. It might make me an angry drunkard too. ;-)

You are correct, I did not go to your link. In the past they have consistently been un-scientific right wing propaganda sites masquerading as science or news, so I don't bother anymore.
As has been pointed out, May to October IS winter in the south. What's ignored is that the reason the ice MAY have not melted as fast last summer in the North is that the heat that normally sits on the pole moved south and cause our heat waves all summer (well, yours, it stayed 70deg here). What was ignored was that it also didn't freeze as fast this winter because the cold that normally sits there was also moved south, causing our harsh winter. If you counted the entire year, it shrank....again....like it has for the last 20+ years.
One tiny incomplete data set is not climate. One season in one place is not a full data set. In the last decade, the trend has been for polar ice to melt FAR faster than it re-freezes, to the point of allowing a North West Passage and a lack of pack ice that's eroding the northern tundra.
It's way easier to have a significant increase AFTER there was a larger significant decrease in ice. It's no where near normal levels, even if your link is correct that this one season it increased (and I think it's likely either wrong or you misinterpreted it).
Science has said for decades that the polar ice will melt, and it is doing so. Your contention that it's increasing it asinine in my view, and flies in the face of over 100 articles I've read that said the exact opposite.
I did the most important thing a person can do to slow the rate of increase of climate change, I didn't have children. (you are correct, your ilk has denied the issue long enough that no one can stop climate change, it's happening now and will get worse for the next 100+ years even if we stopped adding CO2 today) That means as long as the food lasts another 40 years, I'm good and screw the rest of you. I also see the futility of petitioning the government or populace to get off their ass and stop screwing up the planet, that time came and went in the 70-80's, it's FAR too late to fix the problem, and some like you still sit back and say 'there's no issue to fix'. I only hope you have children that will blame you when they can't eat or drink anymore because of lack of food and water.

For some, everything is a 'debate' about 'state control' because that's all they think about.
You are wrong, most climate scientists are clearly in the 'climate change is happening and it's man made' camp, I've never met one that wasn't, and I know hundreds of scientists. The right wing has you by the brain banana and you would rather believe your party than science, because science wont' just tell you what you want to hear. To me that's sad and dangerous.
4%! Whoever told you that was a bold faced liar.

I'm sorry mate, but i'm going to have to refute a bunch of this. And i hope i can do it without coming across as religious in my approach.

"Your "facts" are nothing but easily manipulated simulations based on theories," Excerpt from your full quote below.

-- The facts and science are not in contention and they are not "easily manipulated simulations". What we have are conclusions made by studious people based on data collected by electronic instruments world wide. The data is statistically analysed to find trends and patterns and then those trends and patterns are separately analysed to see how likely they are. When hundreds of those studies are done, consensus is formed and that is how humans come to all the theories that you adhere to every day; such as gravity, conservation of energy and momentum, etc. We then construct simulations that adhere to those theories and pass different parameters into the simulation to see what the results would be in a certain amount of time. Those parameters are the things you can change, a typical parameter might be the fractional amount of greenhouse gases per cubic metre or something like that, change in volume of polar ice per day perhaps. Thousands of studies analyse thousands of different parameter values and conclusions are drawn from the whole. That is why so many scientists now believe in climate change - because over thousands of scientific studies, the conclusions have pointed overwhelmingly and convincingly to bad news for humans.

I can't dispute your accusation that they are "based on theories". I have yet to meet a person that preferred to have their facts based on anything other than theories. A theory is a collection of ideas relating to a certain topic that are based on independent principles. The alternative is to pin words to a dartboard and throw blindfolded to construct facts. Or perhaps have a floor covered with words and let sacred chickens run round shitting our facts out for us. I'd prefer to use independent principles and the best logic we have available to us.

Please read this bit in particular
Scientists are not tricking or fooling anyone, there is no money in it for a scientist. If they try to lie, they are ridiculed by the rest of the scientists. If you spend 3 years at any decent university doing any science then you will discover that the scientific method is pretty sacred to scientists because it's the only way the field progresses.

BUT BUT BUT politicians get hold of the studies and lie to you about what they mean or how best to solve the problems they illuminate. They want your money, and they manipulate the science to get your money. They can do that because most people are not scientists, and need someone to explain it to them. So my advice is that you do not choose politicians to do that job, but instead use independent adherents to the scientific method who choose to dedicate their lives to scientific study - like Neil de Grasse Tyson who speaks as a scientist... and if he did not, his reputation within the scientific community would be in tatters, and other budding scientists like myself (and others) in this community would be highlighting just how full of shit he is.

So, are scientists lying to us, or are politicians lying to us? What seems more likely?