I get my facts the same place everybody else does, Ebbie, and in the same fashion. ;-)

But I am aware of it! ;-) I mean...I'm fully aware of the fallibility and inadequacy of my available means of acquiring facts. Most people, I find, aren't. They are fueled by utter certainty regarding their opinion, and they don't seem to realize how little they know. It makes them a pain to talk to... ;-) They probably find me a pain to talk to for the same reason....!

You see, I am, like Mark Twain, simply commenting wryly on the common weaknesses of human beings, myself included. I know what pompous, babbling, opinionated little yammerers we all are.

I think it's important to remember this marvelous quote that Amos put on another thread awhile back. It is so apt:

Don't believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities.
The things that seem most absurd, put under 'Low Probability', and
the things that seem most plausible, you put under 'High
Probability'. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you
stop thinking about it. The more things you believe, the less mental
activity. If you believe something, and have an opinion on every
subject, then your brain activity stops entirely, which is clinically
considered a sign of death, nowadays in medical practice. So put
things on a scale or probability, and never believe or disbelieve
anything entirely.

-Robert A. Wilson (interview with "innerview")

I don't actually KNOW if the popular Global Warming theory is correct or not. Neither does anyone else here. I can only make the best "educated" guess I am capable of about it, based on what others have said here and there about it, look up some stuff on the Net or wherever, and then I might develop an opinion...but I still don't know. My knowledge is fragmentary and very limited. So is everyone else's here. I neither believe in the GW theory nor do I disbelieve in it. I just feel a certain measure of skepticism regarding, because I've seen so many of these kind of alarmist theories come and go in the past. They all resound in our media with a frenzy while they're in fasion...a year or a decade goes by...and they are completely forgotten and soon replaced with another alarmist theory. Each alarmist theory generates a whole new industry and makes money for a bunch of interested parties.

It's like that with medical stuff too...like the latest H1N1 hoopla, which I am very skeptical about.

But here's the clincher: I don't KNOW for 100% certain sure about any of these things, because I have no way of knowing all the facts. And neither does anyone else here. They can only do what Mr Wilson above advises, and avoid clinging to the dogma of utterly rigid belief. That way at least they will continue thinking.