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I'm trying to parse this.  You don't like traditional agnosticism because it doesn't allow for 100% certainty.  Because some people, let's call them dichotomous thinkers, need 100% certainty or else they will go (even more) insane.  100% certainty is, of course, impossible for mere mortals without faith (i.e., magic), so you further allow them magical thinking. 

How does this improve on fundamentalism again?

If you don't allow the magical jump to certainty, then at some point, your agnostics are going to have to face the paradox of multiple religions each claiming to be the one true faith.  From there, it is pretty steep slope to, at best, some variety of pantheism and a Greenpeace membership.

Researchers Use Wikipedia To Make Computers Smarter
http://www.physorg.com/news87276588.html

You might be interested in Douglas "Intelligence is 10 million rules" Lenat's  Cyc project.

From the last line on that page ...

Arctic: decrease of 3% per decade (200,000 km2)
Antarctic: increase of 0.8% per decade (100,000 km2)

They label the Arctic figure "significant" and the Antarctic figure "insignificant" but the Antarctic figure is fully 50% of the Arctic in terms of surface area.  That must have taken some pretty careful choice of statistical confidence levels to exclude the Antarctic figure.

Why dismiss the Antarctic increase as "roughly constant"?

To be fair, the Antarctic increase is consistent with global warming.  Global warming means more water vapor in the atmosphere, which means more precipitation, in particular more snow over the Antarctic, so more ice.  For some reason most people seem to miss the fact that a few degrees warming at the poles still leaves them _way_ below the freezing point of water. 

In fact, not a few scenarios have the Antarctic making a _negative_ contribution to sea level because it takes thousands of years for snow that falls at the center of the continent to make its way to the edge.  (I have never seen this discussed in anything remotely approaching the popular press, but check out _Mass Balance of the Cryosphere_, Cambridge University Press, if you are interested).  Most of the projected sea level rise comes from thermal expansion of the ocean rather than ice melt, but our models of thermal transport in the ocean (whether just the surface warms or whether the depths warm too and how much) are so poor that IPCC estimates of sea level change have the now familiar order-of-magnitude uncertainty: 4-40 inches per century.

My apologies, merely the overwhelming majority live at the south pole.

or, in fact, adapt

Agreed!

This is, at best, a gross oversimplification, but I think in fact that it is false in general, because I recall recentish articles blaming a particular krill decline on colder water from increased polar melt.  There are 80+ known (so probably 800+ total) species of krill, each with its likes and dislikes.  Modeling the populations of even the most common types is in its infancy.  Mostly, krill populations are limited by food supply - so to model accurately, you would have to model ice-algae and phytoplankton populations, but modeling of these populations is also in its infancy, etc, etc. 

I understand hyping for grant proposals, press releases, etc.  This is fascinating and important science.  I feel privileged to watch it happening.  But we are no where near modeling responses to climate change in this area.

Actually, increased warming, so increased stratification in some areas, so a reduction in nutrient transport efficiency in those areas, so decrease of a particular type of plankton in those areas, so ... may be other plankton that are usually crowded out increase, may be some creature that feeds exclusively on the decreasing plankton also decreases, but may be it just switches to some other type of plankton instead, etc, etc. 

Krill live at the south pole, Antarctic sea ice extent is increasing (hmm, don't see that fact often in the press, do you?).

Population modeling is an order of magnitude harder than climate modeling - which is exactly why environmental alarmists are moving on to that area, because we are finally learning enough in the climate field to quash alarmism there.

Lose the poles?  They respond to temperature signals on _millennial_ timescales.  It really worries me that people with scientific training, who would be ruthlessly skeptical in other areas, swallow whole whatever the news service headline writer throws up if it relates to climate.

My understanding is that phytoplankton is already everywhere, but in the far North/South it's productivity is limited by available light levels, whereas in the tropics there is plenty of light, so the limiting factor is upwelling nutrients.  Apparently the problem with the warming is that it enhances temperature stratification of the ocean's upper layers making nutrient transport from the depths less efficient.

I read the Nature paper, and the authors fall over themselves to say how tentative their results are.  They basically used a hi-res satellite camera to monitor color changes in the oceans and the assumption that the more green it was, the more plankton there was.  Seems reasonable, but apparently there are all sorts of complications, and the plankton that produce a good signal in the visible light spectrum aren't the most important ones.  The authors are now lobbying for a specially designed instrument that is most sensitive in the ultra-violet.

The strongest statement the paper makes is that changes in plankton populations may effect marine biodiversity.

serj, you will get a much better hearing here if you at least pretend that there are no Martians above single-celled life.  Just letting you know.

Just "sandbag" I think ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbag

They should collect tritium or create antimatter.  Energy is always in short supply.

It's had a good run, it would be sad to lose the MOC Public Target Request Program though.  It's really quite unique, although I believe there is a similar program in the works for the MRO.

If the Democrats win again in 2008, everything that Bush ever touched will be dismantled.  The next two years will consist solely of the Democrats saying "it is worse than we ever believed possible, it is imperative that the American people give us the presidency as well in order to correct the situation."  While gridlock will likely prevent additional measures, I'm sure you'll have plenty of cause for grievance in the meanwhile, if only due to unthinking bureaucracy.