Creepy Double Images for April Fools Day

Hybrid Images @ MIT

Look at the picture above. Get really close. Then step back, go the other side of the room, and look at the picture again. Weird, eh?

Aude Olivia and Antonio Torralba from MIT do research in cognitive science and have developed these amazing hybrid images. Their Hybrid Images is a gallery where there are examples of these optical illusions for you to creep yourself out. There are more examples and explanations of how it's done in this pdf. DIY and creep out your friends.

Happy April Fool's, one day early!

Help with your Google searches

Google Suggests

When you're searching, sometimes it's difficult to figure out what the best words to use for your search. Sometimes I mispell words.

Google Suggests tries to guess what you are going to type, and offers suggestions and refinements. These suggestions and recommendations can help you find ideas that you'd never even thought of before. They have an FAQ here.

For example, if you type in "Vancouver", Google suggests:
"Vancouver Sun" (daily newspaper)
"Vancouver weather"
"Vancouver canucks" (hockey)
"Vancouver airport"
"Vancouver public library"
"Vancouver craigslist"
"Vancouver giants" (junior hockey)
"Vancouver bc"
"Vancouver aquarium"
"Vancouver school board"

If I type "Vancouver r", I get:
"Vancouver restaurants"
"Vancouver real estate"
"Vancouver radio stations"
"Vancouver rentals"
"Vancouver radio", etc

Hmm cool, but I could probably figure out what I was looking for in Vancouver on my own. What if I wasn't sure what I was looking for?

Search: "origami" (Japanese paper folding)
Results: "origami crane"
"origami instructions"
"origami box"
"origami star"
"origami rose"
"origami paper"
"origami diagram"
"origami flower"
"origami flowers"
"origami swan"
Neat, so I could have found something cool, that I didn't even know existed before: an origami swan.

Search "scuba diving in"
Results:
"scuba diving in Hawaii"
"scuba diving in Thailand"
"scuba diving insurance"
"scuba diving in Florida"
"scuba diving in Australia"
"scuba diving information"
"scuba diving in Belize"
"scuba diving in Costa Rica"
"scuba diving in Cuba", etc

Wow!!! I'm getting excited about traveling already, and I've never even learned to scuba dive.

Yakiniku - Korean Barbecue marinade

A big shout out to Yakiniku. It's Korean Barbecue, translated into Japanese. It's my birthday today, and I'm heading out with my friends for some delicious yakiniku at a restaurant in Vancouver.

The best recipe for a yakiniku marinade (that I just found but haven't tried) is:

2 tb sesame seeds
1 ts hot red pepper
1 ts minced garlic

1/2 c soy sauce

1/4 c sugar

1 ts rice vinegar

Thinly slice your beef, chicken or pork, and marinate it for at least 30 minutes. Yummy!!

Create your own comics

ToonDoo - The Cartoon Strip Creator

ToonDoo is a new really easy way for you to create your own comic strips. You can upload your own photos, use some of their photos or drawings. Click and drag things around, then copy the code and put it on your website or blog.
Dead easy. Let the hilarity ensue.

Widgets for websites

LabPixies - Coolest Gadgets On The Web

Sometimes known as "Widgets", LabPixies creates little web gadgets that provide functionality to websites. The News panel on the right and the Space Invaders widget on the left are some of the best examples of the stuff that they currently offer.

Forget surfing! LabPixies brings the content to your website.

Send me an email if you know other sites with great widget content!

DIGG THIS-> 19 Killer Links for Remixing Music

This link has been posted to the site Digg.comDigg it UP!

read more digg story

19 Killer Links for Remixing Music

The Linkjockey has been getting a lot of links lately about remixes, so I decided to create a big list of resources for you if you're interested in manipulating sounds to create something new. Here are 19 places you can go to get started, or take your remixing skills further. I will publish and promote anything you create as a result of this post.

Digg this post!

Recording Software

1. Audacity
Open source, free digital audio editor and processor for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux

2. Ardour
Free multi-track software for MacOS X and Linux

3. Mixere
Free, open-source Windows NT/2000/XP application for mixing audio files

4. Pro Tools Free
Still available for older operating systems including Macintosh OS 9 (up to 40 MB total) and Windows 98/Me (up to 32 MB total)

5. Computer Music magazine (UK)
While the magazine is not free, it always comes with a CD-Rom or DVD of free software and samples that makes it worth the cover price

Audio Samples

6. ccMixter
Killer site with lots of tracks to remix, samples to download and remixes to listen to, all free and available under Creative Commons license

7. SampleSwap.org
Free audio samples

8. Real World Remixed Download
Download and remix tracks from Peter Gabriel's Real World label

9. University of Iowa Music Instrument Samples
Samples of orchestral instruments

10. SampleNet.co.uk download site
One of the granddaddies of free sample downloads

11. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
Download and remix tracks from Brian Eno and David Byrne

12. Internet Audio Archive
AMAZING massive archive of all sorts of free audio files, including: poetry, radio shows, live music, foreign language and spoken word. It's the best! Be aware that not everything is Creative Commons.

13. Beastie Boys A Cappella Download Page
Remix Beastie Boys tracks

13b. Splice - Meet. Mix. Mashup.
A remixing-specific community with sample exchanges, forums and finished remixes.

Killer Resources

14. OpenSonics - Open Music Community News and Copyleft Resources on Squidoo
A Squidoo lens promoting awareness of freely available music, audio services, video and software within the Open Music/ Creative Commons community.

15. Free Sounds: Legal Audio Samples, Loops, Freeware, Music and Video Downloads on Squidoo
Another Squidoo lens with links to some great sites for audio samples and software

16. Dave's Imaginary Sound Space
A long link list of more technical sites with free software, plugins, DSP and recording resources


Other

17. FreeCulture.org Manifesto

18. Creative Commons
The legal alternative to Copyright

19. sounds like silver : lcd soundsystem remixed
Unofficial remixes of LCD Soundsystem's "Sounds of Silver" cd, available for free download. Same people that remixed albums by the Prodigy and Chemical Brothers. Good stuff!

Worst Art contest

International Pavel Jerdanowitch Painting Contest

In their words: "The contest is named after the founder and supreme master of the Disumbrationist School of Art. The challenge is to produce the worst picture ever painted."

Worst picture ever painted, eh? It's actually quite the challenge.

There are lots of examples from the 2006 contest, as well as the current 2007 contest.
It's pretty strange that when some people try to make truly horrible paintings, they create something that might "pass" as an actual, legitimate painting. It's amazing at how far these "artists" have to go to create something that is truly terrible. It's LOL humourous!

The sweet irony is that because of the notoriety of this "event", the brilliance that it takes to create a horrible painting and the irony of it all, the top entries would probably become "Art".

Bono on the Difference between Karma and Grace

This is an excerpt from an interview with Bono from U2, that he did for a biography called, "Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas"
In the interview with Assayas, Bono talks about the difference between karma and grace. He gives his takes on the Bible and on the Roman Catholic Church. He talks about whether Jesus is a teacher or a prophet (hint: neither). He talks about giving his fly-glasses to Pope John Paul.

Bonus link: Transcript from Bono's Speech to the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast, in front of President Bush, among others. Bono turns out to be a pretty funny and engaging speaker.

What are you doing?

twitter.com is the new buzz site.
It's the new Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Blogger, Flickr, Linkjockey,
etc. It's hot!!!

The whole point is that it's kind of a mini-blogging site that
answers the question: What are you doing?

Check out Christopher Walks's Twitter profile: http://twitter.com/linkjockey

Ciao!

Net Surfin' ain't easy!

amandacongdon.com

Man, surfing the net for links CAN be hard work. My favourite site of 2006, my favorite news site, and my best site for links is popurls. They have tons of the best fresh, fresh links, but I've talked about them before. Fantastic! It just takes TIME to go through all the headlines, with linkbaiting titles.

Amanda Congdon is some kind of minor media celebrity, but she does her homework. Every day she posts her Today's 5 from popurls, and she generally gets it right. I say "generally", because out of roughly 386 headlines on popurls at any given time, opinions can vary, and she normally picks 2 or 3 of my favourites. Very nice.

Today's 5 picks:
- Obama Pastor rips NY Times a new one, gently (via reddit)
- NBC, Newscorp launch YouTube rival with AOL, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo
- Digital Art Made from Lava and Cactuses (via NowPublic)
- YT Video Awards Fashion Recap
- 10 Most Magnificant Trees in the World

Photo mag follow-up

As a result of yesterday's post, Linkjockey reader EvenMe (aka Brock Nicholson), posted some stuff on the JPG Magazine site, and he asked me to mention it.

EvenMe has a Main Page, and did work on several themes, including Entropy, Breakthrough and Beauty Redefined. It's funny to think that the wonderful old woman's photo is sponsored by the Suicide Girls.

Other Linkjockey readers, listen up! If you have links, projects, or topics that you'd like me to highlight, or if you'd like a link thrown up for your blog, then please write: linkjockey@gmail.com I'm here for you!

Peace.
Christopher Walks

Photography magazine meets Web 2.0

JPG Magazine: Themes

JPG is a real-world photography magazine that seems to be based on user-submitted pics and articles . Neat idea, but the proof is in the pudding, and... the photos are gorgeous and compelling! Users submit photos to a variety of categories, such as: Entropy, pictures of loved ones, Democracy, Danger, pictures of people working, pictures of music performance and the number 7. Registered users (free) vote on the best ones, and these make it into the magazine.

If I had some great photos, I'd submit them. The rewards aren't great for having your work published ($100 and a year's subscription), but the higher profile is probably worth it.

There isn't much advertising in the magazine at all, but if I was in advertising, I'd be contacting the artists that took these pictures, and licensing them like crazy. They're stunning!

Download a free copy of the magazine here.

Daily freak news

UniqueDaily.com - Your Daily Guide For Unique Entertainment

UniqueDaily.com is an "odd news" site that posts the best of teh freaky stuff daily. They have about 25 new picture headlines that link to the strangest news stories, videos and lists everyday.
Examples from today? The Chinese girl with no lower body. The "Borat bathing suit" tshirt. Japanese booger porn. Top 10 action hero one-liners. Car wreck photos. Super Mario played in Lego form.

There's some pretty far out stuff!

How I Became A Music Pirate

How I Became A Music Pirate - Consumerist

Bonus Link: Yet another new story about how the RIAA is mistreating and abusing the people who could be their biggest customers and supporters. This time the problem is their Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that cripples how people can listen to the music that they legally bought. This guy goes out of his way to buy some music online that he chose not to get for free, and then he can't even listen to it on his ipod or cd player. Lame.

RIAA is killing music

The fate of indie music as we know it Salon News

NPR Starts A War Medialoper

The RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America, which is an association of the major record labels in the USA.

CD sales have declined in recent years, and the RIAA is trying to find new ways to make money; such as shutting down Napster, trying to ban mp3 players, taxing blank cds and mp3 players in Canada, and getting lists of customers from internet providers and universities and extorting money from mp3 downloaders.

The RIAA don't seem to acknowledge or address their other problems, namely that the music they've been promoting stinks. Their marketing tool (radio) is stale. After downloading mp3s, people don't want to buy a full album of filler to hear the 1 or 2 hits, and they don't need a shiny plastic disc to listen to music. With the tactics the RIAA is using, in the end they wind up punching themselves in the face by alienating and attacking the biggest music fans.

This week, with the help of US regulators, they will begin charging more money in royalties from internet radio stations than from broadcast radio stations. I don't think anyone is making much money from internet radio, and if this change is enforced, it will force public radio, not-for-profit hobby stations, as well as the legal, for-profit stations, off of the internet. Goodbye internet radio! Too bad for music fans! No new music for you. Im glad the NPR is fighting the good fight to stop these tyrants from destroying music completely.

I've made a personal decision to not purchase any music from RIAA labels this year. I've spent thousands of dollars on music, but I've decided not to support the music mafia any more. That's why I've made Tuesdays at Linkjockey about music; it's to help you find new music and to convince you that good music still exists. End of rant.

A Linkjockey shout out to Vancouver's Spirit of the West for putting on a spectacular St. Patrick's day show at Vancouver's best concert venue, the Commodore Ballroom. They're a Celt-rock and folk-rock institution in this city.

Free online translation tool

Babelfish

Sometimes, there are webpages and emails in other languages that would like to read in English. Sometimes, I'd like to translate something into a different language. Babelfish is the best way to resolve these translation issues, without actually talking to another, you know, person. You can translate web sites or blocks of text.

Warning: sometimes the Babelfish translations can be unnatural or garbled. This can really be a barrel of laughs if you do repeated translations with the same text.

"Linkjockey - big verbindingsplaats!!! quotidien the Linkjockey connections of placement Web with cold, has the interesting placements you before parakoloycime'nos." Yeah, man! Totally big verbindingsplaats!!!

Click here to help the oppressed.

DO-GOODER: 10 Online Ways to Save The World - Valleywag


"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'
"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.'
Matthew 25: 35-40

It's really wonderful that there are ways to use our internet click-streams and our computers' power into really positive actions that have real-world consequences. In the passage above, Jesus tells us some ways that we can serve Him. While not all of Valleywag's 10 Online Ways to Save The World are opportunities to help the overlooked or ignored, you can indeed use your computer to fight disease, feed the hungry, help the poor work their way out of extreme poverty, or meet up with, or start, a new organization that helps the oppressed.

Common Sense Personal Finance

I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Get Rich Slowly

2 Links For The Price of 1!

Today's 2 blogs offer sensible tips for taking care of your money, in a way that's much more engaging than that Consumer Education class that you took in high school.

They have well-written entries about saving money, practical investing, and eliminating debt. Both sites are updated regularly, they have introductory articles to get you started on a sound footing. And no, they're not selling anything.

They post news, articles and interviews on related topics like saving, shopping, simplicity, frugality, entrepreneurship, customer service and personal development. They also post occasional reviews of books, magazines, and software, and scour the web for the latest personal finance tools and articles.

Some tips are more more relevant for Americans, because of tax laws, but there's lots of great, useful information for everyone else.

Free Stock Photos

everystockphoto.com - your source for free photos

When I'm working on projects that need graphics, sometimes I need to use photos that I don't have.

everystockphoto.com is growing, and at the moment, they have over 1 million free, Creative Commons photos. Sure, you could just grab pictures from Google or you could pay for them from a stock photos company, but I think "free" and "legal" are important qualities, and don't have to be mutually exclusive.

everystockphoto.com is based in beautiful Vancouver, BC, Canada, as was the fantastic photo-posting site Flickr, before it was bought by Yahoo!.

Build Public Places

Placemaking for Communities Project for Public Spaces (PPS)

Too much of urban planning revolves exclusively around homes, malls and streets, and not enough thought goes into public spaces. The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) wants to change that.

You might ask, what are public spaces? PPS lists:Parks, Transportation, Civic Centers , Public Markets, Downtowns, Mixed-use Developments, Campuses, and Squares. Put another way, these public spaces are what make a community vibrant, interesting and livable. They are the soul of a city that fills out the skeleton of infrastructure.

Some of the highlights include their list of the 60 of the World's Great Places (all public spaces), training resources, and tons of examples of great public spaces.

If you're into Urban Design, Land Use Planning, or Community Development, you should be all over this site.

Let's give a big hand to EvenMe for the tip!

33 Amazing surreal videos

Zugakousaku

Japanese artist Zugakousaku has some beautifully designed Quartz Composer projects posted online. They're gorgeous and surreal, and unlike anything I've seen before.

You can even use them as screensavers on your Mac.
Download a file. Un-stuffit. Place it in screensaver folder. Copy them to your Mac in either /Library/Screen Savers or ~home/Library/Screen Savers.

Put on some Orb or Pink Floyd, and chill!

New Eighties music video

Pop Goes My Heart video

I saw the new Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore movie on the weekend, Music and Lyrics. It's a pretty good romantic date movie, but the highlight of the movie was the opening scene.

Hugh Grant's character was in an eighties pop band, PoP!, that's reminiscent of Wham! Today's link is Pop!'s steaming turd of a video on YouTube that was featured at the beginning of the movie.

Sublime cooking blog

cookthink blog

The internet is great for people that love to cook. Google is great for finding recipes: type in the name of the dish you want to make, type in "best" and "recipe", and you'll have a few options to choose from. I use the word "best" in the search, because I think that if somebody declares their strawberry jam recipe to be the best, it's much more likely to be a good recipe.

Other than Google, I don't actually have a favourite recipe website.

That said, I've been checking out the cookthink cooking blog, and I'm quite impressed. Apparently, they're in some kind of beta mode, but currently they have interesting and relevant musings on cooking, without any of the pretension. The entries are focused and simple, but sublime. Simple, digestable recipes and ideas that are kind of like getting a little bit of cooking school every day.

How to feed free food to 10,000 people a day

Lunch at the Langar: Exploring a Free Kitchen in Delhi

Writing for Worldchanging, Sarah Rich went to New Dehli for a conference and visited the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib kitchen, at a Sikh temple,
which serves meals to around 10,000 people every single day, for free. Although I've never visited one, apparently every Sikh temple has a "free kitchen", called a Langar. This one is funded by wealthier members of the community and through small donations at the temple.

Worldchanging is a leading environmental website, with many great articles and solutions.

As someone who has cooked for hundreds, it boggles my mind to think of an operation cooking for that many people every day. What an amazing ministry!!

Education wants to be free

Self-Made Scholar

Self-Made Scholar has combed the web for audio, video, email, and text-based courses – all of which are available for free. If there's a field you'd like to study, they probably have it: languages, business, the arts, social sciences, cooking, world religions, etc. Sure you can search for information on the net, but there's a lot to be gained by going through a structured course with a learning plan.

Maybe you don't need to spend all that money on a university education after all.

Self-Guided Walking Tours in Vancouver

Vancouver : Walking Tours Frommers.com

Walking is great! I like to walk. It’s even my name: Chris Walks.

I also feel that walking is best way to explore and get a real feel for a place. You get to experience the people, the buildings, the businesses and the flows of the community. You notice things and discover the secrets that you would otherwise just drive right past. If you're in a different culture, then you notice lots of tiny differences from your own. Walking is free. It's good for your health and the environment.
Today's link is from Frommers, the travel guide publishers. Their website is very well done, and seems very informative, detailed and well designed. It's not just a teaser for their books. For many cities, they have multiple walking tours, including maps.

If you’re visiting (or just exploring) beautiful Vancouver, these are some great routes for trekking round the city. Frommers has three different walking tours of Vancouver: Downtown & The West End, Gastown & Chinatown and Yaletown, Granville Island & Kitsilano. You might not need any guidebook or escorted tours if you can see it all on your own. The Vancouver tours are so good, I'm inclined to use Frommers walking tours whenever I travel. What a great budget travel site!

Free Google advertising for charitable organizations

Google Grants Canada

Traditional advertising companies are struggling, as newspaper readership and TV viewership decline. People are spending more time on the internet, and the big advertising winner is Google. By putting paid search results beside search results and third-party websites, Google is doing very, very well.

In return, Google has created a philanthropic program to give free advertising to registered charities in Canada, the USA and other countries. Fill out the online form, and if you're approved, your great charity will be harnessing the power of Google's search to reach the online hoardes.

Tonight, I'll be bringing up this idea at a meeting for the fantastic camp I'm involved in.

Free digital Page-A-Day calendar subscription

Page-A-Day Calendars Fun Stuff - Quiz

Page-A-Day publishes those tear-away calendars with odd bits of trivia for every day of the year. Answer the Quiz question on this page, and you can sign up for the free digital version of their calendars.

Sure most of them are just bits of meaningless trivia, but there are some that are more interesting and "sophisticated" than their horrible joke-of-the-day. So pick one of their excellent calendars!
My picks are the song download of the day, Bible verses, and the literature, beer, wine and travel profiles.

Hmmm... it's kind of like a commercial version of Linkjockey. I post a random link every day; they email you something random everyday. There's something really cool about having something new drop into your life everyday.

How to make it BIG with your Band

Beatnik Turtle's Indie Band Survival Guide
AKA: How to make a living with your band, How to survive as a musician, or Being successful in music isn't what you think

This Guide is a bible for musicians that want to make money with their skills, and it's not as easy or romantic as it is in the movies. Going independent, they argue, is the way to go.
Many of the issues surrounding the music industry have changed in recent years, and Beatnik Turtle's Guide reflects these changes. Really important topics that they cover include: Putting on Great Shows, Recording an Album, Copyright, Promoting Your Music, Your Website and File Sharing: An Independent Band's Perspective.

For convenient and portable offline-reading, download the Indie Band Survival Guide in pdf.

The Best Budget Travel Resources

Contrarian Travel Resources

Do you want to have some amazing international traveling experiences, at prices that you can actually afford?

Tim Leffel is a travel writer that has published some great books about budget travel. His schtick is that he's not into the usual "travel porn" that passes as travel journalism. He isn't swayed by the massive budgets and packaged travel. The best deals and the best experiences are often had by people that travel independently, and are flexible about their travel choices.

Today's link is the updated link page that he maintains for his most recent book, The Contrarian Traveller.

So, why is the site so great? Tim knows where to really find the best sites for last minute travel deals, the best magazines and websites for real travellers, and great, affordable restuarants, while avoiding all the massive PR Hype machine surrounding the travel industry.

Jesus' Life and Death from the BBC

BBC - Religion & Ethics - Jesus

The BBC, with their usual intellectual and professional rigour, has pages on each of the 19 major world religions.

Because of the titillating Discovery documentary tonight about the so-called Tomb of Jesus, I thought that it might be a good idea to point out the original story of Jesus' life.

These pages about the life of Jesus and the history of Christianity are well done, and include a bibliography of Jesus and His miracles, information about the history of Christianity and the church, audio documentaries, and a reading list. The articles are written by well-known academic scholars, and represent the views of mainstream theological scholars, and widely-held Christian beliefs about Jesus.

The 9 Drawbacks to Being an Evil Villain

The 9 Drawbacks to Being an Evil Villain

Becoming an evil super-villain is a bad idea. Do I need to say any more?

Free Jamie Oliver (Naked Chef) Cookbook

Feed Me Better - School Dinners Pack (pdf)

UK (naked) chef, Jamie Oliver, was upset by the unhealthy junk food that was served in school cafeterias. Spurred on by new school food standards, Jamie researched, he experimented and he did some shows about it. Jamie also came up with some solutions, that is, menu plans. Today's link is essentially a free cookbook of healthy, inexpensive, easy-to-prepare meals that are scalable for groups of different sizes. Hmmm... a free Naked Chef cookbook. Interesting.

Sure, some of the recipes are better than others. I think I'd enjoy the Chicken Tikka Massala and the Slow-Cooked Balsamic Beef more than the Sausages and Mashed, but this is a really great resource! Imagine if you had to cook for a large group of wonderful people at a camp, a retreat, a big family dinner or even a school, I'm sure this recipe book could be an excellent resource.

How to Talk to a Climate Change Skeptic

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic

Last week someone asked me what scares me the most. My answer was: Global Warming.

The tipping point for me was reading a Roger Ebert review of a movie, where he said, "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."
I thought to myself, "Man, if Roger Ebert is saying, for the first time ever, that there is a MUST-SEE movie, well this is a movie that I NEED to see." So, I went to the theatre with Mrs. Linkjockey to see "An Inconvenient Truth". I bought it when it came out on DVD, and I'm lending out my copy to my friends.

If the Al Gore movie or book doesn't work, you might need to dig deeper.

If you need to dig deeper, today's website has answers to many (hundreds, even?) questions that people have about the Climate Crisis. They are broken down into different categories, for quick browsing, arguments are divided by:
Stages of Denial,
Scientific Topics,
Types of Argument, and
Levels of Sophistication.

Example arguments include the answers to:
Global warming is a hoax
Current global warming is just part of a natural cycle
What's wrong with warmer weather?
There is no proof that CO2 is causing global warming
There is no consensus

Sure, there are lots of objections that I'd never heard before (or didn't understand), but the arguments explain where those objections came from, and refute them.

As far as I can tell, Climate Change is real.