And in other news, due to a classic winter noreaster coming up the coast in spring, Massachusetts has cancelled an uprising where the People of Lexington and Concord would have driven the British back to Boston.

The Boston Marathon, however, will be run as usual.

So, sure, outline your list of voluntary options already available. Let me know how widely they have been accepted, and the impact they have had on greenhouse gas release or similar factors. Convince me that enough has been done voluntarily that the seas won't rise, the glaciers melt, and the Third World fall into a spasm of water wars. Let's see if your science is any better than Justin's.

You consistently miss my point. Unfettered experimentation cannot be proceduralized. You want a Big Plan(TM). There is no big plan for dealing with the universe. There is only the heuristic process: trial-and-error, learn-as-you-go. The more little experiments -- political, economic, social, technological, etc. -- are permitted to run, the better our chances of survival. You want a single, organized approach; I want all approaches, simultaneously, and may the best solution(s) win. That is the fundamental disconnect in our perspectives, and until it is bridged, nothing I say will convince you of anything. That is true for most of the people on these forums. I sometimes wonder why I even bother posting here.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Well, that's true, in a sense you may not have intended: the scientific debate is over, the political one needs to begin. Not about WHETHER to do something, but about precisely WHAT.

The scientific debate is never over. Science produces theorems, which are defeasible. Only perfect knowledge can be called complete, and only deities are posited to hold such knowledge. We feel certain at the moment that global warming has an anthropogenic origin. We were equally certain, before Copernicus, that the Earth was the center of the universe. I personally hold that climate doomsayers lack a sense of deep time: they believe the Holocene is the "normal" condition of the planet and ignore the preceding 500 million years of climate history. They also underestimate the self-regulating power of the biosphere. We may be defecating in our bed, so to speak, but the bed eats excrement. Our task is not to starve ourselves so we produce less waste (the "solution" promoted by the state, which would like to ration everything); it is to find a way to package the waste in bite-sized chunks that are readily digestible.

Interesting caricature. What environmentalists are you paraphrasing here? Certainly not this one.

The Club of Rome. Paul Ehrlich. The Peak Oil crowd. Even Greenpeace at its most extreme. These are not fringe movements and lone cooks.

Wait a minute, am I talking to Arkham or to Eric?

Some people are capable of altering their beliefs. It is possible (though rarely observed, especially on these forums). To my credit, I don't couch my ecological views in New Age gobbledygook. There is a metaphysical component to my worldview, sure, but it is not based on astrology and tarot, or whatever.

If this were 1970, I'd agree with you. As it is 2007, I don't. The popular consciousness is sufficiently green already.

Clearly it's not, or we'd be in the midst of a revolution.

The problem lies in the fact that $20 billion in annual federal subsidies are going to the fossil fuel industry, and should instead be invested in green technology and efficiency technology. The problem lies in the fact that the government's priorities all flow towards promoting highways, automobiles, and other uses of fossil fuels.

All true. Yet we keep driving our SUVs on those highways. More now than ever, despite rising gas prices.

I'm not even convinced we need MORE government action to solve the problems we face (although I'm not convinced we don't, either), but I'm certainly convinced we need different ones than are being undertaken at this time.

You'd be surprised what kind of experimentation is going on in the background. The problem is that all but a fraction of it is deliberately impeded by vested interests emboldened by an apathetic public. When people stop driving the SUVs and buying the McMansions and voting for the corporate shills -- not because the credit has run out, but because they find the acts morally reprehensible -- that will be the sign that a cultural sea-change has occured.

All of that is institutional, though, not cultural. It has nothing to do with consciousness and everything to do with politics.

I'm sorry, but I've lived in the South. The culture there is extremely hostile to any worldview that does not place man at the pinnacle of creation. That's a sizable chunk of the electorate, and they vote overwhelmingly Republican. Until the South (and to a lesser extent, the Midwest) comes on board with the rest of the country, we will not see substantive action on any of the issues of the developing Crisis. And that only addresses the problems specific to the United States. Can you imagine Islam, a religion of lawyers, developing the flexibility required for ecological thinking?

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

But that's not what "most" Greens have in mind. Most advocate implementing solutions that provide us with similar amounts of energy as we have now (if not more) without increasing entropy in the biosphere (at least to anywhere near the degree we do now). In this, er, light, solar and fusion seem very promising.

Environmentalists want to freeze human civilization. Progressives are inquisitors ready to burn people. Those who wish discussion to be free but civil are fascists. Those who quote environmental science are preaching a dogmatic religion.

This is ad-homineum and strawman. Rather than talk about the real progressive positions, too many are creating bad nightmare parodies of what progressive are pushing, and launch hate campaigns against the bad parodies of their own creation. This is of course most noticable with Zilch, but it seems he is becomming less unique in his style.

What interests me is that many of the insults and bad stereotypes allege that today's progressives are similar to the conservatives of prior crises. When the authoritarian stay-the-same status quo crowd seeks to find a deeply hurtful comparison, they invoke memories of past authoritarian stay-the-same status quo movements. With all of human history available, you'd think today's conservatives could find a few of history's progressives who might have been the bad guys? Surely, there were some? Instead, they seek to insult by calling us one of them???

I don't get it.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

You consistently miss my point. Unfettered experimentation cannot be proceduralized. You want a Big Plan(TM). There is no big plan for dealing with the universe. There is only the heuristic process: trial-and-error, learn-as-you-go. The more little experiments -- political, economic, social, technological, etc. -- are permitted to run, the better our chances of survival. You want a single, organized approach; I want all approaches, simultaneously, and may the best solution(s) win. That is the fundamental disconnect in our perspectives, and until it is bridged, nothing I say will convince you of anything. That is true for most of the people on these forums. I sometimes wonder why I even bother posting here.

I can concede the wisdom of this. I would not think it at all prudent to decide at this point that fusion (just as an example) is The Answer™ and fund fusion to the exclusion of all else. It took Lincoln and Grant several years to start freeing armies from the constraints of rivers and railroads, and start launching Great Raids. FDR did a bunch of stuff that didn't work or wasn't enough in his early years in the White House, but got it done through trial, error, persistence, and more error. We are in a similar situation today. We don't know which technologies and approaches prove best. It might be more prudent to try too many approaches rather than too few.

But there are times when your anti-government theme seems to play too strong. In the Victorian Era, individual inventors would create, develop, patent and profit from their own Big Ideas. One of the less desirable results of FDR's crisis was an addiction to government research grants coming from the Military Industrial Complex. It seems you can't do a danged thing these days without working through government funded grants. I sense you don't like this any more than I do. It might be a good thing if this could be changed. Still, many of today's inventions and developments are simply more complex than what the Victorians were doing. The Wright Brothers couldn't have built the first Airbus 380 in their bicycle shop. Not even Thomas Edison and company could have financed and built a fusion reactor prototype the likes of which is being built today in France.

Anyway, I'll acknowledge that diversity at this point is good, that we don't know enough to guess what will work out best yet, if you can be somewhat open to the idea that governments will likely be a necessary evil if we are going to work through this.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Besides, if Hitler were alive today, wouldn't you tell him to go fuck himself? Or would you just keep posting graphs.

Sometimes there are enough facts available to separate an individual with badly flawed values. The global warming issue should be one of those times. Truth can be a powerful weapon, even against closed minds. What other weapon is there? It ought to work.

I have seldom had that much luck with insults and obscenity. I have never opened people's minds that way. Once, in my extreme youth, I got my nose opened. Not the same.

Anyway, I've been trying to convince people that invading Iraq when we hadn't the force available to suppress insurgency was a bad idea. Continuing to fight the war when we still haven't got the force available is still a bad idea. Brick wall. Sometimes Truth is not a powerful enough weapon. I could see me sitting down with Hitler, me armed with production charts, population levels and a ton of histories of his war, and still not being able to convince him that World War II was a bad idea from Germany's perspective. I can see him insisting that if his generals had not been inept, if they had only followed his orders...

I don't know. I might plausibly break down and suggest he relieve his own sexual tensions. I don't know that it would do that much good. His problem runs deeper than mere sexual tensions. I am doubtful of that approach.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

There is only the heuristic process: trial-and-error, learn-as-you-go. The more little experiments -- political, economic, social, technological, etc. -- are permitted to run, the better our chances of survival.

Nobody is preventing technological experimention about GW to be run. It is not a matter of permission. It a matter of value. Either you believe that preventing climate change is worth something or you do not. The denialists assign a value of zero on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It makes no sense for individuals to work to develop a technology that has zero value.

The reason why a handful of people are working towards greenhouse gas reduction is that their financial backers have predicted that in the future reducing greenhouse gas emisions will have value. That is, they are betting on the eventual political defeat of the denialists.

It has nothing to do with permission and everything to do with uncertainty. Capital markets hate uncertainty and hence will not mobilize significant resources to fund uncertain enterprises. Should denialists change their minds about GW, while still in power, the uncertainty is removed, the capital markets go to work and the world is remade at a remarkable rapid clip. Not only that, but the repsonse to GW could create wealth rather than impose costs.

But as long as folks like Ricercar, the Rani, Mr. Reed and you are skeptical of the reality of the phenomenon, then the uncertainty will remain. The consensus about what to do will be built without libertarian input. And if this happens there is no possibility for the solution to create wealth instead of impose costs.

We will be forced into a more constricted future by the very people who oppose such a development.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

A while ago, I posted a link to a blogger civility code. The only response was from Zilch, who thought advocating free speech and courtesy a sign of fascist oppression. The problem goes both ways. Conservative websites will also publish personal contact information of opponents, and encourage large numbers of readers to discourage those who speak out. This is one of the behaviors the civility code was intended to deter.

Your own post is an example in itself, associating those you disagree with with the worst of the Agricultural Age religious authoritarians, and using foul language. Yes, bad behavior is inexcusable. Dehumanizing, insulting and harassing political opponents for exercising free speech and voicing valid opinions is inexcusable.

So what's your excuse?

Ad-hominem and strawman are worth zilch. I know you care more for humor than Truth or Clarity, but there ought to be limits to how far you push your insulting characterizations of those who displease you. There are times you give the impression of being a throughtful civilized person. When you drop out of character, it spoils the illusion.

Now, if we could just get rid of the denialists who just refuse to see

... Mr. Butler on an earlier occasion.

Nicole Williams, the think-tank's vice-president, had to go ex-directory after receiving death threats. Someone posted her old home address on the net, and caller after caller phoned to scream at her. 'I was accused several times of being a "redneck bitch",' she said. 'I was repeatedly called a "whore".'...

The American conservative magazine, the National Review, went through 3,000 abusive emails and pointed out how the quickly the veneer of political correctness dissolved. To spare the feelings of delicate readers, I won't quote the choicest messages, but even the publishable insults show an almost racist hatred of American southerners.

'You are the most despicable and pathetic type of people of all time. I hope you all die slowly and have your hearts and brains trampled to pieces, you small-minded, ignorant, backwoods ideologues,' one correspondent declared. There was also homophobia - 'You guys are the faggiest fags I've ever come across' - and murderous fantasies: 'You are a total waste of skin and air. Help the environment and jump off a cliff.'

Mr. Nick Cohen in the Progressive Observer (UK) on the Progressive abuse of "denialists".

While Sir Bob Butler, Bart. may want a verdant biretta and the Green equal of a cardinal's throne, his objection to uncivility cannot be a paver on that path. It is the side of Progress that spoke of eliminationism, femaled doggedness, laxness in social intercourse, and a fiery sort of inversion of a sexual nature on the part of the population who might be thought skeptical, agnostic, atheistic on the matter of Nature's Rise in Temperature. And, while the writer in the Observer noted the Progressive failure on the personal front of his fellow Progressives, he was also saddened by the intemperance of his fellows toward the heretic denialists.

Sir Bob, in a post on the military dimension of the heated Crisis called for more than abuse to those who are indifferent or worse, unbelievers. He wondered upon the matter of their removal. Sir Bob is a curate's egg as we are all. On this part he is very wicked indeed! Of course the eliminationism will be carried out by the civil authorities and the path to the palace(s)* of Progress will remain pure for His Eminence.


_____

*One hopes that these 20K+ sq. ft. structures are warmed by sunlight and powered by windmills.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

...Progressives are inquisitors ready to burn people. ...With all of human history available, you'd think today's conservatives could find a few of history's progressives who might have been the bad guys? Surely, there were some? Instead, they seek to insult by calling us one of them???

I don't get it.

Of course your don't, Your Eminence, you refuse to recall that The Inquisition was a sister in growth to that of the Nation State, and its program one of modernisation as it enhanced and was enhanced by the growing power of a National Monarchy that was replacing a Personal Monarchy. It was an arrow of its time.

And, now that Progress has spent too many of its bolts to an incomplete victory it has had to dig deep into that quiver of weapons and has come up with: >>>Kill them all, let Gaia sort them out!>>> Oh, you'll allow some to become converso-greenlings; but there are those who will have to be handed over to Civil Authority for a Proper Progressive Toasting*!


______

*Will the Energy Credits go to the clerical or secular authority; or will their be a division of the ashes?

Feeling Green
Whose religious environmentalism?

Originally Posted by Mr. Andy Crouch

Indeed, nearly every time Gottlieb touches on Christian belief and practice, he strikes a false note—or rather, frames Christian belief in a way that would only be recognizable to a liberal Protestant. In a book that makes a real effort to account for evangelical Christians (including an interview with Cal De Witt, the closest thing evangelicals have today to a Johnny Appleseed), he is still capable of tossing off phrases like "fundamentalist evangelical Christians" (apparently unaware that the two terms describe distinctly different groups) and "believers who still cling to the absolute truth of their faith" (the patronizing phrase "still cling" is, as Richard John Neuhaus would say, a nice touch). More substantively, Gottlieb's claim that Christians celebrate Easter "as the rebirth not only of Jesus but of all life as well" may describe the cutting edge of "Christian ecotheology" but is hardly representative of orthodox Christian thought.


...
Why is it so hard for Gottlieb to affirm that there is something precisely better, higher, and worthier about our ability to deliberate morally and to take a responsibility for the redwood and the beaver that they assuredly do not take for us? What would be lost with that affirmation? How much, in terms of motivation to serious environmental stewardship, is gained when we name what is evidently true: that in the whole known universe we are the only species that takes responsibility for the others; the only species that demonstrates the slightest interest in naming, tending, and conserving the others; that indeed is accountable for the stewardship of the others; and the only species that feels guilt (however fitfully and hypocritically) when its stewardship fails?

The only possible reason for entering into the twisting and tortuous attempt to simultaneously charge human beings with moral responsibility while also demurring that we are, after all, merely "different" is, in a word, theological. It is the belief that god is in the redwood and the beaver, and that our refusal to set aside our own sense of being uniquely made in the image of God is at the root of our environmental foolishness. This is a perfectly recognizable position. But it is not compatible with the religious traditions that collectively claim the allegiance of several billion human beings. Why someone interested, even excited, about the prospect of religious engagement with environmental concerns would not recognize how many barriers this erects to any genuine partnership is puzzling at best. A philosopher who cannot recognize that he is in this instance making a contested religious claim, who fails conspicuously both to acknowledge and to defend that claim rather than merely assert it as presumed common ground, is deceiving himself. ...




What is signally missing from Gottlieb's account of religion is history—the possibility that our faith hinges not on subjective (or even shared) experience of a numinous, interior sort, but on the intervention of God in a particular place at a particular time. History, of course, is itself a form of human experience, but it is unlike the experience so prized by Gottlieb in that it is anything but universal. The claim that God has been definitively revealed here, and not there, creates the "scandal of particularity." It may well not be true—orthodox Christians do not believe it is true in the case of Islam's particular claims, and many fair-minded Westerners do not believe it is true of Christianity's particular claims. But such particularity is of the essence of orthodox faith.

It may seem that an environmental crisis which is universal by definition requires a religiosity that is freed of the scandal of particularity. But the stubborn truth is that in the United States at least, the traditions that "still cling to the absolute truth of their faith"—for "absolute" I would much prefer the term "historical"—are the ones that are thriving. Furthermore, as Gottlieb has the clarity to note at one point, the liberal religious traditions that seem so hospitable to environmentalism bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the very consumerism that environmentalism must overcome, affirming as they are of an endless search for the sacralized self set free from the constraints of tradition—which is another way to say, from history.
...
There is another way.

There is an environmentalism that is rooted in historical faith—that indeed is modeled on the life of an historical human being who modeled both feasting and fasting, abundance that offended the ascetic and simplicity that challenged the affluent. This environmentalism is agnostic about our market economies, recognizing that on past form they are likely to foster innovation, relieve poverty, and solve many of our worst problems, while not expecting them to deliver us a life without suffering and sacrifice, nor granting them impunity from their consequences for our descendants. This environmentalism affirms the dignity, uniqueness, and accountability of humanity and thus can motivate serious stewardship without the circularity and contortions of ecotheology's self-defeating pantheism.

emphasis by VKS

The Green Theology has made difficulties when it (as is often the case in Our Commercial Republic) ignores the dictates of Clio, much less the Jehovah and the Trinity.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Clearly it's not, or we'd be in the midst of a revolution.

Arkham, that's the whole problem with expecting "consciousness" alone to provide the necessary changes: when it's time to manifest all that consciousness in reality, when push comes to shove, there has to be a revolution, because the normal machinery of government can't do the job. It's frozen in place, neglected and waiting for the big shift in consciousness.

I don't like the idea of revolution except as a last resort. It's violent, messy, squints at totalitarianism, and is rife with unintended consequences.

You may have lived in the south, but I grew up there. I do understand what you're saying about the antiquated spiritual mindset, but given the consequences of our ecological irresponsibility for human beings, a change in perspective really isn't dependent on having folks down there remove their own species from its pedestal -- much as I'd like to see that happen.

Things will probably have to get worse before action can be taken. But when we're in a position to move, the move will need at this point to be political, for purely practical reasons.

This is just a suggestion, but can we stop accusing each other of being, or (when that hasn't happened) of accusing each other of being, Hitler? It might help avoid the eruption of virtual gunfire if we do.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

But as long as folks like Ricercar, the Rani, Mr. Reed and you are skeptical of the reality of the phenomenon, then the uncertainty will remain. The consensus about what to do will be built without libertarian input. And if this happens there is no possibility for the solution to create wealth instead of impose costs.

I'm not skeptical of the problem; I'm skeptical of the presumed cause and the political opportunism the problem has generated. My skepticism is not unfounded, as the debate concerning anthropogenic global warming has not been conclusively decided. One side shouting louder and longer than the other does not scientific consensus make, and regardless, if a theory is erroneous, it is erroneous no matter how many people endorse it. What I want to see is a biotech revolution that renders the whole bloody mess irrelevant, by producing a technology that eats pollutants and responds to climate fluctuations by farting gasses in the right proportions to moderate temperatures. A technology that grows like produce, so that no one person or organization can monopolize it. I do not want to see an ossified industrial civilization that has forced most of its inhabitants to live in medieval squalor so that a handful of elites can continue to enjoy SUVs and McMansions in their fortified bubble cities. Which is what we will get, if the powers that be are given carte blanche to "fix" the environment.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Not sure what that has to do with what I was saying. Of course, there are scientifically-grounded things-to-watch-out for (and, contra as seems to say Brian, I'm far from asserting that knowledge must be somehow perfect to be actionable). But, whereas the link between health problems and mercury and PCB exposure is both well-documented and fairly well-understood, the anthropogenic global warming models are far from it. You know, I also put sunscreen on my kids when we take them to the beach. Because the sun-exposure/sunburn correlation is easily demonstrated, as is the sunscreen/less sunburn one. Those hardly count as fads.

I was just trying to get my camel's nose in your tent.

Now I'll try for a bit more. What should a civil society do about a prevalence of mercury and PCB pollutants that have such a clear effect on our food supply?

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

... While it appears reasonable to argue that a chaotic system, such as the global climate, cannot be modulated (or even predicted) with the crude tools currently available to human science, the real issue is that the proposition that such a thing even be attempted is a screen for global totalitarianism. We are, after all, talking ultimately about giving the state control over the weather...

No, that's not the case at all. The weather is chaotic and not easily subject to control. Climate, on the other hand, is much more so. That's not to say that we necessarily know how to create the results we want, but we know, to a reasonable certainty, what will create improvement and what will make matters worse.

That said, I doubt we can control climate beyond a certain degree, but we can at least try to keep certain basic parameters within prescribed bounds. CO2 is certainly one of those parameters. That may not be adequate, but ignoring the issue completely is a form fatalism that is atypical of humans and extremely atypical of Americans.

If, after 40 years of trying to conquer the climate, we find the effort meaningless, then we can walk away. By then, we should have a modified energy paradigm that will serve us well, even if the environmental reasons prove to be unnecessary. BTW, I suspect the environmental demands are very real and the efforts very necessary. But reducing the use of fossil fuels and encouraging the overall reduction in the use of energy, among many other efforts, are valuable without that being the case.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

... There is no big plan for dealing with the universe. There is only the heuristic process: trial-and-error, learn-as-you-go. The more little experiments -- political, economic, social, technological, etc. -- are permitted to run, the better our chances of survival. You want a single, organized approach; I want all approaches, simultaneously, and may the best solution(s) win.

That's normally the correct answer, but not this time. The difference is the lack of independence. Your experiments and the experimental media are both part of a single experiment on a single medium. Allowing for the likelihood of cancellation by inverses, this process yields no net gain.

In fact, that's much like what we do today. Some people want to save the earth, so they live in smaller, more energy efficient homes, drive smaller, more energy efficient cars, and so on. Others wish to prove that this is an unbounded world, and act in the exact opposite fassion. The net result is determined by whether there is an effect from either practice, and the balance between them. Under these conditions, the facts are hard to discern.

Originally Posted by Arkham

That is the fundamental disconnect in our perspectives, and until it is bridged, nothing I say will convince you of anything. That is true for most of the people on these forums. I sometimes wonder why I even bother posting here.

You post here because you like us and you sense that we like you. That may not be what you want to believe, but it's the most likely reason.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

I'm not skeptical of the problem; I'm skeptical of the presumed cause and the political opportunism the problem has generated.

The phemonmenon to which I was referring was the idea of human-caused global warming. If humans are not causing it then there is not problem as recent warming will likley be reversed in coming decades. In this sense you are a skeptic.

What I want to see is a biotech revolution that renders the whole bloody mess irrelevant, by producing a technology that eats pollutants and responds to climate fluctuations by farting gasses in the right proportions to moderate temperatures.

Well that's not ever going to happen by itself because there is no money in it. The folks who would make this happen (like me) like to get paid, you know.

I did my thesis in this field back in the eighties in a research group that was started with funds from the Carter Adminstration Alcohol Fuels Program. This program sought to revive the WW II alcohol fuels work to explore the idea of achieving energy independence from the Mideast. The WW II program developed a process to make ethanol from softwoods. The gain in the 1980's was the discovery of microbes with the ability to produce ethanol from all sugars allowing use of more abundant hardwords and agricultural wastes. The WW II work had focused on softwords because yeasts that ferment the five-carbon sugars come in hardwoods were not known.

Since the 1980's some academic work has been done on enzymatic hydrolysis of the sugar polymers instead of the dilute acid technology developed in WW II. There has been little serious commerical effort as there is no certainty that there will ever be any money to be made with any alternate fuel. Without a favorable political environment that creates a value for environmental or geopolitical (i.e. not from the ME) advantages of one fuel or another over oil, there could never be any money in the field.

I left the field and went to work in the pharmaceutical industry because I perceived that environmentally friendly technology was not the place to be. I've enjoyed an interesting job with regular 40 hour weeks, good benefits, reasonable job security and a comfortable salary. Sure beats scrabbling from grant to grant in academia.

Originally Posted by The Rani

This right here is the difference between you and me. I refer to what I see as the truth as "what I believe,"

Well if this is so, then there is no such thing as "reality" wrt to mental illness.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Nobody is preventing technological experimention about GW to be run. It is not a matter of permission. It a matter of value. Either you believe that preventing climate change is worth something or you do not. The denialists assign a value of zero on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It makes no sense for individuals to work to develop a technology that has zero value.

Nobody who are somebodies are not doing anything to help the situation. As far as I'm concerned our industries are about 100 years obsolete and that is why (as you, Paul Craig Roberts, those at the economic storm alert site www.financialsense.com, and many others have pointed out) real economic growth that matters is zero and returns on real economic activities is around 1.5% which is approximately zero.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The reason why a handful of people are working towards greenhouse gas reduction is that their financial backers have predicted that in the future reducing greenhouse gas emisions will have value. That is, they are betting on the eventual political defeat of the denialists..

By then we'll both be dead. Perhaps with the help of Boomers who have been crowing for an every 80 year crisis for the past 20 years and their Millenial grunts.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

It has nothing to do with permission and everything to do with uncertainty. Capital markets hate uncertainty and hence will not mobilize significant resources to fund uncertain enterprises. Should denialists change their minds about GW, while still in power, the uncertainty is removed, the capital markets go to work and the world is remade at a remarkable rapid clip. Not only that, but the repsonse to GW could create wealth rather than impose costs.

Well here is the certainty: another 35 years of flat wages and 1.5% ROE, if we are lucky.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

But as long as folks like Ricercar, the Rani, Mr. Reed and you are skeptical of the reality of the phenomenon, then the uncertainty will remain. The consensus about what to do will be built without libertarian input. And if this happens there is no possibility for the solution to create wealth instead of impose costs.

We will be forced into a more constricted future by the very people who oppose such a development.

Real libertarians are geo-libertarians. My solutions are all over news:sci.space.policy and http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/

If you think "my" ideas are ambitious you can read William Mook's plans to terraform the Sun http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...bb242c5b288a0a.

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

...you refuse to recall that The Inquisition was a sister in growth to that of the Nation State, and its program one of modernisation as it enhanced and was enhanced by the growing power of a National Monarchy that was replacing a Personal Monarchy. It was an arrow of its time.

Except it wasn't. I'm not sure which Inquistion you are talking about, the office established in the 13th century, the Spanish branch established in the late 15th or some other. I am not aware of any Inquisition coincident with the development of the nation state. Of the two I mentioned, the first occurred during the High Middle Ages and the second during the rise of the personal monarchy. Neither was a new (progressive) development but rather a revival of old forms. The arrow of time does not always point towards progress, particularly in the days before there were any Whigs.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The denialists assign a value of zero on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Why do you persist on making ludicrous caricatures?

Generally speaking, any emissions at all represent potentially wasted energy. There's always value to be had in not pissing away energy. But that's not what you're getting at, either...

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

What should a civil society do about a prevalence of mercury and PCB pollutants that have such a clear effect on our food supply?

I don't know? I'm opposed to Big Ideas and Programs as detrimental to the appropriate functioning of the human environment. Generally speaking, I would say: pay attention to what you eat/feed people; encourage others to do the same; make people responsible for the consequences of their action/inaction. It's all the stuff I've said time and again before. Why the micro application of it should change the basic idea is something I have yet to understand...

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Why do you persist on making ludicrous caricatures?

What are you gettin at? It's not a caricature, it's an inference from the denialist's basic position, that there is no benefit to be obtained from reducing emissions of CO2. If there is no benefit, there is no value from reducing CO2 emissions.

Generally speaking, any emissions at all represent potentially wasted energy.

What nonsense is this? How do emisisons of CO2 reflect wasted energy?

You are sounding sillier and sillier.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

What are you gettin at? It's not a caricature, it's an inference from the denialist's basic position, that there is no benefit to be obtained from reducing emissions of CO2. If there is no benefit, there is no value from reducing CO2 emissions.

See what I mean by caricature? The basic skeptic position is that since the [overall] benefit is unknown, it is impossible to give a meaningful accounting of what opportunity costs are worth incurring to attain that benefit. What you, on the otehr hand, are ascribing is juvenile idiocy. Frankly, although there's enough of that on both sides of the debate, it hardly represents the basic position of either side...

How do emissions of CO2 reflect wasted energy?

Didn't you study physics? If a mass is going to be collected and rendered unusable for the creation of energy, any release less than mc^2 represents some amount of the mass that is simply released, unused, back to wander the environment. From an energy-balance standpoint, chemical burning is pretty silly. And that says nothing of the heat that is thrown away (how often do exhaust temperatures even approach ambient?) And the potential that is lost to friction (more 'waste' heat) over exhaust flows. Obviously, 100% (even when the fundamental delta-s is taken into account) is unattainable; but that simply means that some level of waste will always be with us -- not that that [hopefully ever-decreasing] amount is not in fact waste...

You are sounding sillier and sillier.

Glad to amuse. Usually True Believers find it more agitating than entertaining to be questioned.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I don't know? I'm opposed to Big Ideas and Programs as detrimental to the appropriate functioning of the human environment. Generally speaking, I would say: pay attention to what you eat/feed people; encourage others to do the same; make people responsible for the consequences of their action/inaction. It's all the stuff I've said time and again before. Why the micro application of it should change the basic idea is something I have yet to understand...

I know you don't like Big Programs.

But you do have big ideas (and I use the lower case deliberately and as a compliment ).

Are you saying that a collection of microapplications would do at least as well at solving the problem, if not better, than one macroapplication?