Jack wrote:
Marc Ramsey wrote:

You are confusing the message with the messenger. If Al Gore lived in
one 500 sq ft house and traveled around only by bicycle, many would
this frugal lifestyle further reason for ridicule.


Al Gore is his own reason for ridicule. His message is tainted,
undeniably, by the fact he has yet to demonstrate that he is _not_ one
of those who says, "Do as I say, and not as I do." Until then we will
ignore him and others like him.

As long as we insist on being warm in the winter and also believe that
the earth can sustain increasing billions of human inhabitants the
problem will continue to grow -- only the rate might be changed
imperceptibly by anything we may try to do about it. It makes no sense
at all for 300,000,000 Americans to become tree-huggers if 5,000,000,000
Asians, Africans, and others are doing all they can to increase their
own material comforts, and with little or no regard for the pollution
that results.

Stop consuming like a high schooler drinks beer at his first kegger.
Also, the notion that the only way to improve a product is to make it
less expensive is killing US manufacturing capacity and fueling Asian
expansion. We are in the process of jump-starting their middle class
with our demand. If/when we've gone to far and that machine can run
without our demand, we lose all control of world economics including the
oil market, labor markets, and international banking. Forget Fed
control of interest rates (may already be happening). Not to mention
melamine concentration in our food!
The only way to fix things now is through protectionism (yeah, yeah,
**** your economics prof, mine too ;-) ). Consumers and business don't
have the balls to be responsible. Probably too late anyway.

Nature will take care of the problem, one way or the other. It is our
obligation only to see that we are the beneficiaries of the natural
course of events, and not its victims. That requires much more science
and far less dogma.

True, but when really good science is so strong it looks like dogma
(e.g. evolutionary science, or plate tectonics), it serves no purpose to
condemn it *just* because it's the status quo. Climate science seems to
be headed this way.


Shawn