For one thing, I'm not used to laptops and it's very easy to "click" unintentionaly because my thumbs are too close to the mouse substitute. To make matters worse, for some reason every since I got my Premie I can't backspace to the page on which I had been writing and find everything I entered neatly preserved. Still, it's past time I dusted off the rule I adopted during some of those epic debates with Legolas, SilverWarder and rebelaessedai: If it's a long response, you better write it in Word so you can periodically save, because odds are good it's going to be eaten at some point before you finish.


Fair enough; I'll at least try to summarize my response.

Scale, IMHO, is precisely the problem; I don't think comfortable living standards require anywhere near our present industrial capacity. That's part of why you can't just grab on to the nearest factory job and be set for life any more; factories are closing down, and while outsourcing is certainly accelerating that trend it was already developing. Attempts to avoid it only produced the planned obsolesence that ultimately harmed more than helped the Big Three. Building things to last a century eliminates the need to replace them every decade, especially if they were luxury items in the first place, which is why it's literally true that they don't make 'em like they used to: Manufacturing things to stand the test of time provides little long term job security unless you constanly come up with new things for people to "need". The bottom line is that maintaining any kind of infrastructure is a lot less labor and resource intensive than creating it, so building things to last then reducing industrial capacity to simply maintain existing infrastructure and innovate makes much more sense than reinventing the wheel and mass producing a shoddy version of it. Build what's required, well, and a lot of greenhouse gas production is a self correcting problem (also, consumers will once again consider "Made in America" a badge of low price quality instead of overpriced garbage).

I'm old enough to know how long we've been told that new technology will turn deserts into gardens any day now. Right after I get my fusion powered hovercar, right? It sounds good, but until I see something more than small scale prototypical use I won't rely on it. I know we have the technological and industrial MEANS to do it, and have for some years. I also know "we" is a big word and that those who've long possessed the means haven't utilized it because there's not enough profit to motivate them. Demand is high, but no money means no market. When it happens I'll eat my words, but if that were my only diet I'd have starved to death in HS.

Greenhouse desalination's been around long enough 321Contact showed devices USN pilots could flip over the side of a life raft if they had to ditch in the middle of an ocean, and I was in elementary school then. I'm old enough to know how long we've been told that new technology will turn deserts into gardens any day now. Right after I get my fusion powered hovercar, right? It sounds good, but until I see something more than small scale prototypical use I won't rely on it. I know we have the technological and industrial MEANS to do it, and have for some years. I also know "we" is a big word and that those who've long possessed the means haven't utilized it because there's not enough profit to motivate them. Demand is high, but no money means no market. When it happens I'll eat my words, but if that were my only diet I'd have starved to death in HS.

Only in the short term, and that's always been my knock on biofuels, ethanol and "carbon sequestration". Not that carbon neutrality isn't much better than increased CO2 emissions, but "clean burning natural gas" is an absurdity to anyone with the most basic knowledge of hydrocarbon chemistry (granted a lot of activists LACK that knowledge, so we have to deal with periodic alarmist demands to go vegan and commit genocide when someone discovers all life emits CO2 and CH4). It doesn't bother me; the only way to remove all that carbon semi-permanently is to find a lot of Yucca mountains for it, and recycling carbon from corn or cooking oil is a lot more attractive than reintroducing carbon that's been safely locked in an oil deposit two miles underground for the last 100 million years. It's not a solution though, just mitigation.

As for the wonders that manufacturing and technology can bring to the Third World, see my previous paragraph.

The irony is that the more we reduce the price of food globally the less incentive there is for the industrialized nations with the capacity to create a Third World "green revolution" to do so. That kind of thing often puts me closer to the right than to the left, because a Peace Corps or UN program to bring in water pumps is a lot better for everyone than just dumping a years supply of food in the local governments lap and hoping they'll distribute instead of horde it; either way it will ultimately be consumed by people no more capable of feeding themselves. "Give a man a fish... " and all that. As you note, Ethiopias problem hasn't been lack of water, but getting it to fields. I believe depleted fields is an even greater problem that could be solved with the same industrial fertilizers that keep the former Dust Bowl productive, but Ethiopia can't afford them. Again the ironic truism: Manufacturing a Third World infrastructure would be a great way to maintain existing industrial capacity in the developed world, at least temporarily, but it falls apart when we face the question of how to pay for factories and labor to produce things for a market that can't afford them.

Mmmm, it's funny how Hugo Chavezs critics don't have much to say about Robert Mugabe; I know which executive I'd prefer running my country. At the risk of getting into the politics we're both trying to avoid, the difference between a democratic state and a "pro-Western" one too often IS a dictator willing and able to deliver cheap labor by any means necessary in exchange for a piece of the action. Many of them (e.g. Saddam) were CREATED by Western government precisely because the citizenry democratically chose a government that wouldn't play ball. Sure, that's appealing to any business; it's cheaper to bribe one general than pay a whole country minimum wage, and even if some revolutionaries come along and topple him despite the Western military hardware his graft buys, the moment they try anything contary to Western business interests the West will replace them with another dictator. I don't defend but can't really blame Chavezs antagonism toward the US; he knows full well that nationalization in the Third World often means a CIA sponsored coup, so it's a perfectly natural fear as well as a great stick to motivate dictators to be "pro-Western". Of course, it means a lot of Third World countries devolve into brutal "communist" and "Western" factions whose only real difference is who's in charge. It's the same reason the mafia was able to get a stranglehold on US unions: When the government is bought and the police and military reduced to an instrument of denying labor rights, force is met with force from a thugs who have also have no interest in labor rights, but a strong interest in controlling the reigns of power. Don't kid yourself though: China sends missionaries to prison labor and Indonesia tolerates militias holding Americans for ransom; are they really "pro-Western" or just pro-business...?

The links I provided are vague on the amount of land lost for precisely the reasons you (and they) state: It's hard to get a precise read on it because "coastal land" is frequently in the eye of the beholder, and some estimates include erosion while others only consider sea level increases. Yes, resort communities have both the means and desire to save their own hides, but if they were all or even most of the coastal populace you wouldn't have mentioned the less fortunate Bangladeshis (actually, most of the Indian subcontinent is in for quite a ride close to sea level as it rises and monsoons intensify, and I don't think think their share of the global economy will develop fast enough to save them). There are approximately 200 million people in Indonesia alone, and I doubt they could all just cram into a walled Jakarta even if they were willing. I still think you're extrapolating some pretty big assumptions and, once again, if you're right and we take extreme measures to prevent a disaster that was never imminent, no big deal, but if you're wrong hundreds of millions starve, drown or become refugees (which usually leads to militancy).

Counter evidence is scanty and almost invariably from industries whose bottom line will be severely impacted by significant behavioral changes. The rest boils down to "we don't have absolute proof of a problem I don't think exists or the means to solve it without great effort, so, despite a wealth of supporting evidence, we should wait for future generations who'll have enough evidence to prove it a problem theory plus the means to both verify and solve it". Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow, right? If you're that well versed in environmentalism you surely know how we've gone from "there is no global warming" to "there is global warming but it's not a problem" to "there is global warming and it is a problem but man plays no signficant role" as mounting evidence made each position untenable. The next step, of course, will be "there is global warming, it is a problem and man plays a large role but it's too late to do anything so let's just enjoy the ride".

Hey, I'm trying really hard not to get political, but here you HAVE trotted out virtually every specious talking point the right has ever presented for dismissing all environmentalists as liberal whackjobs. We should ignore the strong scientific consensus, dismiss it as liberal propaganda, because they were so demonstrably wrong about:

1) freezing in our bunkers after a nuclear winter (which was a speculated result of global thermonuclear war; the theory was never tested and thus never invalidated, for which I'm very grateful)

2) scorched by acid rain (a very real problem until catalytic converters industrial filters were mandated in just the intrusive resource intensive way you fear, dramatically reducing SO2 emissions within a few decades)

3) burnt by our missing ozone layer (ionizing radiation remains a problem in Patagonia and Australia due to a persistent ozone hole over Antartica that's unlikely to diminish significantly for at least a decade or two; ironically, both CFC and SO2 emissions reduced in response to this and the preceding problem have accelerated the global warming about which too many remain in very real denial)

4) starving in mass from the population boom to 16 billion people that was being presented as a certainty my the 2010s as recently as the mid-80s, strangely still feeding 6 billion plus people after being told one or two billion was the top or the various prior repetitions on how our capitalist greed would lead to misery and slaughter (global population in 1980 was ~4.5 billion; what science then claimed it could only support <half that? Malthusian scenarios remain a concern in the Third World but less of one in developed areas whose reproductive rates are at or below the level of population replacement).

Really, you're just giving me the party line laundry list of how science has been repeatedly and undeniably wrong, wrong WRONG, despite the fact that the science for those cases has either been verified or remained untested. Nuclear winter remains untested, thank God, and was never the only option on the table (Sagan once infamously suggested nuking Mars to produce a greenhouse effect, and never mind that would make it too radioactive for human habitation). People worried about acid rain and the ozone layer, so they did something about both; that the solution to the problem worked doesn't mean there was never a problem. That's like saying the Salk vaccine proves there was no postwar polio epidemic. Although, if you want to talk about the ozone layer, we started phasing out CFCs almost two decades ago, but most of them won't finally break down and stop catalyzing ozone depletion for at least another ten years. Gee, it's too bad we didn't sit on our hands for the last twenty years waiting for a smoking gun, huh? Global Malthusian scenarios were based on reproduction rates that weren't legitimate globally at the time, but also more fodder for Newsweek articles than scientific journals; it remains a local concern in the Third World and China, but for all save the latter global warming may take care of it so, y'know, one more reason to do nothing.

Then why on Earth did you cite them as instances of science being incorrect when you KNEW that wasn't the case? Since you KNOW the science was valid where it's been tested, and no worse than inconclusive elsewhere, what possible benefit is there to referening them here? To remind me that complaceny advocates routinely misrepresent established science to discredit other established science that exposes complacency as foolish and dangerous? I, um, was aware....

I'm not suggesting we burn down the house to save it anymore than you're suggesting we bury our heads in the sand. However, "we need more data" has too often and too long been an excuse to do nothing and while I don't question your sincerity, yes, I question the sincerity of those with whom you align politically every bit as much as you question the sincerity of my political allies. At least that much; I can and have disavowed all those who want to ban industrialization and internal combustion so we can go live in straw huts and caves as the Earth Mother intended, and my consistent and strong support for fission power ought to make that clear if nothing else does. Giving me the complacency advocates examples of how science is always wrong, WHEN YOU KNOW THOSE EXAMPLES ARE SPECIOUS, does little to convince me you're being objective about this. Listing ways to mitigate the effects of global warming without preventing it, even to the point of calling it a positive thing, doesn't help either; that's just back to "it's real, but it's no big deal". Get with the times; we moved on to "it's real and a big deal but man plays no role" ten years ago.

I favor pragmatic solutions; I DON'T paying them lip service but implementing none while we insist we can't act until the data becomes irrefutable. That means I want the "no nukes" people to STFU, but also want the "we can't act without more data" people to do the same. If there were a 5% chance you've been infected with rabies and the animal couldn't be found to verify it, would you wait until you're thirsty all the time to get vaccinated? You're welcome to do so, but I wouldn't bother; by that point you'll probably slowly and painfully die whatever you do. I'd much rather just vaccinate pets and manage the wildlife population than regularly give painful injections en masse OR allow rabies epidemics because the petshop lobby insists "we need more data, and even if we get it biologists are always wrong because they don't know as much about infectious disease as we do".