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"To show that America is serious about stopping this threat..."

Can people not relate this issue to more personal things, specifically invasive plant and insect species? Let's not forget that we, here at the pinnacle of our scientific achievement, can't keep Japanese beetles off a hibiscus or stop kudzu on a single acre of land without someone physically standing and hacking at the vine. A single acre of land is a fairly controlled environment, but nothing we do short of chopping or burning can prevent the plant's growth or somehow keep it from it's slow movement, and neither chopping nor burning is a long-term solution. And nothing will stop the bugs.

Our planet is a significantly more complex system than an acre of land, and it's a bit more difficult to control the variables (ocean temperatures, algal production, solar activity, etc.). We are at a point in our culture where people are too easily fooled into believing that someone can "fix" everything, and that the "fix" is easily done or will accomplish anything at all.

And that politicians present themselves as capable of determining what said "fix" should be is possibly the funniest part of the global warming exchange.

I submit that the first person to come up with a solution to the kudzu problem be immediately appointed to head the struggle against global warming.

Roger

I generally agree, Bennet. As a minimum, we should take this as a strong message to learn to adapt quickly, and learn to conserve what we have (oil, insect and animal species, etc.), and also at least recognize there are often unintended consequences for the actions of mankind.

Hear, hear. I call this narcissistic planet syndrome, wherein the planet is perceived to respond intimately to one's personal moral decisions (to recycle, bump the thermostat, drive a Prius, etc.). As everyone who looks seriously at the issue is away, even the drastic measures of the Kyoto protocol would have, at best, only a negligible effect on worldwide carbon emissions.

There are both delusional and canny NPS suffers. The former actually believe that President Bush could solve the problem, but won't *because of his oil buddies and intrinsic depravity). Others believe that NPS should be disseminated because people who suffer from it are likely to do useful things (recycle, cut down on oil consumption, invest in alternative energy, etc.) irrespective of global warming.

Hear, hear. I call this narcissistic planet syndrome, wherein the planet is perceived to respond intimately to one's personal moral decisions (to recycle, bump the thermostat, drive a Prius, etc.). As everyone who looks seriously at the issue is aware, even the drastic measures of the Kyoto protocol would have, at best, only a negligible effect on worldwide carbon emissions.

There are both delusional and canny NPS suffers. The former actually believe that President Bush could solve the problem, but won't *because of his oil buddies and intrinsic depravity). Others believe that NPS should be disseminated because people who suffer from it are likely to do useful things (recycle, cut down on oil consumption, invest in alternative energy, etc.) irrespective of global warming.

Brian:

There is a flip-side to the narcissistic planet syndrome and that is human myopia toward environmental consequences. At one point, humans existed in very small numbers and in wandering groups. In these circumstances there were seldom local consequences to their behavior, and when there were, they could just move on to another location while the first one recovered.

Individual environmental actions and consequences are still miniscule relative to what occurs naturally (and socially) and therefore practically invisible to us. Cumulative behavior, however, is another thing and has reached the point where there are global impacts.

Human history (especially recent history) is filled with examples of us acting as if there was no environmental impact when in fact there was. Until the 20th century, city living was a major cause of disease and death because we didn't understand how our own filth impacted the environment. In the 1970s we realized what certain aerosols were doing to the ozone layer. We've seen the consequences of non-chalant toxic dumping practices and the widespread use of lead in paints and as a gasoline additive. And we're continuing to see the impacts of acid rain.

Given this history and the current understanding of global warming, it seems reasonable to take measures to reduce our contributions to the problem, that is, to stop making the problem worse than it might already be. Alternatively, we might view this course as slowing our contributions to the problem until we understand them better.

The letter writer's analogy--in which he describes actual remedial steps such as plucking beetles from a plant or pulling out the odd Kudzu plant from a forest--is a poor one. A more accurate analogy would have us continuing to introduce beetles and Kudzu into the environment. We can argue about whether it's cost effective to clean up the mess that we've already made. But it seems myopic to just go on making the mess worse without some concern for the potential impact.

Maybe 50 years from now, we'll all have a great Sleeper moment in which we emerge from our orgasmatrons, chain-smoke some cigarettes, and comment how ridiculous and overblown this whole global warming thing was. Reasonable caution suggests, however, that we hold this out as one possible favorable outcome among many possible negative ones.

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I can still remember seeing the "carpeting" of dead crows in my Grandma's corn fields when DDT was being used. Little did we know then, how that one chemical would affect the food chain--almost wiping out the American Bald Eagle.
For many, the President included, to scoff at the science being used to buttress today's conversation is ludicrous. Man does great harm to the environment, but the "wackjobs" who continue to believe the corporate propaganda will never see what is right in front of them. Those dead crows told quite a story and thank goodness we heeded the call of the environmentalists.

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