Re: WAY OFF TOPIC was: Re: Ada and the NMD

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <9n8put$67u$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>
>If there is clear and convincing evidence that X is a problem and the public
>believes that Y is a practical solution to the problem, you'll see political
>action. Despite what people may choose to believe and/or advocate, there is
>no overwhelming, clear, convincing evidence that the earth is in imminent
>danger of destruction because of CO2, global warming, global cooling or
>whatever the latest "threat" is. (Remember that for an extremely large
>number of species on this planet, CO2 is a *good* thing - hence expect them
>to flourish.) Even accepting that there is some real threat here, it is not
>at all clear that any or all of the solutions proposed by various advocates
>are going to be practical and effective. Hence, you get what we've got -
>political ambivalence.

That's pretty much where I am too. I do personally *suspect* there is a problem,
but the evidence that there is one is certianly not all in, or even the evidnece
as to what it is. I remember vividly back in the '70 people telling me at school
that we'd run totally out of oil by 2000. Realise that I grew up in Tulsa
Oklahoma, which at the time styled itslef as the Oil Capital of the world. Our
entire economy here was based on it. If there was one place in the world immune
to anti-oil environmentalists, it was Tulsa. So I know people seriously believed
this. Quite a few laws were passed to try to help "fix" this problem. Of course
nothing even remotely like that has happened.

Note that I'm not saying I think there's no problem. I personally think there
is. I just don't know exactly what it is yet. :-)

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com