You have a typo there. I think you meant to type "49" (38 directly, 11 from cancer). At the time, it was thought that many more people might die 20 years later from cancer (rather than 25 years later from old age, car accidents, etc) but evidence indicates that hasn't happened much - cancer rates haven't increased as much as was feared. One claim that "6,000 workers will die from cancer due to radiation" was debunked when it was pointed out that there haven't even been 6,000 TOTAL deaths of workers, from all sources combined (including car accidents, etc.)
> Where are the Nuclear power fans now?
Well a bunch of them are having a fancy party 100 meters from the reactor. Because it's safe to do so.
Others might be at Banqiao, where a hydroelectric dam failure killed 170,000 people. Maybe they are at Machchu Dam (5,000) killed, Vajont Dam (2,000) or South Fork (2,200).
Ps, if grammar terms like subject, object, and indirect object don't come natural to you, here's one way to distinguish I, me, and myself. Replace them with he, him, and himself. Like so:
Bob found a house for himself. Sounds fine. Bob found a house for he. Doesn't sound right. Bob found a house for him. Still not right, if "him" means Bob.
Himself is analogous to myself, so myself is correct.
The front windshield is safety glass, glass layered with plastic so that the broken pieces hang in place.
The side windows can be either of two types. They break into small pieces, but have no plastic so all the little pieces fall into the seat cracks, under the seat, wedge at the edge of the floormat, in the door pockets, in the cracks of the dash... On some cars, a light tap on the edge, such as from using a coat-hanger type tool to try to unlock the door, will cause it to shatter this way. A year later you'll still be picking little pieces of glass from confined spaces in the car. Ask me how I know this.
"I was looking for a house for me"? No, "I was looking for a house for myself." It's reflexive. Therefore "I was looking for a house for my fiance and myself."
"Unlimited use of data on your phone, and also tethering at 512Kbps" I can understand. Video, on the other hand, is over 90% of the bandwidth usage on phones.
Whether the cause is an asteroid, nukes, or even a virus, the preparedness is mostly the same - be ready to provide medical care to a million people, have your lines of command and communication ready between leaders and to the public, etc.
One popular drill in emergency preparedness is zombie apocalypse - not because zombies might actually happen, but because it's a generic scenario that exercises all aspects of response. Zombies are contagious, like any virus or bacterium, they are mobs, they're violent, etc. If you can handle hoardes of zombies you can handle anything, so we practice handling zombies. If the media spokesperson screws up and forgets to give the essential information during the press conference about the zombie attack, they've learned a valuable lesson that applies to any widespread, panic-inducing event.
> If a cancer doctor tells you "stop smoking" and you respond by saying "I don't have time! I'm gonna cuddle my young child instead" -- you're a muppet.
If I'm cuddling the kid, I'm not smoking. Just sayin'.:)
Funny thing is, for me, the next first step to stop smoking is spending time with my daughter - motivation.
> I have a shit-ton of devices with the CH340G and I've never been sorry about it.
That's good to know.
> What's wrong with CH340G support? It's included with Linux
Of course; I'm pretty sure Linux includes drivers for some 1960s era vacuum tube radars too.:) I have a bunch of old enterprise hardware, raid cards and such, that works fine with Linux - the companies that made the hardware have been bought out a couple times since my hardware was made, and it's been off the manufacturer "supported" list for probably a decade, so I would caution anyone considering it for new deployments.
I'm guessing that in your country the politicians use some *other* program as their slush fund, to give taxpayer money to their friends.
> about the means to counter global warming and about how dangerous it may be for the respective country and its economy (how much to err on the side of caution, how much money to spend, etc.)
Disagreement about how much resources (money) should be spent on one thing versus another is the very basis of politics. That's not a scientific question. It should be, however, informed by science. "How dangerous it may be for a respective country" is a very important scientific question which bears directly on the policy questions of how much resources to devote to it.
Unfortunately, even the lead authors of the UN studies on the topic strongly disagree on the answer to that question. Repected scientists have come to very different conclusions. Climatologists who serve on high-profile committees have made dire predictions about what would happen by 2015, and those dire scenarios didn't happen. In fact, rather than accelerating warming as predicted, global temperatures didn't increase at all 18 years after those predictions were made. I don't know about the "experts" that are well-known in your country, but US "experts" engaged in fear-mongering to get their name in the paper and their grants approved.
Also unfortunately, in the US we happened to get a vice president who made his name and his from fear-mongering about this issue, and while he could have used any number of federal programs as his slush fund, he chose environmental programs as his slush fund. There's nothing special about environmental programs in this regard, it's just what happened to choose, like the mafia happens to use garbage disposal companies to launder money. That worked well and the party continued to use environmental programs to funnel money to their friends for the next 8 years.
If the US politicians gave 20 billion dollars to their former business partner to research quantum physics, without any quantum physics work being done, I'd certainly question that, especially if the politician left the white house and joined the board of the non-researching quantum physics research company. If a major donor received a $2 billion grant to build a particle accelerator, and never began building a particle accelerator, I'd question that. That's the problem we have in the US - our politicians paying their friends billions of dollars of taxpayer money to not build solar panels.
I'm all for protecting the environment; I was a member of Greenpeace for many years. I recycle, etc. When a Democrat politician over here says "I want to take $1 billion of your money and give it to Bob, because environment", unfortunately I have to try to figure out whether Bob is doing anything for the environment or just doing something for the politician.
Interesting ideas. Why do you think 34KV lines are so much higher than 240V lines, with wide horizontal clearance between 34KV lines and any residential structures? Do you think 340KV lines need towers the same height as 34KV? The same distance to residential structures? Does a MV transmission line require towers to be higher than 700 feet, do you think?
Diesel is the only energy source with significant use in transportation and in Europe it's used widely for heating. Do you think diesel should be replaced with clean energy?
If so, you have to start thinking about total *energy* needs and consciously watching for trick statements about *electricity*. Germany can increase their percentage of *electricity* that comes from renewables by shutting down fairly clean natural-gas burning electricity plants and replacing them with garbage-burning heating plants. That's probably not what you want. That sounds silly, but people really do make stupid statements (and policies) conflating energy with electricity in order to make their policy look better. They increase the cost of electricity with a tax, causing industry to use more coal, then claim an increase in the percentage of *electricity* from renewables.
Germany imports a lot of energy, including a shit load of diesel. For most of their energy to come from clean sources, they need either ten to twenty times as much solar (not going to happen) or nuclear.
> A liberal-green-conspiracy just lacks credibility.
Really you haven't noticed a liberal-green alliance? Think of *any* "environmental" group and look up which politicians they contributed to. Hint - it's not Donald Trump. Gore is on the board of half the major green groups.
"Old coal-faced Joe" didn't like "we're going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business". The politicians he supports won the 2016 election, not the 2004 election.
Bob: Hi Al, it's Bob. I wanted to give you a call and let you know I'm donating $80,000 to your PAC. Al: Thanks, Bob, what are you up to lately. Bob: I'm starting a company to research new solar-cell designs using federal grant money. It's called Solarslush. Would you like to be on the board next year when you're done with your VP gig? Al: Sounds great, Bob.
It doesn't take a vast conspiracy. It takes a one-minute phone call.
If you think it's a coincidence that the "green" companies paid Gore HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars right after he gave them billions in tax dollars, I'm sorry that's just naive.
> There are a multitude of ways for politicians to shuffle money to their friends,
There are many ways. Especially for smaller amounts of money. When presidents, vice presidents, and senior senators want to shuffle billions of dollars to their friends, they of course use a federal program that awards billions of dollars to private companies. There are a few to choose from. If you rose to power based on green rhetoric, you tend to have friends involved in such things, and that fits the need just fine. Some more or less legitimate - he supports Greenpeace, they support him. Some not so legitimate, like solar panel companies who take huge amounts of government money, and never bother to produce even one solar panel. He could have switched to advocating for huge new programs that build affordable housing and his friends could run housing developments that never got built, but why change? He was already the green guy, that's how he got press.
> which three years
2008-2011, shortly afterv testifying before Congress that cap and trade would cause investors to make a ton of money. His investment firm was heavy into carbon credits as they rose to $70/ton. After he sold out to investors, they dropped to ten cents per ton.
> It would discredit government action on AGW much more than the science itself.
After Bush Jr. used trumped-up intelligence about WMDs as his causus belli to invade Iraq, I questioned both his actions and his excuse. The yellowcake uranium did exist, as did parts and pieces for biological weapons, but the threat was greatly exaggerated by the politicians.
When Gore used trumped-up studies about global warming as his causus belli for handing billions to his buddies (and indirectly, himself), I question both his actions and his excuse. Global warming bas a concept is a real thing, but the threat was greatly exaggerated by the politicians.
While Gore was handing out tax-funded grant money, and afterwards when his profit-making carbon exchange company was underwriting the work of scientists, do you think those grants went to scientists who pointed out Gore was mischaracterizing (exaggerating) the data? When a person who profits from AGW scare-mongering pays the scientist's paychecks, he's going to hire^H^H^H^H award grants to those scientists who support his viewpoint.
Again, I'm not saying they're all full of shit, any more than the generals at the Pentagon who are serious about defending their country. Both know, however, that you don't get promoted by announcing that the boss is full of shit.
I wrote: > In three years, he personally made $172 from carbon trading.
Of course I meant: In three years, he personally made $172 MILLION from carbon trading.
Does that mean the whole concept of global warming is all bullshit? No. Does it mean that Gore had a huge profit motive to hype it as much as possible (and got famous doing so)? Obviously.
Not that all the science is wrong (though of course some of it is), but your leaves me a bit puzzled why you'd even ask. > I mean... what is the profit motive here?
I mean, really? That's like asking "where's the profit motive in the military industry?" The politicians having handed out tens of billions of dollars to their friends based on plans to do something "green" (and some hefty donations). Do you have any idea how many billions of your money and mine Gore Inc gave to green companies who never released a product?
Heck even think of Gore himself. He rode AWG, mostly, into the White House. As he left the White House, he was worth $700K; over the next three years he and David Blood made $218 million profit from their carbon credit trading company. In three years, he personally made $172 from carbon trading. You don't see a profit motive there? Really?
"Green" is the liberal slush fund just as "defense" was the conservative slush fund.
Don't misunderstand me, national defense and environmental protection are both important. They also happen to be the multi-billion dollar industries that each of the parties chose to launder very large kickbacks in exchange for campaign contributions. If you haven't noticed that... wow.
> If people want to buy an insecure device that will compromise their well-being, then they should be allowed to.
Actually that's the FTC's position. The company fraudulently advertised the product as having "advanced security" and "easy to secure." That's the law suit - "if people want to buy insecure/secure, then they should be allowed to", companies may not lie and deliver the opposite of what they sold the customer. The result of the law suit will probably be that the company will stop advertising security.
> So you would only take a report seriously... if half of it was written by people with absolutely ZERO expertise in the topic it's about ?
Suppose a proposal would delay AGW global warming by five years, and cost 80% of your income. Is that a proposal you would support? If so, we're too far apart and we should stop here. If you wouldn't support such a proposal, you recognize that each proposal is a balance between maybe having some benefit re AGW vs the economic costs. If the only people talking are climatologists (and no economists), you're ignoring half of the problem!
You wrote a lot of good stuff in these last two posts. I'm going to focus on the one point where we don't see eye-to-eye.
> It's a reality issue. You can't eat, drink or breath money. The world is ALWAYS the more important of the two
Money (and more generally, resources) does in fact buy food, clean water, and less directly clean air. You know those commercials for charities that say "just a dollar a day will feed a hungry child"? They're not lying. They spin, of course, but it's basically true. One example, fertilizers and pesticides help crops grow. If the world used no fertilizers or pesticides, many people would starve. On the other hand, they havev varying degrees of environmental impact. Good policy is about balancing those things.
Washing out a greasy paper towel so you can recycle it would have some benefit to environment, but it's not worth it. Recycling a clean aluminium can *is* worth it. It would be better for the environment if you weren't using electricity to read this, but you've decided that the minor environmental impact isn't worth giving up Slashdot.
With AGW, there is a meta-issue. As discussed, the lead authors of the UN papers on climate change disagree significantly, with one lead author saying the paper is alarmist. We don't KNOW quite what the environmental impact, or the economic impact, of some of these proposals might be. You wouldn't give up half your annual income in order to recycle a bag of cans, the benefit wouldn't be worth the cost. It's all about balancing costs and benefits.
We must be careful about this common pattern: X is a problem. Something must be done! Proposal Y is something. Therefore, Y must be done.
Very often, Y isn't a good way of solving X, sometimes it has nothing to with problem X. (Frequent example: high profile shooting, using a handgun. Proposed solution: ban RIFLES.) Other times, proposal Y may mitigate problem X by $z worth, but cost $z,000. That makes it a bad idea.
If James Hansen wants to dispute that quote, fine. You'll notice I included another quote from him, not from the same article. He's very well known, serving on many high-profile committees over many years, and he has a tendency to make predictions that turn out to be wildly incorrect.
Obviously this doesn't mean that everything anyone ever said about AGW is wrong. It just means that there has been some scare-mongering.
Unfortunately, when I removed this section ("Overcoming skepticism due to past hyperbole"), from my paper, I didn't keep the formal references in a place I'm easily able to find them now. I'm sure if you plug any of the quotes above, for which I've named the sources, you can find the formal reference in seconds.
Slashdot Mirror
> thousands of lives lost
You have a typo there. I think you meant to type "49" (38 directly, 11 from cancer). At the time, it was thought that many more people might die 20 years later from cancer (rather than 25 years later from old age, car accidents, etc) but evidence indicates that hasn't happened much - cancer rates haven't increased as much as was feared. One claim that "6,000 workers will die from cancer due to radiation" was debunked when it was pointed out that there haven't even been 6,000 TOTAL deaths of workers, from all sources combined (including car accidents, etc.)
> Where are the Nuclear power fans now?
Well a bunch of them are having a fancy party 100 meters from the reactor. Because it's safe to do so.
Others might be at Banqiao, where a hydroelectric dam failure killed 170,000 people. Maybe they are at Machchu Dam (5,000) killed,
Vajont Dam (2,000) or South Fork (2,200).
Ps, if grammar terms like subject, object, and indirect object don't come natural to you, here's one way to distinguish I, me, and myself. Replace them with he, him, and himself. Like so:
Bob found a house for himself. Sounds fine.
Bob found a house for he. Doesn't sound right.
Bob found a house for him. Still not right, if "him" means Bob.
Himself is analogous to myself, so myself is correct.
The front windshield is safety glass, glass layered with plastic so that the broken pieces hang in place.
The side windows can be either of two types. They break into small pieces, but have no plastic so all the little pieces fall into the seat cracks, under the seat, wedge at the edge of the floormat, in the door pockets, in the cracks of the dash ... On some cars, a light tap on the edge, such as from using a coat-hanger type tool to try to unlock the door, will cause it to shatter this way. A year later you'll still be picking little pieces of glass from confined spaces in the car. Ask me how I know this.
"I was looking for a house for me"?
No, "I was looking for a house for myself." It's reflexive.
Therefore "I was looking for a house for my fiance and myself."
"Unlimited use of data on your phone, and also tethering at 512Kbps" I can understand. Video, on the other hand, is over 90% of the bandwidth usage on phones.
Batteries are a significant cost for electric cars. I know where someone can get millions of cheap batteries, Samsung branded.
Whether the cause is an asteroid, nukes, or even a virus, the preparedness is mostly the same - be ready to provide medical care to a million people, have your lines of command and communication ready between leaders and to the public, etc.
One popular drill in emergency preparedness is zombie apocalypse - not because zombies might actually happen, but because it's a generic scenario that exercises all aspects of response. Zombies are contagious, like any virus or bacterium, they are mobs, they're violent, etc. If you can handle hoardes of zombies you can handle anything, so we practice handling zombies. If the media spokesperson screws up and forgets to give the essential information during the press conference about the zombie attack, they've learned a valuable lesson that applies to any widespread, panic-inducing event.
> If a cancer doctor tells you "stop smoking" and you respond by saying "I don't have time! I'm gonna cuddle my young child instead" -- you're a muppet.
If I'm cuddling the kid, I'm not smoking. Just sayin'. :)
Funny thing is, for me, the next first step to stop smoking is spending time with my daughter - motivation.
> I have a shit-ton of devices with the CH340G and I've never been sorry about it.
That's good to know.
> What's wrong with CH340G support? It's included with Linux
Of course; I'm pretty sure Linux includes drivers for some 1960s era vacuum tube radars too. :) I have a bunch of old enterprise hardware, raid cards and such, that works fine with Linux - the companies that made the hardware have been bought out a couple times since my hardware was made, and it's been off the manufacturer "supported" list for probably a decade, so I would caution anyone considering it for new deployments.
I'm guessing that in your country the politicians use some *other* program as their slush fund, to give taxpayer money to their friends.
> about the means to counter global warming and about how dangerous it may be for the respective country and its economy (how much to err on the side of caution, how much money to spend, etc.)
Disagreement about how much resources (money) should be spent on one thing versus another is the very basis of politics. That's not a scientific question. It should be, however, informed by science. "How dangerous it may be for a respective country" is a very important scientific question which bears directly on the policy questions of how much resources to devote to it.
Unfortunately, even the lead authors of the UN studies on the topic strongly disagree on the answer to that question. Repected scientists have come to very different conclusions. Climatologists who serve on high-profile committees have made dire predictions about what would happen by 2015, and those dire scenarios didn't happen. In fact, rather than accelerating warming as predicted, global temperatures didn't increase at all 18 years after those predictions were made. I don't know about the "experts" that are well-known in your country, but US "experts" engaged in fear-mongering to get their name in the paper and their grants approved.
Also unfortunately, in the US we happened to get a vice president who made his name and his from fear-mongering about this issue, and while he could have used any number of federal programs as his slush fund, he chose environmental programs as his slush fund. There's nothing special about environmental programs in this regard, it's just what happened to choose, like the mafia happens to use garbage disposal companies to launder money. That worked well and the party continued to use environmental programs to funnel money to their friends for the next 8 years.
If the US politicians gave 20 billion dollars to their former business partner to research quantum physics, without any quantum physics work being done, I'd certainly question that, especially if the politician left the white house and joined the board of the non-researching quantum physics research company. If a major donor received a $2 billion grant to build a particle accelerator, and never began building a particle accelerator, I'd question that. That's the problem we have in the US - our politicians paying their friends billions of dollars of taxpayer money to not build solar panels.
I'm all for protecting the environment; I was a member of Greenpeace for many years. I recycle, etc. When a Democrat politician over here says "I want to take $1 billion of your money and give it to Bob, because environment", unfortunately I have to try to figure out whether Bob is doing anything for the environment or just doing something for the politician.
Interesting ideas. Why do you think 34KV lines are so much higher than 240V lines, with wide horizontal clearance between 34KV lines and any residential structures? Do you think 340KV lines need towers the same height as 34KV? The same distance to residential structures? Does a MV transmission line require towers to be higher than 700 feet, do you think?
Diesel is the only energy source with significant use in transportation and in Europe it's used widely for heating. Do you think diesel should be replaced with clean energy?
If so, you have to start thinking about total *energy* needs and consciously watching for trick statements about *electricity*. Germany can increase their percentage of *electricity* that comes from renewables by shutting down fairly clean natural-gas burning electricity plants and replacing them with garbage-burning heating plants. That's probably not what you want. That sounds silly, but people really do make stupid statements (and policies) conflating energy with electricity in order to make their policy look better. They increase the cost of electricity with a tax, causing industry to use more coal, then claim an increase in the percentage of *electricity* from renewables.
Germany imports a lot of energy, including a shit load of diesel. For most of their energy to come from clean sources, they need either ten to twenty times as much solar (not going to happen) or nuclear.
> A liberal-green-conspiracy just lacks credibility.
Really you haven't noticed a liberal-green alliance? Think of *any* "environmental" group and look up which politicians they contributed to. Hint - it's not Donald Trump. Gore is on the board of half the major green groups.
"Old coal-faced Joe" didn't like "we're going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business". The politicians he supports won the 2016 election, not the 2004 election.
The CH340G usb serial chips are about 30 cents. On older versions of Windows you have to install the driver.
For about $3 you can get an adapter that uses a Silicon Labs 210x chip, and support is better than the CH340G.
That visual made me chuckle. If Mythbusters were still on the air, I might have sent them a note mentioning it and seen what happened next.
Cue mdsolar to tell us why capturing CO2 is bad (for his business).
Bob: Hi Al, it's Bob. I wanted to give you a call and let you know I'm donating $80,000 to your PAC.
Al: Thanks, Bob, what are you up to lately.
Bob: I'm starting a company to research new solar-cell designs using federal grant money. It's called Solarslush. Would you like to be on the board next year when you're done with your VP gig?
Al: Sounds great, Bob.
It doesn't take a vast conspiracy. It takes a one-minute phone call.
If you think it's a coincidence that the "green" companies paid Gore HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars right after he gave them billions in tax dollars, I'm sorry that's just naive.
> There are a multitude of ways for politicians to shuffle money to their friends,
There are many ways. Especially for smaller amounts of money. When presidents, vice presidents, and senior senators want to shuffle billions of dollars to their friends, they of course use a federal program that awards billions of dollars to private companies. There are a few to choose from. If you rose to power based on green rhetoric, you tend to have friends involved in such things, and that fits the need just fine. Some more or less legitimate - he supports Greenpeace, they support him. Some not so legitimate, like solar panel companies who take huge amounts of government money, and never bother to produce even one solar panel. He could have switched to advocating for huge new programs that build affordable housing and his friends could run housing developments that never got built, but why change? He was already the green guy, that's how he got press.
> which three years
2008-2011, shortly afterv testifying before Congress that cap and trade would cause investors to make a ton of money. His investment firm was heavy into carbon credits as they rose to $70/ton. After he sold out to investors, they dropped to ten cents per ton.
> It would discredit government action on AGW much more than the science itself.
After Bush Jr. used trumped-up intelligence about WMDs as his causus belli to invade Iraq, I questioned both his actions and his excuse. The yellowcake uranium did exist, as did parts and pieces for biological weapons, but the threat was greatly exaggerated by the politicians.
When Gore used trumped-up studies about global warming as his causus belli for handing billions to his buddies (and indirectly, himself), I question both his actions and his excuse. Global warming bas a concept is a real thing, but the threat was greatly exaggerated by the politicians.
While Gore was handing out tax-funded grant money, and afterwards when his profit-making carbon exchange company was underwriting the work of scientists, do you think those grants went to scientists who pointed out Gore was mischaracterizing (exaggerating) the data? When a person who profits from AGW scare-mongering pays the scientist's paychecks, he's going to hire^H^H^H^H award grants to those scientists who support his viewpoint.
Again, I'm not saying they're all full of shit, any more than the generals at the Pentagon who are serious about defending their country. Both know, however, that you don't get promoted by announcing that the boss is full of shit.
I wrote:
> In three years, he personally made $172 from carbon trading.
Of course I meant:
In three years, he personally made $172 MILLION from carbon trading.
Does that mean the whole concept of global warming is all bullshit? No. Does it mean that Gore had a huge profit motive to hype it as much as possible (and got famous doing so)? Obviously.
Not that all the science is wrong (though of course some of it is), but your leaves me a bit puzzled why you'd even ask.
> I mean... what is the profit motive here?
I mean, really? That's like asking "where's the profit motive in the military industry?" The politicians having handed out tens of billions of dollars to their friends based on plans to do something "green" (and some hefty donations). Do you have any idea how many billions of your money and mine Gore Inc gave to green companies who never released a product?
Heck even think of Gore himself. He rode AWG, mostly, into the White House. As he left the White House, he was worth $700K; over the next three years he and David Blood made $218 million profit from their carbon credit trading company. In three years, he personally made $172 from carbon trading. You don't see a profit motive there? Really?
"Green" is the liberal slush fund just as "defense" was the conservative slush fund.
Don't misunderstand me, national defense and environmental protection are both important. They also happen to be the multi-billion dollar industries that each of the parties chose to launder very large kickbacks in exchange for campaign contributions. If you haven't noticed that ... wow.
> If people want to buy an insecure device that will compromise their well-being, then they should be allowed to.
Actually that's the FTC's position. The company fraudulently advertised the product as having "advanced security" and "easy to secure." That's the law suit - "if people want to buy insecure/secure, then they should be allowed to", companies may not lie and deliver the opposite of what they sold the customer. The result of the law suit will probably be that the company will stop advertising security.
> So you would only take a report seriously... if half of it was written by people with absolutely ZERO expertise in the topic it's about ?
Suppose a proposal would delay AGW global warming by five years, and cost 80% of your income. Is that a proposal you would support? If so, we're too far apart and we should stop here. If you wouldn't support such a proposal, you recognize that each proposal is a balance between maybe having some benefit re AGW vs the economic costs. If the only people talking are climatologists (and no economists), you're ignoring half of the problem!
You wrote a lot of good stuff in these last two posts. I'm going to focus on the one point where we don't see eye-to-eye.
> It's a reality issue. You can't eat, drink or breath money. The world is ALWAYS the more important of the two
Money (and more generally, resources) does in fact buy food, clean water, and less directly clean air. You know those commercials for charities that say "just a dollar a day will feed a hungry child"? They're not lying. They spin, of course, but it's basically true. One example, fertilizers and pesticides help crops grow. If the world used no fertilizers or pesticides, many people would starve. On the other hand, they havev varying degrees of environmental impact. Good policy is about balancing those things.
Washing out a greasy paper towel so you can recycle it would have some benefit to environment, but it's not worth it. Recycling a clean aluminium can *is* worth it. It would be better for the environment if you weren't using electricity to read this, but you've decided that the minor environmental impact isn't worth giving up Slashdot.
With AGW, there is a meta-issue. As discussed, the lead authors of the UN papers on climate change disagree significantly, with one lead author saying the paper is alarmist. We don't KNOW quite what the environmental impact, or the economic impact, of some of these proposals might be. You wouldn't give up half your annual income in order to recycle a bag of cans, the benefit wouldn't be worth the cost. It's all about balancing costs and benefits.
We must be careful about this common pattern:
X is a problem. Something must be done!
Proposal Y is something.
Therefore, Y must be done.
Very often, Y isn't a good way of solving X, sometimes it has nothing to with problem X. (Frequent example: high profile shooting, using a handgun. Proposed solution: ban RIFLES.) Other times, proposal Y may mitigate problem X by $z worth, but cost $z,000. That makes it a bad idea.
I appreciate the tone of your posts.
If James Hansen wants to dispute that quote, fine. You'll notice I included another quote from him, not from the same article. He's very well known, serving on many high-profile committees over many years, and he has a tendency to make predictions that turn out to be wildly incorrect.
Obviously this doesn't mean that everything anyone ever said about AGW is wrong. It just means that there has been some scare-mongering.
Unfortunately, when I removed this section ("Overcoming skepticism due to past hyperbole"), from my paper, I didn't keep the formal references in a place I'm easily able to find them now. I'm sure if you plug any of the quotes above, for which I've named the sources, you can find the formal reference in seconds.