wrote this:

...and when it is produced as part of normal organic resperation, or the combustion of modern materials, there is not net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, even if there is a release of greenhouse gases.

which is very close to true, but then wrote:

To classify CO2 as a pollutant suggests that regardless of it's source, all CO2 is equal in the eyes of the law. If CO2 is regulated on a parts per million placed into the atmosphere basis, then dairy farmers will be as subject to regulation as Coal fired power plants.

Such a simple flawed means of regulating CO2 as a pollutant would indeed be ridiculous, and there is no reason why it would have to be done that way. The producers causing a net increase can be identified if they are of significant size, or belong to a group that can be monitored.

wrote:

This is an important question to answer, because if speculation is at fault, then perhaps political energy is better spent trying to modify market behavior than develop alternative sources of energy.

No, political energy is better spent finding alternative sources of energy, period. Consider the cost of global warming.

"Better" control of the supply?

wrote:

If you're going to call them frauds or phonies, I'm way more likely to pay attention if you back your conjecture up with some hard evidence of corruption or duplicity. What you've given here doesn't measure up.

Did you get beyond the first paragraph of the post? Did you read the material about Black and Born, or perhaps even read the complete sources?

This really is not any harder than realizing that WMD in Iraq was irrelevant to the war, before the invasion.

wrote:

Why would Geithner get on national television and basically tell the banks flat out that their dangerous activities will now be regulated more strongly if he was just a corporate tool of Wall Street?

Because it is his job to do so. Surely even you can do better than that.

First, spend 15 minutes trying to think as somebody else, like an actor does, preparing for a part.

Second, hold that mental state, and go back and read what you wrote.

When you write, you reveal things about yourself you do not know, and if you did, you would not want anyone else to know.

My favorite paragraph from that Brooks OpEd is this:

To me, the most interesting factor is the way instant communications lead to unconscious conformity. You’d think that with thousands of ideas flowing at light speed around the world, you’d get a diversity of viewpoints and expectations that would balance one another out. Instead, global communications seem to have led people in the financial subculture to adopt homogenous viewpoints. They made the same one-way bets at the same time.

Brooks would have us believe that all bankers are incredibly stupid. (So I guess he would support firing them all with no compensation, but that is another issue.)

Actually they cannot all be that stupid. When the GCF (now probably known as the Gaussian Crappola Function) was adopted as the essentially universal means of determining the independence of risks, it only takes some common sense, not mathematical ability, to see how unlikely it is to work.

There were public warnings; why were they ignored? Sorry Mr. Brooks, the "greed" explanation works much better. Blaming it on the speed of light is poetic, but does not stand up to the light of day.

Bankers: Yes, they cannot all be that stupid, but there is room in the system for some who are.

Ah, so you completely dismiss the idea that bankers influence the government? In your dreams the Fed is run for and by the people, and the most benevolent of the bankers volunteer to do the hard work for the people by running the treasury as a sort of financial soup kitchen?

Please go ahead and make your case.

Karl wrote:

But there is still one more reason to learn it, even if it weren't such a useful tool for understanding the rest of the world. As nothing more than an abstraction, it keeps asking and answering questions about itself. It scratches an itch. When you were a child, didn't you ask your parents countless questions, like, "Why is the sky blue," and "How does a fly walk on the ceiling?" Perhaps you have put your curiosity away. Perhaps you regard it as a childish thing. Well, take it out again. It's time to see how it has grown since you were small. It's time to scratch that itch all over again.

It looks like something I would have enjoyed in high school. I did have one teacher in middle school who explained things in a similar way, but he was fired and long by the time I got to high school.

wrote:

I don't personally have any real objection to the Obama administration's desire to have a few additional weeks to try to figure out how to manage these internal controversies and political storms over the memos' release.

I do. Every delay is a violation of Obama's promise to run a reasonably open government. His credibility is mostly gone, but releasing the memos still matters.

Different yes, but if there are no differences in the areas that affect the future of the republic, then the actual differences have of no long term importance.

Well, he was at a baseball game yesterday, throwing out the pitch and talking with Jon and Joe.

And today I bet he is also nowhere near any place where impeachment is being discussed.