Good grief, presuming everyone on either side of this totally fabricated and abstract political spectrum is dumb. I'm on the left for most things and don't consider warming a political issue but a scientific one. I know plenty of people who are on the left and believe in the power of crystals or jesus or any damn dumb thing. Want more proof. Wait until the next space probe crashes into the moon and wait until you read the comments from the "oh-so concerned" about the moon's environment and complains how we're now ruining other planets with out junk. Now, is that what you'd call pro-science?

The issue of global change is real. That it is correlated with co2 is interesting but not ertainty and who do you think is smarter? Al Gore, Hansen or Freeman Dyson and the recently deceased Dr Borgund..oh, you didn't know he was a denier? He wasn't a denier; he was a brilliant scientist who understood complexity on a level the doomsayers seem to not understand. Why the certainty especially with cap and trade? When did cap and trade become science? Why spend what will probably be trillions on correcting a tiny bit of co2 emissions when for a lot less we could be creating space based solar energy systems that would deliver to us all the clean energy we want? Why? Because nobody pulls their eyeballs away from the TV ranters to see what is up with technology...oh, techno fixes..they don't work, say the left who accuses the right of being anti-science. There's plenty of ignorance to go around but attempting to lay it squarely in the lap of just one side of the political spectrum does not elevate the level of discussion nor does it intelligently characterize the problem. What's so smart about a statement that says "the debate is over"? It's embarrassing what the left has done to its scientific credibility and the right wing ideologists might be right sadly and laughably, but for all the wrong reasons. This is a media-framed arguement created to sucker us into not discussing the science and looking squarely at alternatives and solutions.

When I go to an airport and see one of these kiosks to buy offsets fo my carbon, I have to wonder why can't I also buy penny stocks in a company that wants to build space based solar systems and mine the asteroids so we don't have to pollute mongolia for the rare earth elements we need for windmills and your prius. Oh..you didn't know? How smart you are indeed! How does the sand look down there where your head is buried? No, not you, the other guy.

Thanks for taking the time to address my response. I rarely do this myself but your response is engaging and intelligent and expresses what a lot of people think, even if I and others disagree base on perspectives that are not ideological but regarding our understanding of how technology advances.

The fragile stuff takes the taxi, the bulk stuff gets shot up on the railgun, and assembled in space by robots with humans there to help while adequately protected. The protective coating,whether it's water or polypropilene doped with boron, or lead..whatever. It'd be cheap to send with railgun..the whole model of how to operate can change once we drop the ballistic missile model of space launching.

As for the billions left behind...only until we create off-world environments if we want 'em, and besides being left behind once the energy is clean as a result of solar or clean fusion, the place might be a darn nice place to stay even living in cities which many of us prefer anyhow.

As always,for every arguement there is a counterargument and its through that exchange ideas are concieved and made into workable plans. Check out the future tech websites that abound on the web..you might be surprised at what is being realistically proposed..I'm sure your congressman would be...Who knows what the future holds but if we use really hard science, and not just speculation based on mathematical models, but real science such as geology and glaciology we know that the earth is still in the ice age and it will come again and it could cause massive famine, not due to a crushing wall of ice but as a result of growning seasons cut short by frost which is in turn caused by a combination of factors among which could be space dust, reduced insolation, and the alighment of the continents themselves. History has shown these cold induced famines to arrive really fast and if that weren't enough the geological record shows that far from being unusual, climate changing impacts from space are sure to occur again and space developement is a great way to gain the technology we need to effectively identify them and do something smart about them. Warming? We should be so lucky.

You might not know this because you're not an economist, but evidently economists are the smartest guys on the block on every subject, including how to save the planet while making the major investors rich. Or maybe on private jets that economists fly to and from world environmental meetings they can actually adjust the oxygen but they always splurge and give themselves more oxygen 'cuz they know these things since they're economists. Cap and trade offset at the airport? The economists have shown that it will work beautifully!

Sorry...couldn't resist. When it comes to how the world works, evidently economists reign supreme...though their new clothing is a bit too revealing if you ask me.