This campaign does show just how far from reality an argument can go when it enters the "what if" range and one side of the other insists it must be weighed as an equal.

But if we are going to base arguments on "what if"s, then I wonder what-if we saw a sharp turn towards cooling after cutting down on co2, and we then saw massive failures of crops in the northern hemisphere due to early or late frosts, would we consider releasing more co2 into the atmoshpere to specifically compensate for the naturally low water vapor in the polar regions? After all, from history we do know that these kinds of cold snaps have occured and in the modern context famine might become more than just an unfortunate shortage, but lead to environmental degradation on a previously unexperienced level as conflicts increase over both energy and arable land, and in the worst case scenario; regional or even global war.

It seems whatever is possible, stability and secure footing might be as important as whether some of our ankles get wet.

...though there's some question as to just whom that is these days. Considering we have leadership which sees greater value in cash for new clunkers than it does for a manhattan style program to educate a generation of engineers and scientists. Instead the US ships those jobs overseas, or sends those students from overseas who recieve their advanced educations at our schools, back to their home because we only have enough space for the homeless refugees and their hungry families. Any sane country would actively recruite newly minted researchers and engineers to become permanent residents once they've gained their education...we kick 'em out...and this is the leadership that's supposed to know what to do on issues of climate (belief in big complex models without understanding them), space engineering...oh, too expensive,and education? Who's gonna save us when the shoe is on the other foot?

Will there be a day of protest over this? There should be.

I lived in the SF Bay Area for a couple of decades and while I recognize that in contrast to most of the rest of the country social protest is almost as formalized as a state dinner, and that in the bay area they are almost always organized to express left leaning sentiments, I think they are good even when I'm opposed to whatever it is they are pushing because they are very informative in surprising ways.

Which ever side one's affiliations are on, when one sees the power of people brought together one realizes that there as aspects to one's postions one might not have considered. Maybe it will change your mind (imagine law and order supporters finding themselves the object of police scrutiny and strong arm crowd control regardless of their personal actions), and you might find that the kind of corporate sponsorship which typically expresses itself to be different that what you might have expected. It's an eye opener and furthermore it give people an understanding of what it takes to get your issue into the "free press", and to re-frame the argument in a more genuine fashion than is typically done in our short attention span theater of a media as watched on TV.

Some become more involved in the original impulse that caused them to join a protest in the first place. Others are actually turned around for other reasons they might not have anticipated, but involvement by people on the streets is a very powerful expression that leadership should respect if not fear because ultimately they are the vote and some of the charades that pass for political movements and/or legislation defies any normally expereinced citizen expectations or realizations.

I cheer on every protestor I see and give 'em credit for taking some interest and moving away from the pathetic infotainment we are told by the media is the news.

I'm one who thinks that the concern over CO2 is way overblown, and think that those who are really focused on CO2 are wrong but not trying to perpetuate a hoax. I like Al Gore and glad that he's optimistic. There are lots of reasons to be optimistic because for the first time the world governements are beginning to work together to address the environmental impacts that, in contrast to the probably minor CO2 contribution to warming,are really pretty bad and pose a very real threat to the integrity of the ecosystems as we have come to depend on them.

Every day there are new discoveries and technologies which can address warming and can much more. To think that if we don't do something right now about CO2 or we face doom is the kind of motivation that will cause us to over-react and miss the other critical components we need to understand or worse; to cripple the very source of our industrial vigor that we as a species need if we are to get beyond the state we are in right now.

Space will not be reached by improved windmills and CFLs. What resources we have available should be applied to genuine game changing technologies like fusion, and space based solar and towards exploring and benefiting from the enormous resources that are there, only a few hundred miles away in the space beyond our gravity and atmosphere.

Developing an alternative to cold-war era balistic missile technology to reach space is more important than our leaders seem to realize and I hope that leadership in the US and around the world begin to develope innovated launch systems using electromagnetic mass driving rail guns or similar systems so that we can begin an era of inexpensive payload deliveries and begin taking advantage of the clean energy of solar up above the atmosphere.