What does that have to do with global warming? Or are you suggesting that human intellect is limited to only being able to make things dirty? If so, I find that offensive. Speak for yourself.
If Global warming doesn't have negative impacts, or the impacts are less than that of progress, it doesn't seem like much of a problem. How one measures the impacts is complicated, those suggested are a portion of the possible ways to do so.
It isn't that hard, technologically or economically, to simply clean up the messes we make. Factories can put scrubbers on their stacks. Auto-exhaust can be cleaned. What is the big deal?
I haven't the foggiest idea how big a deal cleaning up is. As far as I can tell, neither do you. First off, the US can afford to clean up our industries as all the really dirty ones have been offshored so what's left are the ones that can be run efficiently. And second, I'm unaware of any "scrubbers" or auto-exhaust cleaners that will deal with CO2, which has become the big point of contention in the GW thing. They've discussed ways of dealing with CO2, but I don't think it's practical to sequester the CO2 from your car, which would require your car run on something other than a hydrocarbon, which is certainly a "big deal" for most people.
The fact that industry and consumers whine like little b----es doesn't mean anything. So what if factories have to buy scrubbers? So what if petroleum refineries have to be more careful about their product? So what if car owners need to watch their emissions? People already waste their money on utterly stupid things, diverting some of that to cleanup isn't going to hurt the economy at all.
I know nothing about what makes the economy work, and it's obvious you don't either, so I guess it's pointless to discuss.
I am sorry, but I find the suggestion that progress will be hindered in any way by trying to clean up our act to be remarkably ignorant. Odds are that it would accelerate progress.
Heh... "if you disagree with me you're remarkably ignorant, the odds I just removed from posterior storage say so."
I've stopped getting involved with these threads since they pretty universally devolve into people yelling at each other about terribly complicated issues they don't understand. For the record (not that my opinion matters in the slightest since I don't really understand either), it's become an issue where I take a purely pragmatic approach.
We need to continue to invest in cleaner technologies, but there's no way that the world is going to suddenly switch over from a petroleum based economy. We need to determine what the actual effects of GW will be (and asking your readers ain't exactly global), and how best to deal with them. Last I heard the "best case" actions weren't going to stop GW, just slow it down, so clearly we need to figure out how to deal with it's effects, whatever they are. So we do what we always do, deal with environmental realities and go on with our lives.
In the mean time, we can keep calling each other idiots to demonstrate that our brilliant analysis of chaotic systems is utterly superior to everyone elses.
