Artful Dodger:

> And BTW, this is the exact kind of dishonesty I'd expect from someone who doesn't care for where the facts lead.

Isn't that what people say about those "climate studies" produced by oil companies trying to prove that carbon dioxide emmissions are benign? Much of the opposition to global warming reminds me of the opposition that tobacco companies had when tobacco was found to be a carcinogen.

Most scientists out there are well aware that statistical inference based on long-term climatological data is open to interpretation. After reviewing that data it has been proven that global warming does not exist. The question is: is pollution good or bad? If carbon dioxide does not produce global warming, is it OK to release billions of tons of it into the atmosphere? To me it is not a matter of whether the statsitistical data can be interpreted one way or another, but whether pollutions is bad or not.

If pollution is bad, how do you decrease it? Capitalism has proven one thing: the only language capitalists understand is the language of money. The only way pollution is going to decrease is to make it count where it matters, and that is in the pockets of those who produce the pollution. Those companies that oppose pollution taxes do it for only and only one reason: they are too cheap to do their fair share. It is cheaper to pay somebody to discredit science than it is to pay taxes. The tobacco lobby proved that decades ago, and today we see a similar thing with CO2 emmissions.

Even if global warming does not exist, is it wrong to decrease pollution? And if the only way polluters are going to stop is by taxing them, then what should we do? What do you propose then? How do you decrease pollution? Just say to people "stop" and hope that they will out of the goodness of their own hearts? In capitalism people do things only out of the goodness of their own pocketbooks.

We can keep polluting as if nothing is wrong. It is our grandchildren who will have to deal with the increase in desertification in the planet. Then let's use a reinterpretation of statistical data to ignore the problem and let's pretend nothing is worng. As always, it will be the poor of the world who will pay the price, and the future generations will deal with the consequences.