i must say that i'm much happier with the climate-change people since their chastening. that the scientist who predicts the most thorough and imminent apocalypse is morally superior to his fellows is incompatible with anyone producing credible scientific evidence; the motivations are way too detached from the procedures: you need it to turn out a certain way. at any rate, these folks seem a lot more cautious now in stating their own evidence, as well they should be. so at this point i'm willing to say with some caution that i do think the world's getting warmer due to release by human beings of greenhouse gasses etc and that it is likely to cause problems. and i'm willing to talk about, you know, reasonable responses.

now on the other hand if these folks were right that we'll all die a week from saturday (and presuming that they were not right when they said we'd all die a week ago saturday), then they failed to save the world and we should never have questioned for a moment anything they ever said. and this period of complacency where we're not galvanizing all world governments into zeroing out their carbon immediately is actually responsible for the end of the world: a lot to put on the shoulders of the people that leaked their memos. but i think we're likely to get more realistic assessments now than then, and be able to put this issue in balance with other problems etc in a more rational way. of course any way you look at it, our response is going to be inadequate. we are, after all, human beings, the most morally and intellectually incompetent species that evolution has so far permitted to continue.