Our computer models, with only 30% of the data available, suggest that these untested solid fuel boosters are powerful and safe. While we cannot be absolutely certain, we are still confident that your launch into space today will be routine. Bon voyage!

You should know better than to float that proposition in front of a BBS of space cadets; my answer is, we're good to go!

I don't think the parable maps exactly to global warming, though. It's one thing for me to accept the personal consequences of a booster explosion, but quite another when we're talking about, potentially in the worst-case scenarios, the extinction of our species. I'd say that a certain amount of conservatism is called for when doing the risk-benefit analysis. There remains a dissenting minority on the subject of global warming, but with the preponderance of scientific opinion saying it's real and human emissions are a major cause, we should pay attention, play the odds, and make some adjustments.

And adjustment is really all that's required. Too many of the self-styled rebuttals to the NAS paper are really political tirades about how dealing with the problem will lead straight to governmental tyranny and the End of the American Way and the rise of the New World Order. Reality is, the world didn't end when we started phasing out CFCs, we simply came up with less-destructive alternatives. It's twisted, but a fact that there's actually opportunity in facing up to the problem and finding creative ways to mitigate it. You know who developed an alternative to Dow's freon, right? Dow...after denying the problem for several years while its scientists quietly came up with a profitable answer. Where's our Yankee ingenuity?

You mentioned planting trees on another branch of the thread. I like that. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, then, but I recently heard a news item about a study that indicates that trees don't sequester nearly as much CO2 as believed. Sorry to be hazy on the details, it was the car radio, etc. Not that anybody planting trees is likely to get discouraged and stop. The trees are inherently valuable, and this news just means that we need more of them.

--Robert