Sure let's replace one problem with another. I worked for Dupont at Savannah River Plant for 2 summers prior to going to grad school. Dupont is a recognized leader in safety within the chemical industry. Nuclear safety awareness seemed a high priority. I was offered a job at the pilot facility to store waste in a glass form. I was going to take it if I didn't go to grad school. I was convinced that nuclear production and waste could be handled safely. To some extent I still do, but I have a lot more experience with what can go wrong in chemical processing and how frequent operator error is. There is also the not so small matter of Dupont abandoning the site after numerous environmental problems were made public.

While I still believe production and waste can be handled safely, I know that the level of safety will decrease with time as equipment ages unless very good maintenance programs are in place. This is often difficult in a normal chemical plant under cost cutting pressures, it will be even more difficult when dealing with the added risk of radiation. I think nuclear propulsion for space probes and initial manned missions is fine due to the limited scale, but I do not think it is a reliable long term solution for Earth. I'd be fine with it as a short term solution until fusion becomes available, but I understand the level of safeguards required make nuclear plants expensive. That in turn requires long facility life times to pay back investment.

As for your scientist self interest comment I said "I have seen an amazing amount of believing what is convenient or favorable to self interest even among scientists when it comes to making their job easier or avoiding an additional bit of work." While this was meant to support the tendency for humans to avoid problems such as global warming it in no way implied I believe scientists are selfless. I'm simply saying it is obvious the anti-greenhouse side is the one primarily motivated by self interest.

I'm sure even you would admit even the rare totally idealistic totally selfless scientist still has to seek funding to do research. It is silly to claim that act negates any altruistic intent. I'm sure you would also admit businesses seek to maximize profits and avoid unneccessary costs. Scientists seek to understand. It is quite obvious which side would tend to uncover the issue and which to avoid it. I'm sure there are good intentions and bad ones on both sides as well as shameless self promoters, but that doesn't change the primary balance of self interest. At any rate, it would be far better to discuss the evidence that try to try to dtermine who is the most selfish. I am simply responding to a point you tried to make.

Your Enron comment totally misses the point. Even it indicates the cheif focus on making a buck. Any change in how money is spent can benefit someone. The issue is that there are far more companies that view this as a threat to their profits and are lobbying against doing anything. I haven't studied Kyoto enough to know whether it is good or bad. I certainly believe there are many environmentalist extremists that don't have a clue technically and are basically ludites unable to evaluate rational alternatives and unwilling to balance environmental risks with other potential benefits.

Regards,
Mark