"I support moving toward alternative energy sources, primarily nuclear for the short term, and allowing oil and gas prices to continue to rise to drive other alternatives. I would support this if there were no climate issues at all. Oil ain't gonna last forever. R.L. seems to feel this way, too, but I won't put words in his mouth. I have heard similar ideas from other liberals. They aren't all Green looneys by any means. And not all conservatives want to rape the environment. Remember that."

Well should govt bail out GM and all their mis-management?
Should govt paid car makers to build hybrids? Should non hybrids have higher taxes? Frankly I wouldn't care if the big three when bankrupt, of course no conservative or liberal who involved in politics wants that. If the big three went bankrupt we might get cars which a public wanted, instead because of their political power the public gets screwed year after year and we have industries which essentially managed by govt.

"I don't support thinly disguised socialist agendas like Kyoto, whose sole purpose, like most other U.N.-type efforts, was to penalize the West, harvest its wealth for their own purposes, and let countries like China off scot-free."

I don't think they wanted to harvest US wealth, I think there purpose is mostly to distroy capitalism. Their purpose is to enslave humankind, "to save it from itself". The present Europe is their paradise.

"A lot of the data and conclusions on both sides are politically driven. It makes the noise difficult to filter out."

I don't buy that. Tom you are buying the Liberal line about big bad Oil companies. This debate is mostly involving pseudo science vs science.

"If there is climate change, it's going to have to be dealt with from a high-tech vantage point. We no longer have the option of going back to live in yurts powered by windmills. There are too many of us."

I like it when liberals decide they want to live in yurts and be powered by windmills. I wish more would do this. But far too few take this option and it certainly is an option that is available to them. Of course they will probably fairly rapidly turn into rednecks and do horrible things like oppose govt taxations. We do have those movie star folks that like to pretend they are living in "Yurts and are power by windmills", but it's more a fashion statement than anything resembling real change in lifestyle.

"In fact, all human-caused warming issues aside, simple natural climate change, or natural disasters, will need to be met by a high-tech civilization. I don't see Green Utopia, with its geodesic domes and solar panels, launching an effort to stop an asteroid coming this way."

But the good news is they will die from "natural causes".

"If we have a problem, fix it with methods that will allow our culture to generate the surplus power and wealth that are needed to do the things we will want to do and maybe have to do someday."

"If we have a problem". Define what the problem is. Lets say the human affect is we are adding a full 1 C to global temperature. No one vaguely serious is saying that humans have already added 1 degree C to global temperature, but say we have or we will. Is this really a problem? The planet since a few thousand ago has "naturally" added a couple of degree at least to the Global temperature.
Isn't the only forseeable serious problem to start of a ice age or catastrophic warming. Is this what you mean by "a problem"?
It seems what we need is more scientific understanding. Why do we have these cycles of warming and ice ages? Could humans do anything to prevent an ice age from occuring. Regardless of humans exising on this planet, we will have an ice age sometime in the future. And we know that it's wasn't Humans putting CO2 in the air that caused the numerous past ice ages.
If we knew enough, then I would say the best solution is to do things which "terraform" Earth, as a way to solve the problem. If you look at the hottest areas on Earth, the most obvious are Saharra desert and Austrailia interior. What if we could de-desertify these areas so the temperature dropped by 20 degrees or more so they were at similar temperatures as other regions and at same time turn this into carbon sinks of forests etc. If we looking projects on the scale of tens of billions of dollars this might be cheaper any most regulations and be good instead mostly a waste of time. If we had climate models which were reliable we could the macro affects of such projects.