I re-read my first post to check on what I said, and on further thought, I have decided that I was being a bit unfair to the scientists. ALL good science tries to point out that there may be flaws in their studies and it could easily turn out differently. Had they expressed certainty one way or the other, it would not have been good science, and it was inappropriate to refer to their unwillingness to be pinned down as "CYA." I am, however, reserving judgment on the news writer who selected specific points he wanted to make.

why is it that the environmentalists always seem to be in some sort of conspiracy against free enterprise?

Well, moving away from the scientists and into the political activists, the short answer is because they are. Specifically, the radical wing of the environmental movement is, and while numerically they're still a minority in the movement, over the past couple of decades they've become the tail wagging the dog of the rest of the movement. Greenpeace and Earth First are still not on the same page, but they used to be a lot further apart than they are now. The movement has become a refuge for 60s socialists, and they're poisoning the waters (pun intended).

Again, it should be noted that the main culprits are not usually the scientists doing the work, but members of pressure groups or others with agendas who pick out what they want to hear and use it to push what they want. To be fair, this is also true of industrial interest groups. Whenever you see a paper referred to in an advocacy article, it always pays to look it up and see for yourself. Unfortunately, many journals are pay-per-article.

On the first Earth Day, it was all about cleaning up the environment, getting the filth out of the air and rivers, and getting industry to live in harmony with the environment. In more recent years, it's started to become about crippling industries and Western technological civilization, and in the most extreme cases, a hostility toward the human race in general. Look up Deep Ecology or the Wildlands Project sometime.

Try and think of a single case where the environmental movement has given a solution to a problem--any problem--that has not involved large increases in government power and a decrease in individual freedom.

Back in 1989, when cold fusion was still a hot topic, I assumed that environmentalists would welcome something like this with open arms. Some did. But the response of others was a real wake-up call.

My dad worked for Green Giant when I was in high school. His job was to deal with pollution issues, and I learned a lot about how industry works on this first hand. I went out with him for tests of waste lagoons, local rivers, and other things. When Pillsbury/US Foods bought Green Giant out, he was promoted to do the same job for a large corporation. In the 1980s, my Dad was instrumental in pulling PCBs out of Pillsbury's plants, and many other projects.

In later years, before his retirement, he could never figure out why nothing they did was ever good enough. He told me about regulations that required water to be discharged that was so much cleaner than the river water that it actually wasn't good for the river. He told me about rules being changed arbitrarily, and interest groups that didn't seem to know what they really wanted.

I told him that the reason for all this is that they didn't want his company to clean up their act. They wanted his company dead. There would never be a day when these environmental interest groups would sit back and say, "yes, well done. Thanks. We'll leave now."

A lot of people here would be pleased to know that he thought I was nuts, too, but he was very glad to retire.

You should know that most, if not all, of the people on this board are quite rational about their environmental opinions. As one example, a lot of them see nuclear power as a reasonable part of any solution to CO2 emissions.