Hello there again.

It seems to me there are several significant parallels between the current debate on whether Man's activities are contributing to global warming and the former debate over whether cigarette smoking contributes to the frequency of lung cancer.

In both cases the event can occur without the alleged causative agent's presence. The Earth warmed before Man, and people who never smoked get lung cancer. There is not a 1 to 1, cause and effect tie.

Second, in both cases powerful corporate interests contributed to clouding the issue in the name of profit. Their concern is not what the evidence shows, but in persuading enough people there is SOME doubt that nothing coercive will be done.

And those interests are abetted by people who are afraid their lifestyle might be impacted, who are unwilling to make the temporary sacrifices to accomodate reality. These people didn't want to feel that their smoking might be detrimental to their health, a belief now regarded as ludicrous.

And now the same psychological syndrome is operating to try to convince them that their lifestyles, SUVs, fossil fuels, eradicating vegetation and so on is not detrimental to the Earth's ability to support life as we know it. We will soon regard those notions as silly as the previous denial of the impact of cigarettes on health.

In both cases it's an unwillingness to accept responsibility for one's activities, an inability to accept change, with the rationalizations for those processes funded by greed.

Arf