i don't think there's any shortage of people willing to debate global warming, so i have to wonder how hard jp has tried to interview them. if you listen to jim and john, they cherrypick any scientific evidence they can find, and as far as they are concerned, the case is already closed. it doesn't matter to them that the northwest passage is open. if the arctic polar cap keeps melting, it will become much more efficient for shipping from europe to asia, as the northwest passage will be a much shorter route than the panama canal. but you can bet jp won't ever mention that.

for all the good information that jp provides, whenever he strays from economics and finance into science or politics, he sees what he wants to see. it's his show, and he can say what he wants, but he has a number of blind spots where he often gets things wrong.

I won't deny that J & J have their blind spots, but I'm even less convinced by the likes of Al Gore & co., whose motives are much more questionable and far less connected to any science I've ever seen on the subject. On reviewing the available material, the only definite conclusion I can reach is that this isn't a scientific debate so much as a polemic, and those rarely result in anything constructive.

Clearly there's no denying our impact on the planet, that much can be stated as fact. I'm just not convinced our resources are being directed towards a meaningful solution, if in fact one even exists. It could well be that the impact of 7 billion, soon to be 10 billion people on our planet simply can't be mitigated. Frankly, if our management of the current banking crisis is any indication of our ability, I'm not too hopeful on that count.

However, if there IS a solution, my well informed guess is that it starts by replacing coal as a power source ASAP, and to do that involves a rapid switch to nuclear power. There's your "infrastructure" project that's going to rescue the economy. I don't see any other option frankly. "Alternate Energy" is a complete waste of time, and capping carbon emissions seems like a a fool's errand to me. At the first sign of crisis the caps will come off and we're back to square one. The time & money spent on that boondoggle would be put to better use building 4th generation nuclear power plants whilst simultaneously switching to mass electric rail transportation.

Following that, we need to completely rid ourselves of the automobile - not make them electric, or hybrid, or hydrogen powered but simply remove them from the face of the earth. Try selling that to Congress, or anyone else for that matter, but if you examine the question closely, you'll see it eventually has to happen. Oil aside, far too many resources are consumed by this curse on mankind. It is the very definition of unsustainable.

Looking even further ahead, we need to prepare for the next ice age, an almost certain catastrophic asteroid impact, and of course the eventual death of our sun.

As for me, I can barely see past the end of next week.

ebear