Comment submitted by L. L. Smith

The sender is a semiretired energy economist with considerable agricultural experience as well as experience with combustion, energy conservation, petrochemical manufacture, petroleum refining and renewables, such as bioenergy, photovoltaic, solar thermal, waves and wind. The rationale for regulating greenhouse gases, including CO2, is simple. We don't know much for certain about this subject, but we do have a very good sense of the relative odds, and they are these : If we do nothing about Global Warming and we are wrong, the consequences will be horrendous and in many cases irreversible. In money terms, they will be much greater than the money we would waste, if we were to do something and it turns out to have been unnecessary. And by the way, why should we worry about a low probability of wasting money on the mitigation of Global Warming, when we happily wasted so much more on our "Iraq adventure" ? Why this sudden concern for "fiscal responsibility" when so much blood and treasure has been thrown away for reasons which turned out to be entirely phony ? [ We can be certain about that ! ] Cordially, Lewis L. Smith mmbtupr@aol.com