Hi Joe, Brian, EnviroNetrs'

Thanks Joe, I don't have or spend enough time reading the Economist.
I have communicated with at least one of them when I was trying and failed 
to get NPR Science Friday to do a piece on Global Warming back a few years 
ago.

<Of course people and businesses are not maximising their economic self 
interest. They look for the short-term profit, not the economy. Why 
spend $3 on a light bulb when a 30-cent one would do the job? The fact 
that it consumes only 25% of the juice and lasts 6 times longer is not 
material, nor is the fact that, over 10 years, your 30 c bulb will cost 
you 3 times as much in replacement bulbs and electric power.>

In Joe's posting you will note that economists' seemed concerned that 
economics by itself should solve this problem and it has failed.  I would 
disagree with them since economics easily predicts overuse, and misuse of all 
things as part of the economic cycle, and financial reporting. So since they 
are economists, the economists go on a pathway of using only their selective 
bag of tricks to manipulate the masses.

Economically we can see in Brian's post a normal human rationale for only 
thinking in the short term and using 2 year planning or the next quarter's 
report to Wall Street, LondonStock, , , etc.

We see the same thing with the media on a grander scale as they go this way 
and that to create public readership and excitement.

Now we have this Climate Change Group doing the same by first giving us 
GLOOM and doom and then striving to make it seem easy. They too are failing 
the world.  From the story:   "Wolf, Wolf", as the boy who wants company, 
goes running back to the village one too many times before the real wolf is 
upon the sheep.

YiEngr, MA/NY DDave
Yours in Engineering, Dave