But his honor is pure and his courage as well,
And he’s fair and he’s true and he’s boring as hell-
And he’ll go to the grave as an angry old man.

Joe,

You just don’t get it. There is a limit to the number of people that are going to buy into your kind of disaster mongering and those people are already fully supportive of aggressive action. However, the majority of the population is much less credulous and understands the issue is more complex than you would like to believe.

Roger’s moderate and sensible approach will reach more people than your fire and brimstone ever will. In my own case, Roger’s arguments have convinced me to reconsider my position on a modest carbon tax provided the proceeds are spent on renewables and R&D.

I realize you are probably feeling pretty confident with Obama and his cabinet picks but you may want to take a look at what happened to Rudd in Australia after his debut at Bali. The recent developments in EU also don’t bode well for progress on emissions cuts. To make matters worse, China is starting to send signals that it will not be able to keep buying US treasuries at the rate which will put severe financial constraints on Obama administration. I am willing to bet that aggressive action on climate will be pretty low on the list of priorities when it comes time to make spending choices.

The bottom line is you will likely find that Roger’s recommendations will be the only way to achieve any progress on this issue and insisting on more will simply give people an excuse to be fatalistic (i.e. there is nothing we can do so we shouldn’t even bother trying).

I see that Joe Romm deleted your second comment on his site (but not before I had seen it)

Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding. I look forward to seeing your future comments on the analysis of cap and trade as applied to acid rain and the implications for GHG mitigation.

Action on climate have been delayed by people like him, I mean fanatics, and not by more moderate people, like you. By wanting to score all their point with one grand slam, instead of one at a time, they give the all the chances to other to show the flaws of their position.

If it wasn’t for such fanatics, who reject any action that they don’t agree with under the pretense that it is not enough, there would have been a lot more that would have been done.

I guess it is easier to blame others for our own failure.

“Following Pielke’s “specific policies” would inevitably result in the self-destruction of humanity as we know it. “