John, if you are going to jump on scientific thinking, you might not want to start with the assumption that there will be some huge cost. I don't know if there will be or not, but I can see ways that in the long term there may be no such cost (meaning, cost will be balanced by savings). I don't suppose anyone wants to do the math on how much of our weakened $ flows outward to buy oil?

I read the annual reports this spring of companies like DuPont, Dow, and General Electric. They are all remaking themselves as Green companies (if that is possible). They plan to make money on alternate energy and alternate materials (synthetic fabrics and fertilizer are made from petroleum now).

As for the probability of disaster if we don't change our ways: I am not the one to come up with numbers. We need a new person to start posting here who can address this. But, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of climate scientists who think the probabilty is high of major disruptive changes. I don't know about these state A state B changes in a decade or 2: don't know what the odds of that are.

Speaking of weakened $: for work I will be traveling to Europe: things will not be cheap in $.

Chris