extrodinary popular delusions redux

Oh for the good old days of tulipmania and the "South Sea Bubble". We do have however "The love of the marvelous and disbelief of the truth" and as in the past, abetted by the media. "Cornomania", "Anthropegenic caused global warming" and energy independence without domestic oil exploration qualify as the madness of crowds. We believe that CO2 creates global warming instead of being a a result of global warming without real science to support the theory. We believe that ethanol will result in independence from foreign oil and reduce pollution ( this, abetted by the huge push from agricultural interests and ADM ) and it is often cited that Brazil thru ethanol hs achieved energy independence; the truth however is quite different. Brazil imports 550 million bbls of oil a day in spite of doubling domestic production in the last ten years and ethanol is as polluting as petrol. The worst of our beliefs is that humans can do something serious about a degrading environment without population control,world population increased from 1.5 billion to 7 billion in one hundred years with concommitent use of resources. Human exhalation and flatulance therefore results in a fourfold increased contribution to CO2 and methane. Perhaps if everyone took two fewer breaths each minute and farted only three times a day we could solve all our problems.