I can't help thinking we've seen this sort of thing before and everybody gets on the bandwagon, through no fault of their own, and they get sucked into the debate. Only this week at our ME society monthly meeting a technical presentation on lumieres ended up on a debate on global warming and the relative merits of CFL's pros and cons. Only a handful of the guys use this forum so I doubt it this thread that influenced the way the meeting went.
Other examples?
I spent 20+ years of my life contributing to the western worlds defence against the possibility of the Russian hordes overrunning us. Remember "duck and cover". In the end, when the wall came down and most of them turned out to be ordinary people, like us, who just wanted a quiet life.
Then we had that Y2K nonsense where countless millions were spent to avoid IT Armageddon. In NZ the mobile phone network failed briefly, but only because everybody decided to ring their mates around the world to wish them "Happy New Year Millennium" (we were the first to make it into 2000).
Then we had Bush and his cronies and that "Weapons of mass destruction" nonsense. They managed to whip us all into a frenzy and cause a war and in the end just because the Iraqi's had pissed off his dad.
The "Global war on terror" is yet another example, that's becoming the problem now and not the solution.
So I just see this global warming politically correct BS and just a platform or maybe smokescreen to give the politicians something to rally around and, maybe, distract us while they get on with some other hidden agenda.
Naive? Yes probably. Have I replaced all my incandescent bulbs with CFL's? Yes, have I started to replace Halogens with LED's? Yes, Have I just had double glazing installed throughout the house Yes, Have I availed myself of the Governments insulation grant? Yes. Do I floor the accelerator pulling away from the lights? Yes (hey we've got a 100km/h (60mph) speed limit so 0-60 is the only fun you can have). ;D
I suppose another analogy would be the tale of the Emperors Clothes. It just needs the little boy in the crowd to point out the Emperor has no clothes on and we can get over it.
Pete