Check out this lecture by visionary physicist David Deutsch, presented on the TedTalks site. The heart of it is a fascinating inquiry into the uniqueness of human life and human knowledge, but it includes -- almost incidentally -- with some real wisdom on the global warming debate. As I was listening, and I could hear the subject turn to global warming, I rolled my eyes -- okay, I thought, here comes the politically correct part. But I was most pleasantly surprised. Here's a really unique pro-growth and pro-freedom angle on it:

The rational thing for a layman to do is take seriously the prevailing scientific theory. And according to that theory, it's already too late to avoid a disaster, because if it's true that our best option at the moment is to prevent CO2 emissions, then that is already a disaster by any reasonable measure. So it's already too late to avoid it, and it probably has been too late ever since before anyone realized the danger.

Now the lesson of that seems clear to me, and I don't know why it isn't informing public debate. It is that we can't always know. When we know of an impending disaster, and now to solve it at a cost less than the cost of the disaster itself, then there's not going to be much argument really. But no precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. Hence we need a stance of problem fixing, not just problem avoidance.

It's true that an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure, but that's only if we know what to prevent. If you've been punched on the nose, then the science of medicine does not consist of teaching you how to avoid punches. I medical science stopped seeking cures and focused on prevention only, then it would achieve very little of either.

The world is buzzing at the moment with plans to force reductions in gas emissions at all costs. It ought to be buzzing with plans to reduce temperature, and with plans to live at the higher temperature -- and not at all costs, but efficiently and cheaply. Some such plans exist, such as swarms of mirrors in space to deflect the sunlight away, and encouraging aquatic organisms to eat more carbon dioxide. At the moment, these things are fringe research. They are not central to the human effort to face this problem or problems in general.

And with problems that we are not aware of yet, the ability to put right -- the the sheer good luck of avoiding indefinitely -- is our only hope of not just solving problems, but of survival. So take two stone tablets and carve on them. On one of them, carve "Problems Are Soluable." And on the other one, carve "Problems Are Inevitable."