> > 2% of GDP fades into noise compared with projected future growth in GDP.
>
> Not really, when global GDP only grows a few percent each year... '2% of GDP' might seem
> small, but if we rephrase it as 'half of annual growth' or something more realistic?

Let's run the numbers, shall we? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy#Economy over the part of this decade that has been measured, gross world product has grown an average of 3.1% per year, compounding annually. Projecting forward 20 years that means that we expect gross world product to increase 84%. If we go carbon neutral and the final gross world product ends up at 2% less than this simple projection, it grows about 80.5% instead. Thus we'd reduce the amount of total growth by about 4%. Take a 20th power and we find that the amount of growth in the end is reduced by a factor of 0.2% per year, compounding annually. Note that when I say 0.2% I don't mean that it would be 2.9% instead of 3.1%. Instead I mean that it would be 3.0934..% instead of 3.1%.

The per year impact on economic growth rates could quite literally be missed as a rounding error. I think I am quite justified in saying that this is noise compared with our projected future economic growth. But the projected environmental catastrophe we address most definitely is not noise.

> > It entirely depends on how that money is diverted...OTOH it is hard to
> overestimate how prone politicians are to make stupid politically motivated decisions.
> But if they do that then I blame the politicians, and not the cause.
>
> "My proposal assumes that men are angels and wishes are fishes; assuming that, everything
> will work out great! We'll have our cake of carbon reduction & not eat the cost of
> spending 2% of global GDP. And if it doesn't work, I blame anything but my proposal."

Ridicule is always easier than thought. You made a list of ways in which you thought this effort could take lives. But your list is weak. Worse yet you haven't even tried to think about how global warming takes lives.

1. Projections by scientists say global warming threatens food supplies, resulting in potential starvation.
2. Projections by the CIA predict substantially increased geopolitical instability. This is likely to result in wars killing lots of people.
3. The World Health Organization claims that 2.4 million people die each year from air pollution. Today. Continued increases in industrialization on the current model would increase this figure substantially. A move to seriously replace fossil fuels would save many to all of these lives.

After considering those factors I think that I am on solid grounds to claim that a serious attempt to solve global warming, even if it is done stupidly, is likely to save far more lives than the resulting potentially poor allocation of resources will cost. With the difference measured in the millions of lives/year. (Depending on what value you give each life, this alone could justify the whole project without even considering longer-term consequences.)

Now please justify the energy I put into this post. Please come back with a response showing that you've read and thought about what I said, and either found it thought provoking, or found that you have substantive criticism based on verifiable facts.