I do see your point that in some sense we make infinite many implicit decisions all the time, but I think the word really refers specifically to the intentional

I do see your point that in some sense we make infinite many implicit decisions all the time, but I think the word really refers specifically to the intentional act of creating a position. Though that's a semantic argument and not really important because my main point in the above comments was that this is not a now or never issue. Inaction today isn't a commitment of any kind, because the same options will be available tomorrow. Do you mean that we should (oof, I hate to bring "should" into this) sometimes maintain the status quo even if doing so doesn't have the highest expected outcome for us? No, certainly not. I mean that we should maintain the status quo until we can reasonably estimate those expected outcomes and their costs/benefits (ask questions first, shoot later). This article is arguing that we don't yet have those reasonable estimates. I think the "innocent until proven guilty" approach is and expected value approach. Public loss of faith in the system is a huge cost (probably much bigger than letting the average criminal go free). So I think there's an implicit cost/benefit analysis there. There are also costs associated with (at least some of) the proposed global warming solutions. I'm thinking specifically of cap and trade, a system with far reaching economic consequences we can't fully understand until it's actually implemented. So before we implement it, we'd better know with some degree of certainty that the current situation is bad enough to warrant a potentially dangerous economic experiment. On the other hand, I think investment in alternative energy is a relatively low cost decision (sort of a "what the hell, it can't hurt").