[Dean's World] Dave Price: The Global Warming Argument

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Posted by Dave Price:
The Global Warming Argument
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1187279012.shtml


   As long as we're on the topic, I'll join the party and chime in as
   well.
   There are essentially three assertions that warmenists need to prove
   to make the case that huge amounts of money need to be spent to
   prevent global warming (it's important to keep in mind that in the
   scientific method the bar for heretics/denialists is much lower; the
   null hypothesis does not bear the burden of proof).
   1. Global temperatures are rising.
   2. This global temperature rise is caused primarily by human activity.
   3. Global warming will have profoundly negative consequences in a
   meaningful time frame (say, 100 years).
   Even with [1]the recent GISS embarassment and weak underlying data,
   the first is almost certainly true. The second is believed to be true
   by most scientists, though there are vocal dissenters who point to
   solar irradiance, other natural variability, and warmer periods in the
   Earth's past prior to homo spaiens' industrialization. The third
   assertion is the one that really doesn't prove out very well: sea
   levels are not expected to rise enough to seriously affect humanity
   (and recent ice core samples from Greenland indicate catastrophic
   flooding is even less [2]likely than previously thought), and other
   putative negative consequences are offset by probable positive
   consequences (generally speaking, in human history warming has
   generally been beneficial, allowing longer growing seasons, better
   hunting/foraging, less need for heating fuel, reduced misery, and more
   biodiversity).
   The third assertion is also the focus of an increasing number of
   claims based on little or no scientific evidence, from the notion that
   global warming has created a [3]plague of feral cats to the idea
   [4]earthquakes and tsunamis or [5]increased hurricane frequency are
   caused by climate change. This kind of alarmism distorts the debate
   and tends to discredit even the valid scientific arguments by
   assocation; warmenists need to be more careful in this regard and
   police their own if they want climate change to be taken seriously.
   Finally, it has to be kept in mind that there exists [6]both a large
   economic incentive and an ideological imperative for warmenists to
   prove their case, which should make any independent oberver wary of
   their claims. Money and politics rarely make for good science.

References

   1. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1186752331.shtml
   2. http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming073107m.htm
   3. http://www.livescience.com/animals/070606_gw_pets.html
   4. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006079
   5. http://patterico.com/2007/07/30/notes-from-a-proud-global-warming-skeptic-part-10/
   6. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220