I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Even if don’t think there’s a change in climate happening, or even if you don’t think human intervention is a part of it, it just plain makes sense to pay a little attention to the climate and the environment in general. If it turns out that Al Gore is in fact wrong, well, the environment will still be a lot better off, and some people will get the pleasure of being smug.
If he is right, and people didn’t do anything because it would have cost money to do something…
Y’know, I don’t see the point of the fixation on whether it’s humans’ fault. That doesn’t matter. We have to deal with it anyway.
By Ahruman · 2007.10.12 22:24
Right, but if it’s because of human intervention, that means it’s much easier to reverse the effect.
By Jesper · 2007.10.12 22:29
So global warming comes down to Pascal’s Wager? I’d rather push the issue based on the evidence. It’s too easy to ignore “well, what if I’m wrong?”
By mdmunoz · 2007.10.12 23:39
Enough evidence is disputed by enough people that some people are just going to say “no, he’s wrong, I won’t do squat”. I think these people are selfish and looking for reasons to not have to do anything, but that’s another story.
By Jesper · 2007.10.13 09:29
M. Muñoz: I’m not sure where you got Pascal’s Wager from. Jesper said that the possibility of climate change, if considered inconclusive, at least warrants attention. I said that the cause of climate change is a parenthetical issue, since we have to deal with it regardless. Neither of these is a “let’s believe in it, just in case” position.
That said, the primary problem with Pascal’s Wager is the assumption that there’s only one valid concept of God. It falls apart because different concepts of God require different devotions, and simply believing all the options goes against the doctrines of many religions. (The secondary problem is that God might not like smart-arses.) There are not a bunch of conflicting concepts of global climate change that require opposite responses (and the climate certainly doesn’t care about our motivations), so those problems do not arise.
Besides, there will always be people who criticize, argue against and deny any given scientific theory, no matter how well-established. There are still flat-earthers, and geocentricists, and evolution-deniers, and continental-drift-deniers, and steady-state theorists. As time goes on, the concentration of scientists among these groups goes down.
The overwhelming majority of experts in the field believe that significant climate change is happening. This doesn’t prove them right – it is true that “consensus science” is an oxymoron – but it is far more likely that they are right than that they are wrong. That there are two positions to choose between does not imply that they have equal weight. The balance evidence and expertise is vastly on the “yes, it’s happening” side, and the time to react is yesterday.
By Ahruman · 2007.10.13 13:34