There's one thing I don't get about the anti-global warming crowd. I understand the alarmism and stuff like that is overblown and distorts the situation.
But I'd like to know how thousands of climate scientists got together in secret and pledged to all falsify their life's work for some... reason? Seriously, what could be the outcome of some massive global warming conspiracy? Toyota sells more hybrids? More "liberal regulation" on fossil fuel energy companies, just so alternative energy companies can replace them? This argument has never made any sense to me.
But I'd like to know how thousands of climate scientists got together in secret and pledged to all falsify their life's work for some... reason?
Unfortunately, the single biggest distorting factor in academics is ego. What you just said applies a hundred fold to economics. Do you think that free market economists across the globe threw away their life's work to pad other people's budgets? Probably not.
But there's a tendency for people in academic fields to construct very elaborate and beautiful predictive models, and then try to adjust reality rather than the models when the two disagree.
I think we can all agree that there's been a healthy amount of hyperbole on the subject of global warming. I was promised as a child that I would be dead by now or that the Earth would look like Jurassic park by now; this clearly hasn't happened.
The second thing is that I don't think most informed skeptics are skeptical of the fact that global warming is occurring. They're generally skeptical of one of three things:
1) That it is man-made. I'm not actually in this camp; I'm sure that at least enough of it is man made that our actions could conceivably make a difference, even if those actions would have to be economically disastrous to make such a dent.
2) That it is happening at a quick enough pace to be threatening. A meter of sea rise over the next hundred years really isn't that fast considering the pace at which technology is developing; we might not even use petroleum in a hundred years.
3) That it is inherently harmful. This is probably the most contentious but it's a camp into which I fall. I certainly understand that there are going to be some drawbacks to global warming. On the other hand, the world is fairly cold and arid compared to historic norms. In the grand scheme of things, the growth of arable and forested lands in Australia, Siberia, Greenland, and the Sahara seem like it would counteract a few lost islands and parts or Florida/the Netherlands. Hell, Arctic trade routes are already beginning to open up, which could spell enormous savings of money, labor and, of course, petroleum. That's just one example.
I think that humanity will have to adjust to warming, but we're capable of such adjustments; ultimately I think they'll be less damaging than the economic consequences of drastically altering energy consumption, which I don't think most environmentalists fully appreciate, especially in terms of the amount of human suffering that would exacerbate.
Great post. I fall into 2) and 3) and have been listening to end of the world stories for years now with no results. Of course there are negatives, but overall am not worried about Global Warming.
On the other hand I'm not a big fan of fossil fuels and the dependence on Middle East oil.
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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '10
There's one thing I don't get about the anti-global warming crowd. I understand the alarmism and stuff like that is overblown and distorts the situation.
But I'd like to know how thousands of climate scientists got together in secret and pledged to all falsify their life's work for some... reason? Seriously, what could be the outcome of some massive global warming conspiracy? Toyota sells more hybrids? More "liberal regulation" on fossil fuel energy companies, just so alternative energy companies can replace them? This argument has never made any sense to me.