My neighbor who lurks here reports that her niece can't hear arguments against man-made climate catastrophe; she fends them all off with the assumption that they're funded by the Koch brothers. If she could listen, this would be a good place to start: a fair-minded fellow who tries to make basic, non-threatening points to a group of nice college kids. The Q-and-A session afterwards suggests that not much got through, but you never know. For every well-meaning question posed with a confused lack of rigor, there may have been several kids quietly wondering if the whole thing makes as much sense as everyone's been telling them it does all these years.
It's very discouraging to me that it's so difficult to concentrate anyone's attention on the failure of our climate models to make verifiable predictions, let alone on more difficult questions like "Even assuming you're correct about the probable severity of the problem, is the policy you're proposing to cure it actually likely to cure it?" and "If so, at what cost, and how does that cost compare to the benefit?"
Also, the documentary "Cool It- the Skeptical Environmentalists Guide to Global Warming" featuring Bjorn Lomborg is pretty persuasive, as it takes the position that global warming may be real, and may be man made, but that it's demonstrable that efforts to do anything about it are a huge waste of money and that the funds wasted on any of those efforts could be used to help people in need far more effectively.
ReplyDeleteYou have to wean them off it, chipping away a little of their givens at a time.
It's also frustrating that the "global warmists" never seem to give even a nod of the head to any positive potential consequences of a warming planet, or that different areas of the planet may experience different results (if, indeed, global warming is happening at all, much less due to human activities.)
ReplyDeleteBut, just for the fun of it, taking warming as a given, What if the planet responds by increasing plant life? What if it increases arable land, giving humans the opportunity to grow more/different nourishing food? What if the inhospitable locations and the comfortably habitable locations on the planet simply move around to different places on the planet with no discernible net gain or loss?
Noooooo. It's all one-sided negativity and "Chicken Little" hysteria.
And that's even without the argument that, given that models fail to confirm their hypotheses looking backwards, why on earth (literally) should anyone expect them to accurately foretell a global future that has so many variable inputs?
Why not point out the positives such changes would bring? Mostly because it's not about what would change, it's about having another stick to beat on capitalism with. I am sad to say most environmentalist movements are like watermelons. Green on the outside, Red inside.
ReplyDelete"But, just for the fun of it, taking warming as a given, What if the planet responds by increasing plant life? What if it increases arable land, giving humans the opportunity to grow more/different nourishing food? What if the inhospitable locations and the comfortably habitable locations on the planet simply move around to different places on the planet with no discernible net gain or loss?
ReplyDeleteNoooooo. It's all one-sided negativity and "Chicken Little" hysteria."
If that's the case, then pointing out to those people how reactionary and un-forward thinking they are about climate should jolt them a little!