Let's see.
Global warming is a big topic (the main topic?) of this thread. It is a threat for which substantial evidence exists, but debate rages. People state opinions and sometimes provide reasoned arguments for them. Trying to understand the processes and methods which given individuals use to arrive at their positions is useful IMO.
Hence comparing the methods of science, evidence, ideologies, etc, wrt to taking costly (or cheap) action against potential threats is very much on topic.
We have a few such examples to look at. Most recently the Iraq war and the WOT in general provide one look at how different perspectives view evidence for threats, and how willing they are to act and for what $ on such evidence.
I then provided another data point, namely AIDS and the threat of continued human meat consumption of closely related species. Here again we have some evidence, some controversy, known results of AIDS impact along with some projections for the continued impact. This allows us to decide if additional threats warrant action on some sort of cost/benefit analysis.
You might note that that Danish chap took just that approach in his famous "environmental" book where he concluded that the cost/benefit of fighting global warming was not good.
I think that how people responded wrt to Iraq, and how they would respond to meat eating of apes, and how they respond to global warming will indeed show a pattern. In particular I think something like this would emerge as the main decision making process for one group of people: 1) Intentioned threats by people require drastic action 2) unintentional threats from any source, but especially if caused by people, require minimal or no action. A different group of people will argue that threats should be evaluated based on the danger they pose, not on the intent of the source. |
