No Tim. Number 2) is not false. Your claim that it isn't true is false.
I figured there was a decent chance that you meant that, but you didn't say that. OTOH I didn't claim it wasn't true. I only claimed that the combination of all the points wasn't true. I don't think it can reasonably be said that it isn't true, there isn't the evidence for that. But I would also say that 2, which also includes 1 the way it was worded, can't simply be said to be true either. That statement would be that the world has warmed, is warming, and will warm, and all 3 of those are overwhelmingly (not just partially, or even mostly) because of human emissions of greenhouse gases. It couldn't be said to simply be true because past warming was obviously for multiple reasons (and much of it occurred before significant human emissions of CO2), present warming isn't really solidly establish (I'd say the present trend is for warming, but over a shorter period, there seems to be a pause in the trend, still shorter and its just noise, present in this context isn't well defined because obviously it can't mean right at this second).
But 2 isn't an unreasonable thing to think.
What really isn't established is 4, 5 and 6.
Now for 6), is your argument that unless it can be done at no cost at all, it isn't worth doing?
Nothing I posted remotely resembled such an idea, or hinted at it in any way. You should be able to recognize the difference between "any cost at all" and "global economic catastrophe".
The available evidence is that the cost will be massive if your talking about rapid and sustained cuts. 70 percent plus cuts in a generation or two would be at least massive, and quite likely amount to a catastrophe worse then the warming its trying to prevent. Keeping total emissions static or even small cuts might be reasonably doable, expensive, but unlikely to be "massively expensive" compared to the scale of the world economy (even if such dollar figures would normally get that label), and very unlikely to be catastrophic.
That brings us to the other point in part 6. - Cost Effective - The cost don't need to be a disaster in order to want to avoid them if the benefit isn't all that large. |
