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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (25222)	7/26/2006 10:23:33 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541753

The aggravating thing about this "global warming debate" aka politicization is that ya'll just keep saying, over and over again, "there's a consensus, there's a consensus." And the rest of us say, "OK, now what?" And the reply is, "you're a denier, you're a denier!" Seriously, "OK, now what?" I'd say "put up or shut up" but that would be rude, and also ineffective. But it would be really welcome if you'd just answer the question. "OK, now what?"

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (25222)	7/31/2006 9:38:04 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541753

But the clever debater will show that the cornucopian is focused only on human welfare in the very short term. If he is so clever, he may convince people of that with his rhetoric, but that hardly makes it true. Unless by very short term you mean at least several hundred years. Human welfare has been improving strongly for at least that length of time. They will cite clean air and clean water as successes. This is the problem of induction with a twist. It is not just faith that current trends can be endlessly extrapolated into the future, The contrary position also extrapolates current trends in to the future. But apparently all the good trends are doomed to end, while the bad ones can continue for much longer and eventually end in disaster... I suppose eventual disaster is near certainty. For example the earth will become rather inhospitable when the sun goes red giant. But nothing short of that is really an inevitable disaster. but faith that problems which could derail those felicitous trends and for which there are currently no solutions will be miraculously solved. Nothing miraculous about it. People solve problems, alleviate other problems, and learn to avoid or live with still more problems, and they have been doing that as long as there have been people. That doesn't mean its impossible that attempts could fail, but success does not take miracles. To offer a definite date in the future for anything (accept maybe recognized holidays) is a fib. The cornucopian will easily trip up anyone claiming to be an ecological truthteller and turn him or her into a ecological liar. The calendar is already littered with disaster predictions that have not (yet) come true. And very few of those failed predictions resulted from "cornucopians" pushing for exact dates. Mostly they where apparently sincerly beliefs of the doom sayers, volunteered freely and with a sort of bleak enthusiasm. That doesn't mean other predictions won't also be false. But it should give pause to the worst of the doomsayers. the cornucopian also tells us not to bother with insurance in the form of mitigating global warming or creating a sustainable society. The analogy is a pretty bad one. Those actions don't resemble insurance, and if they are insurance many of the plans on offer have a very high premium. Few would be against steps to mitigate global warming in principle, few would be against the idea of moving away from the use of resources that we might run out of. What people are against is specific plans to deal with these concerns. They also might more generally be against any plan that is rushed in quickly with great disruption and cost, both economic costs and also perhaps a cost to our liberty. Stepping aside from the specific arguments I have to say that Cobb's piece is one of the most arrogant I've seen on the issue.