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

To: Lane3 who wrote (51232)	3/1/2008 8:25:39 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542970

Well, GW comes as close as anything I can think of to benefitting from "alarm" 1) A significant fraction of people doubt it is even happening. 2) The majority of people competent to analyse the situation say it is happening. 3) The system has significant inertia. This was well known to knowledgeable people decades ago, and was one of the reasons it was keenly debated. Specifically the question was posed as to whether we could conclusively identify AGW BEFORE we would need to take evasive action to counter serious consequences. That is a very interesting question, and I would say the answer is borderline. Back in the 1970's it was predicted that a clear AGW signal should be detectable around 2000 (above background noise) and that has more or less proven true. The predictions going forward regarding what we can accomplish in how much time is more problematical, because it is technology dependent. 4) Most of the arguments against AGW conflate need or desire with science. The science of AGW is what it is quite independent of our economic needs. Yet people routinely say, we can't "wreck" our economies to fight global warming. What they are really saying is that they think diverting money to fight AGW is a poorer use than doing other things. This may or may not be true, but I don't find such arguments very compelling when the person making them fails to provide some risk analysis to support his claim. The warming planet does not care about our needs, even if we do.