What is Wrong with Global Warming Anyway?
5th September 2011
David Friedman is not afraid to ask the hard questions.
The argument for large and expensive efforts to prevent or reduce global warming has three parts, in principle separable: Global temperature is trending up, the reason is human activity, and the consequences of the trend continuing are very bad. Almost all arguments, pro and con, focus on the first two. The third, although necessary to support the conclusion, is for the most part ignored by both sides.
The answer, I think, is that nobody knows if the net effects would be good or bad, and probably nobody can know. We are talking, after all, about effects across the world over a century. How accurately could somebody in 1900 have predicted what would matter to human life in 2000? What reason do we have to think we can do better?
September 6th, 2011 at 10:33
I’m really shocked that none of the GW folks have tried to say that GW is the result of a conspiracy of the capitalist air conditioning companies.