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Eric Logan
Science held hostage in climate debate. -
Science held hostage in climate debate.
The broad theory of man-made global warming is acceptable in the purely qualitative sense. If humans continue to fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, there can be little doubt that the average temperature of the world will increase above what it would have been otherwise. The argument about the science is, and always has been, whether the increase would be big enough to be noticed among all the other natural variations of climate. The economic and social argument is whether the increase, even if it were noticeable, would change the overall welfare of mankind for the worse. Attempts to resolve the arguments are plagued with problems, a lot of which are inherently insoluble. There are many aspects of the behaviour of the natural climate system and of human society that are unpredictable in principle, let alone in practice. But perhaps the biggest of the underlying problems, and it is common to both arguments since it inevitably exists when there is large unpredictability and uncertainty, is the presence of strong forces encouraging public overstatement and a belief in worst-case scenarios. - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet
Yes, by all means let's pretend there isn't a quantitative consensus. Meanwhile, it's totally plausible and scientifically sound to push the idea that global warming is a giant conspiracy with no evidence! Partridge: "It is generally assumed that climate scientists themselves are more or less united on the matter and are not pushing a global warming barrow because of their interest in some other agenda. Certainly this is the story the activists would have us believe. " - Andrew C (✔)