From across the ocean in balmy (too balmy? oh dear!) ole England:
… This is where our friend Pascal comes in. If we believe in global warming and do something about it and it turns out we?re right, then we?re, climatologically speaking, redeemed ? if not for ever, at least until some other threat to our existence comes along.
If we?re wrong about it, what is the ultimate cost? A world with improved energy efficiency and quite a lot of ugly windmills.
If we don?t believe in global warming and do nothing about it, and we?re right, so what? Our distant posterity will be able to cite us approvingly in future opinion columns. But if our unbelief turns out to be unsupported by the outcome and we?ve done nothing about global warming in the meantime, then we?re in a position analogous to the atheist at the gates of heaven.
You get that? Doing “nothing” about global warming and being wrong will result in Hell on earth! Could this be parody?
… When confronted with a choice of actions in conditions of uncertainty, the correct choice is the course whose worst outcome is least harmful. That puts the burden of proof on to the global-warming sceptics. Unless you?re really, really certain that we?re all going to be fine, then the only prudent course is to act now to reduce emissions. The costs of understating the threat are much higher than the costs of overstating it.
Instead of misapplying Pascal, this character needs to read Hazlitt. His imagination as it pertains to marginal costs is quite limited. If anthropogenic warming isn’t overstated, all the costs are “Improved energy efficiency and ugly windmills” vs. “approving opinion columns”? He’s quite ho-hum about the “trade off [of] a lot of economic activity in the next 50 years.” But those costs are significant ? so significant that it’s appropriate and responsible to weigh those huge costs against the marginal benefit of reducing the expected warming by fractions of a degree over 100 years. Especially when you consider that future generations of the Ultimate Resource would surely be better equipped to circumnavigate the problem (if it indeed is a net problem) than we are to stave it off by crippling ourselves economically.
As for the religious proof of anthropogenic warming’s existence, I think the zealots might mouth Pascal, but they tend to argue more along the lines of Anselm; q.v., Man-made global warming exists because I can envision man-made global warming.
