Tag: global warming

Categories
responsibility

Who’s Really Doing Science?

Recently, comedian and talk show host Bill Maher defended his questioning of the wisdom of mass vaccination by saying it’s “not settled science, like global warming.”

And, around the world, scientists and critical thinkers and just generally knowledgeable folks fell out of their chairs, like so many calving icebergs.

Climate science remains controversial. Maher’s trendy gambit claiming that the science has been “settled” is absurd.

To really settle the matter, a whole lot more scrutiny would be required. And the critics who have mounted attacks on the anthropogenic — “human-​caused” — hypothesis for global climate change would have to have their work considered more openly to earn any credit for the now-​dominant hypothesis.

Why? Because science is all about open, public testing. As Karl Popper explained, science is the process of conjecture and refutation. When those who criticize a theory are castigated as being unscientific simply because they criticize, science is no longer happening. Then we have pure ideology, non-​science if not pure nonsense.

Though the critics of anthropogenic global warming catastrophism often get dubbed as kooks and crazies by current scientistic prophets of doom, they are, in fact, doing the work of science. Even if they are eventually proved wrong.

And Bill Maher is no more the judge of “settled science” than I am. 

Full disclosure: I haven’t got my flu shot yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Expensive Solutions

I’m skeptical of the notion that climate change is being driven by human activity … and thoroughly unconvinced that the planet will continue to warm causing catastrophic results.

But what if? If the globe is warming, what to do about it?

For starters, sell your beach house in Florida. Global warming means ice sheets melting, oceans rising, shoreline lost.

But for those of us without the beach house, what is the cost of global warming compared to the cost of fixing the problem?

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, looked at this question and concluded that solving the problem of climate change is not cost-effective.

Lomborg is indeed concerned about warming and says that in an ideal world we’d “solve it.” But he says we have to set priorities, and that “[w]hat we can do about [global warming] is very little at a very high cost.”

In a Washington Post column, Lomborg warned that the damage done — especially to the world’s poor — by cutting carbon emissions will far outweigh the benefits. The estimated cost from projected climate damage is $1.1 trillion dollars. The projected expense of cutting enough emissions to avoid that damage is $46 trillion.

I’m skeptical about global warming. But spending $46 for every buck saved takes me well beyond skepticism. I’m against any such idiotic plan. If we must have catastrophe, I prefer the cheaper one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.