Friday, October 02, 2009

Chill Out ? An economic triage for global climate change

Skeptic Michael Shermer offers his questions for people to chew over at Skepticblog » Chill Out ? An economic triage for global climate change.

Are you a global warming skeptic, or are you skeptical of the global warming skeptics? Your answer depends on how you answer these five questions:
  1. Is the earth getting warmer?
  2. Is the cause of global warming human activity?
  3. How much warmer is it going to get?
  4. What are the consequences of a warmer climate?
  5. How much should we invest in altering the climate?

His answers are "yes" for the first two, but the error bars get increasingly wide for answers 3-5. In the end...

In my opinion we need to chill out on all extremist plans that entail expenses best described as Brobdingnagian, require our intervention into developing countries best portrayed as imperialistic, or involve state controls best portrayed as fascistic. Give green technologies and free markets a chance.

No comments: