While I loved this essay, I felt uncomfortable with the vagueness with which the group of “AGW Skeptics” was defined. If we define that group loosely to include every AGW skeptic, then there are obviously rationality impoverished reasons AGW skeptics have for their beliefs, but the same is true for AGW believers. Attacking strawmen gets us nowhere.
A worthy attack on AGW skeptics should be directed at the leading skeptics who have expertise in climatology. They are making very specific scientific claims, such as:
Negative feedback loops in the atmosphere will mostly cushion atmospheric CO2 increases.
Fluctuations in cosmic radiation have been the main driver of warming in the 20th century.
These claims—while I think we have good scientific evidence against them—are not obviously unreasonable. What is unreasonable is the insinuation in the essay that skeptics who are professional climatologists deny the claim “we know from physics that [CO2 is] a greenhouse gas”. They don’t—the real issue that the professionals debate is whether the addition of greenhouse gases will cause a positive or negative feedback (without a positive feedback, the warming from increased CO2 levels is tolerable). The answer to that question requires much more subtle reasoning, and even with the aid of numerous state-of-the-art computer models, the variance in projections is still wide enough to warrant caution in our predictions. To liken an AGW skeptic to a creationist is unjustified, and I mean that in the deepest possible way, i.e. I’d be far more comfortable betting my money in a prediction market to support evolution than to support AGW.
While I loved this essay, I felt uncomfortable with the vagueness with which the group of “AGW Skeptics” was defined. If we define that group loosely to include every AGW skeptic, then there are obviously rationality impoverished reasons AGW skeptics have for their beliefs, but the same is true for AGW believers. Attacking strawmen gets us nowhere.
A worthy attack on AGW skeptics should be directed at the leading skeptics who have expertise in climatology. They are making very specific scientific claims, such as:
Negative feedback loops in the atmosphere will mostly cushion atmospheric CO2 increases.
Fluctuations in cosmic radiation have been the main driver of warming in the 20th century.
These claims—while I think we have good scientific evidence against them—are not obviously unreasonable. What is unreasonable is the insinuation in the essay that skeptics who are professional climatologists deny the claim “we know from physics that [CO2 is] a greenhouse gas”. They don’t—the real issue that the professionals debate is whether the addition of greenhouse gases will cause a positive or negative feedback (without a positive feedback, the warming from increased CO2 levels is tolerable). The answer to that question requires much more subtle reasoning, and even with the aid of numerous state-of-the-art computer models, the variance in projections is still wide enough to warrant caution in our predictions. To liken an AGW skeptic to a creationist is unjustified, and I mean that in the deepest possible way, i.e. I’d be far more comfortable betting my money in a prediction market to support evolution than to support AGW.
Global Warming Debate:
http://www.takeonit.com/question/5.aspx