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.
From the social and economic side of things, one might take much more notice of the global warming scare campaign if it were not so obvious that many of its most vociferous supporters have other agendas. There are those, for instance, who are concerned with preservation of the world’s resources of coal and oil for the benefit of future generations. There are those who, like the former president of France, Jacques Chirac, speaking at a conference on the Kyoto protocol in 2000, look with favour on the possibility of an international decarbonisation regime because it would be a first step to global governance (the president’s actual words were “For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance”.) Read more @ Watts Up With That
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