Comments | erudito: Climate scaries

erudito

Climate scaries

Nov 15, 2007 18:35

A list of sceptical arguments and their counters. I take the debate to be that the “looming disaster” case rests on (1) evidence of warming and (2) CO2 levels increasing at unprecedented rates to levels not seen for a very long time. The contrary case rests on (1) the warming not being the right pattern to be predominantly human caused, (2) not ( Read more... )

politics, climate, status2

Comments 2

I'm spotting a recurring them in my comments... jrggv November 28 2007, 00:37:28 UTC

..which is a long the lines of "I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions, but your arguments are circular ( ... )

Re: I'm spotting a recurring them in my comments... erudito November 28 2007, 01:31:44 UTC

Climate change concerns aren't new.
Yes, they have an over century long history of alternating between Ice Age Coming! and Warming Coming!

I take it you mean the current wave of concern, which hit off in the 1980s. (I.e. a decent interval after the previous Ice Age Coming! worries.)

Saying that they've come at just the right time to fill an ecological niche in the political/media agenda is circular - they've been floating around for years, but it's only when various other things stop being interesting that they have managed to make the front page (well, the odd terrifying statistic helps!)The 1980s just so happen to be when environmental NGOs have become a much more important feature of political life, the socialist project was on its last legs, etc ( ... )