Specious fear mongering on global warming

Posted by Josh Friedlander | No Comments

It’s worth zooming ahead to see the chart breakdown. Basically, he offers a choice (do something/do nothing) based on the premise that global warming (if not fought) will devastate humanity. It’s an absurd argument because we can’t predict how awful global warming will be.

Or as one Youtube user wrote:

You asked to be told (politely) where your reasoning was wrong, so here goes: Your argument is specious in that it presents a false dilemma. It’s a tactic commonly used in persuasive argument to force the listener to make a choice between one of only two alternatives.

The listener will almost always choose to avoid the most drastic set of consequences. A good example of such an argument would be, using the same grid, to substitute WMD for GCC and then ask your listeners to make the choice as to whether or not to invade Iraq. By offering only two choices, to invade or not invade, your listeners are forced to choose to invade because if it turns out that Saddam does have WMD, the consequences are too drastic for America to accept.

Your argument that we must act now about global warming because the consequences of failing to act far outweigh the consequences of being wrong is the same sort of argument.

I can’t say this much better, except to point out generally that one can’t make everyday decisions based on nine-standard-deviation events. Do you stay in the house all day for fear that you’ll be murdered on your doorstop by a walrus? Sometimes I do, but I don’t recommend it.

We know that trying to curtail carbon emissions is not just difficult politically, but damned near impossible (just try to get the Chinese to slow down their nascent industrial revolution). Fear mongering is dangerous. We do have a global climate problem, but building the political will to “do something” is not the problem.

It’s really easy to reach that conclusion. The question is what to do.

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