scienceandpublicpolicy.org— This paper explains the eight most common fallacies that underpin public discussion of the hypothesis that dangerous global warming is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.
Sep 10, 2007View in Crawl 4
I always worry about the short time horizons most studies use. 10,000 years might seem like a long time, but in comparison to the Earth's history it is a very small sample.
People do not realize that even if we are the main contributing factor, getting rid of the SUV, conserving energy, or any thing else people are always urging each other to do is not going to do jack s**t in the long run. There are simply too many of us and our numbers are only going up.<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Livestock">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Livestock</a>Should we just stop eating/harvesting livestock? What about all of the other things that are essential to our continued existence that have environmental impact?Without a significant drop in population our ability to minimize any effect we might have is futile, if we reduce our effect by 1/4 our population will grow by enough to make up the difference in only a few years. We have two options.1: Greatly influence global reproductive trends to slow/reduce our population growth.2: Hope that anything we do pales in comparison to other planetary and galactic cycles and that things will just progress like were not even here.
Closed AccountSep 10, 2007
The didn't list the ninth, 10th -- and most compelling -- fallacies that underpin global warming.9. Al Gore is nuts.10. His followers are stupid.
blitzerSep 10, 2007
I always worry about the short time horizons most studies use. 10,000 years might seem like a long time, but in comparison to the Earth's history it is a very small sample.
renorkSep 10, 2007
People do not realize that even if we are the main contributing factor, getting rid of the SUV, conserving energy, or any thing else people are always urging each other to do is not going to do jack s**t in the long run. There are simply too many of us and our numbers are only going up.<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Livestock">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Livestock</a>Should we just stop eating/harvesting livestock? What about all of the other things that are essential to our continued existence that have environmental impact?Without a significant drop in population our ability to minimize any effect we might have is futile, if we reduce our effect by 1/4 our population will grow by enough to make up the difference in only a few years. We have two options.1: Greatly influence global reproductive trends to slow/reduce our population growth.2: Hope that anything we do pales in comparison to other planetary and galactic cycles and that things will just progress like were not even here.
Closed AccountSep 10, 2007
My motto is, believe the exact opposite of what liberals believe and you will never be wrong. I'm stocking up on heavy coats.
phoobaarOct 29, 2007
The most offensive fallacy is number 6. Every I hear the words "peer-review," I know someone is trying to silence me.