What If Scientists Are Wrong About Climate Change?
A climate change denier I happen to have known personally for a long time writes me:
The idea that Man alone (specifically, according to leftist mythology, US industrial corporations, which, in the left’s rubric, are the focus of all evil on this planet) is responsible for the change in climate on this planet is utterly laughable, insistence to the contrary of politically-motivated university denizens notwithstanding. After all, “scientists” have been wrong before, and they’ll be wrong again.
I reply:
Thanks for this. Yes, it’s possible that the scientists are wrong here, that we have nothing to fear. And I know there are people who think that this possibility justifies inaction. Personally, I’m not one of them, but hey, that’s cool.
It is possible that the scientists are wrong and that we are not contributing to global warming. Scientists have been wrong before. But is that a chance that it would be reasonable to take?
When driving a car, would you pass on a blind hill just because there is no proof that there is an oncoming car that you cannot see? Surely doing so would be foolhardy. Similarly, if there is a reasonable possibility that climate change is real and could be very damaging, then we should do what we can to prevent climate change.
If the scientists are wrong and there will be no climate change, we still have to prepare for the time that fossil fuels, because of increasing scarcity, become so expensive that our economy will be damaged. Also, we do know that, even apart from climate change, fossil fuels cause environmental and health damage.
Considering the above, migrating away from using fossil fuels is desirable even if there would be no climate change.
This is exactly the way I look at it.
“When driving a car, would you pass on a blind hill just because there is no proof that there is an oncoming car that you cannot see?”
What a great analogy. That’s exactly what the skeptics say. They say relax, stay the course, stay on your side of the road, keep driving, don’t be an idiot. The greens say, rather than take the chance of passing on a blind hill, stop the car, get out and walk. Sorry, but I’ll stick with the skeptics and keep driving, I just won’t pass until I know it’s safe.
Climate may be beyond our understanding but energy is part of our budget. Who doesn’t understand budget will go bankrupt.