Tamiflu alternative. Tamiflu. Tamiflu for prophylaxis. Tamiflu and effectiveness and safety. Tamiflu and parvo….

However, a market based cap-and trade program is a great way to deal with global warming gases that addresses the problem while also supporting free markets.

Just because you believe in free markets doesn't mean you can't use the government to solve large problems like global warming.

I suppose having a civil law system backed by a police force is a statist solution to the problem of protecting private property.

"Shouldn't we at least spend the time to figure out if the effects of GW will or will not be positive?"

Since GW policy is unnecessary if either GW is beneficial overall or if the cost of policy outweighs its benefits, focusing on one or the other is sufficient to reject policy.

My understanding is that although GW will produce some benefits, the costs will outweigh those and overall GW is a bad for people. So if policy is to be rejected it must be on comparison of costs and benefits.

Shouldn't we at least spend the time to figure out if the effects of GW will or will not be positive?

There's a difference between attempts to prevent global warming from happening, and dealing with its consequences. I have been concerned with the former. Quite possibly a case can be made for compensating people affected by warming, I haven't thought about it.

Score!

"do you trust oil/gas/coal for CO2 information or the NOAA/NASA"

Appeal to authority is the flip-side of ad hominem. The fact that an oil company paid for something (or that a researcher at one time received money from them) does not prove something is false any more than the fact that the government paid for it is false.

Government researchers are paid to produce things that are useful to the government. They tend to not publish things that aren't – if they do, it will soon dawn on some well-meaning bureaucrat, politician, or taxpayer that we ought not spend money on something of no value or which could be funded by someone who does value it. Agencies, especially the increasingly irrelevant and narcissistic NASA, must justify their own existence somehow.

In Dolan's paper, which I linked to in my FEE article, he raises the issue of libertarian/Lockean justice in connection with global warming. Is there an issue of justice here? Assuming that people living in low-lying areas in Bangladesh are being damaged by man-caused global warming, is compensation due? What does "worth fixing" meaning? If I impose on you but by some measure the damage to you is regarded as less than the cost to me of stopping the damage, does that mean nothing should be done? Does that satisfy the demands of individual rights and justice? This is the sort of thing Dolan asks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/nclimate10.xml

You're still missing the point. A reasoned case against government action can be made taking anthropogenic global warming as given. That is the main point in Don's post. It is a point missed by most in the global warming movement.

Who is "simply not wanting to respond"?

I guess denial is a valid approach, but denial with a valid reason seems somehow more… valid.

Simply not wanting to respond is a choice, but not a very convincing one.

It seems to me this should be the one post on global warming where a debate about the merits of whether warming is occurring shouldn't happen. Don is taking warming as given and saying the case for policy response doesn't stack up.

Bracken and Bruce have apparently missed this essential point.

I think the lesson to take away from Montreal is not that targets and timetables can work, it is the value of having access to a clean alternative. Montreal's lesson is more about the role of technology than the best approach to regulation.

As of December 9, 2006 I would need about 100 times as much "proof" about humanity's role before I would consent to "forced loss of freedom".

All those who run to the government for solutions are doing just that. Those that think that a collection of individuals can act without Big Brother will resist government interference.

I find it amusing that we are supposed to trust scientists who's income and/or reputation is largely based on whether or not we should keep funding global warming research, but we are not supposed to trust oil companies. Scientists are pure whereas businesses are corrupt, right? If you think that tenured professors don't care about huge federal grants then I have some Arizona Glaciers to sell you.

I've worked in science and academia for 16 years and it's about as pure as the rest of humanity.

"Finally, in an appendix, Crichton uses a rather curious train of logic to compare global warming to the 19th Century eugenics movement. He argues, that since eugenics was studied in prestigious universities and supported by charitable foundations, and now, so is global warming, they must somehow be related. Presumably, the author doesn't actually believe that foundation-supported academic research ipso facto is evil and mis-guided, but that is an impression that is left."

That wasn't the point of the appendix. Crichton cites and discusses several huge scares (DDT, population bomb, etc.) that popular scientific thought got wrong and cost lives. The point is not to call the atmospheric scientists morally equivalent to eugenicists, nor to question their funding sources. The point was to provide a historical context for evaluating current claims of impending disaster.

"This time, we're not making this up!" is not an answer. An answer might be to respond to Arnold Kling's criticism that models are unreliable. Show the economists how to apply atmospheric science model making to make better economic models. Or fix the BCS rankings if that's too difficult.

No.

Bruce G Charlton above, enumerates the Al Gore argument sequence. What if the global warmers are wrong at one of the steps, and their incorrectness costs lives, makes lives worse, or makes people less free? What if you're wrong in proportion, as was clearly the case with banning DDT? This study of trade-offs among people is what economists know how to do, not atmospheric scientists.

It reminds me of a typical dot-com story (that I lived through) where the brilliant engineer company founder runs the company into the ground because he thinks he knows everything and doesn't need non-engineers. Not so bad, except in doing so, he takes other people and other people's money into the ground with him.

Until the global warming proponents (mostly scientists and politicians and journalists who parrot their message) grow enough humility to invite a real discussion, it's probably prudent to just deny, deny, deny. And it's funny that as a real discussion starts without their blessing (i.e. Copenhagen Consensus), there truly are trade-offs to consider.

Here's a way the scientists could start showing humility. Condemn the "stop funding the deniers" letter sent by Senators Snowe and Rockefeller to Exxon. Stop that kind of garbage and there might be a reasonable conversation to be had.

since you are citing a 5-year "trend" and the work of the geologists, climatologists, meteorologists, astrophysists, and environmental scientists evaluate changes over millions of years… I have to presume you want to selectively support your arguments with "evidence" that is circumstantial… at best.

But, worse, anyone who doesn't agree with you and provides sound, scientific evidence to contradict your position must be labeled a "mouthpiece"… because they do not fit your political agenda.

http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2006/12/climate-politics.html

What you are stating is simply false,
all these issue have been examined recently in the literature

as one example CO2 levels
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

"friendsofscience" is an oil/coal mouthpiece it is not a credible source of information.

do you trust oil/gas/coal for CO2 information or the NOAA/NASA

do you trust the national science academies or a science fiction writer??