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DM

I think AGW science relies too much on ‘correlation equals causation’ methodologies to warrant the amount of vehement pronouncements from AGW scientists

Based on what do you think this? Based on pure gut feeling? Or can you actually back up your claim with some facts? Perhaps you could point out some specific instances where climate scientist allegedly relied too much on such methodologies in their studies on AGW?

I’d like to dump a tub of it at the bottom of a cliff somewhere so we can finally concentrate on drastically reducing carbon output.

Or stick them in a spaceship and give them a guided tour of Venus, so they can see what’s in Earth’s near future if they don’t gulp down a spoonful of STFU pretty soon.

The crazy thing is that if the denialists are proved right, but we took steps to reduce carbon output anyway, it’s only “cost” the world a small amount of money (and we have the added benefit of reducing pollution and hence improving health). If we’re proved right, but they were successful at shutting down any response to the problem, then we’re all fucked!

They’re probably your standard corporation management – too busy worrying about short term profits to think about the long term.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo

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BR: Outstanding suggestion!

AGW deniers I’d put in the military grade stupid category. I can’t really believe all these people are all that stupid, so there must be several other explanations. Unfortunately, the top possible explanation is they think everybody else is military grade stupid.

Fact: CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
Fact: We’re putting millions of tons of it into the atmosphere every year

These are undeniable.

How this debate gets classified by some as a liberal vs conservative thing amazes me.

PS, remember kids, its politicians and policy wonks who came up with the bright idea that the only way to solve this problem is to just give them $100s of billions of dollars in additional tax revenue and legislative control over it. That seems to be their prescription for any crisis. I would submit that they are not the most objective bunch to heed advice from.

I think more interesting than the question of whether anthropogenic climate change is or is not reality is the vehemence with which the positions are held.

With no intent to sound flippant, I am free to not care whether or not it is true. In the long run, I’m dead. I have no offspring that I know of and unless overweight middle aged men suddenly become sexually fashionable, that is unlikely to change.

Regardless of whether irrefutable empirical evidence of climate change is available today, I am persuaded by the logic: everything we do—plow the prairie, fell the forest, levy the river—impacts the environment. We are changing the composition of the atmosphere and the chemistry of the oceans. We are altering the engines that maintain the climate. Why will the climate not be altered?

I suggest to those of you with, as we like to say now, skin in the game that the only sane response climate change is to wager as Pascal did on the existence of God: there is everything to gain if it is true and nothing to lose if it is not. In fact it is a better bet than Pascal’s since as several correspondents have pointed out, there are other benefits to reducing the desequestration of carbon.