A Thought on Climate Change

There has been a lot of recent discussion of columns in The Washington Post by George Will expressing skepticism about climate change and therefore arguing against policy to cut emissions. Kevin Drum gets to the heart of the matter on Mother Jones.

As I've mentioned previously, if we could be sure that global temperatures would rise no more than 2ºC over the next century, then you could make a case that it's not worth trying to prevent it. Not a great case, perhaps, but maybe a defensible one. But the real reason to get serious about global warming is that we can't be sure of that. In particular, as more data has come in and our models have gotten better, it's looking more and more as if the likelihood of warming in the range of 4-5ºC or even higher is very real. That would be undeniably catastrophic, and if there's even a 10% chance of that happening, we need to blow our gaskets trying to stop it.

Unfortunately, here in the real world, that's not why the skeptics are continually blustering about the uncertainty in climate models. They're doing it because they want people to believe that global warming is a hoax and temperatures over the next century won't rise at all. No good can come of being useful idiots for this crowd.

Like Drum, I am willing to concede for the sake of argument that there is some degree of uncertainty in the science on climate change. However, using this uncertainty as justification for doing nothing in terms of policy is crazy. Uncertainty cuts both ways: what if the skeptics are wrong? When you factor in the health and foreign policy benefits of reduced fossil fuel use, sensible reduction is a no-brainer.

--Ballard Burgher