DDL on 3/12/2009 at 13:38
Sounds to me like we have two ways of looking at this, here:
Method 1) realising that evidence seems to be pointing to man-made climate change, making efforts to avoid this getting worse, accepting that these will be inconvenient, and indeed wasted efforts if it turns out to not be a man-made phenomenon
Method 2) concluding that if man-made climate change is real, we MUST BE ALL DOOMED, not liking the sound of that, denying it, making all effort to bury head in sand, scouring internet for supporting evidence to avoid DOOM SCENARIO
Gingerbread Man on 3/12/2009 at 15:55
There are two ways of looking at it if you don't grok the Prisoner's Dilemma, yes. Otherwise there's only one intelligent way to look at it whether you think global warming is a real thing, a fake thing, an exaggerated thing, a misunderstood thing, manmade, natural, permanent, transient, cyclical, or one-off.
Sometimes I get the impression people think all that logic they may have learned is just a party trick.
Personally I don't know or care whether, what, or why. But I can't ignore the payoff matrix on things like this.
Aerothorn on 3/12/2009 at 16:47
Playing Devil's Advocate: I have a game theoriest/economist friend who argues this. He says that the economic cost of stopping global warming is absolutely humongous, and that it would result in widespread economic woes if the world really got on it and put their force behind it. Obviously this is still preferable to allowing human-caused climate change to continue; his argument was simply that the "there is only one right choice" scenario was invalid because if humans were not causing/significantly causing global warming than it was not something you wanted to do.
Mind you, he didn't have any supporting evidence (this being a verbal conversation) and I'm not sure I really buy it, but the prisoner's dillema thing made me thing of it given that he's basically a super-expert on the applications of the problem.
DDL on 3/12/2009 at 17:41
I'd still argue "massive massive economic woes" are better than "extinction", though.
(might not be a bad time to dig a bunker and stock it with canned goods anyway, mind)
EDIT: plus a lot of the 'omg carbon footprint' reduction strategies are synonymous with reductions in fossil fuel use, which is something we really really have to start doing anyway.
june gloom on 3/12/2009 at 17:47
All I know is that I had a few really stupid friends who were convinced that The Day After Tomorrow showed us what was really going to happen if we didn't stop global warming right then.
They are no longer my friends.
Muzman on 3/12/2009 at 17:49
Quote Posted by Fragony
So you are suggesting that temperatures have been rising the last 10 years?
I'm suggesting your mixed metaphor barrage won't make it all go away.
You do know how a trend works, right? NASA's data says 2005 was the hottest year, at any rate. So this ten year thing is crap. You'll just have to hack into their emails as well.
(I'm going to have to look into the "economy destroying power" of reacting to this thing. Seriously, I have never heard so many right wingers calling disaster over something so variable as the ways countries are dealing with this and the generally small targets for emission reduction being proposed, which get smaller all the time. Their hysteria is roughly equal to the worst of the climate doom-sayers. They probably said the same sort of thing when unions came along. Economics' predictive power isn't exactly in the good books of late.)
DDL on 3/12/2009 at 17:58
Quote Posted by dethtoll
All I know is that I had a few really stupid friends who were convinced that
The Day After Tomorrow showed us what was really going to happen if we didn't stop global warming right then.
They are no longer my friends.
:D
"THE TEMPERATURE INSIDE THE CYCLONE IS DROPPING AT 15 DEGREES A SECOND!!!!"
...so that'll take like 20 seconds, then? Oh, no apparently it can get a lot colder than that...and then chase people down corridors. Climate change will HUNT YOU DOWN.
Fragony on 3/12/2009 at 18:01
You guys are confusing the prisoner's dillemma with the 'stag hunt'
Gingerbread Man on 3/12/2009 at 18:59
I'm not seeing the second Nash equilibrium, then. :(
Renzatic on 3/12/2009 at 19:04
This isn't an issue that Bob's Esoteric Quantity applies to, exactly. It's more a Lurkers Conundrum situation if anything.
Seriously, I think you're all making up phrases just to sound educated.
