Tuesday, April 29, 2014

More Climate Change

Lately, I've been reading a lot on anthropomorphic global warming (AGW), and trying to understand some of the legitimate skepticism directed at the consensus view.

Here is Steve Novella, tangentially talking about AGW. He summarizes my position more eloquently than I could, in talking about his own:
On many issues, however, there is a nuanced opinion somewhere in between the two extremes. I have no reason to doubt the scientific consensus on AGW, but we have to remember the current consensus is that AGW is 95% probable, meaning (if accurate) that one in 20 such statements will turn out to be wrong. Also, it is reasonable to question the efficacy of individual proposed solutions to AGW. I am still solidly in the “AGW is probably real and if we are going to do something about it we better start acting now,” camp, but I also don’t think we should white wash over current uncertainties in order to present a clean and united front. Science is messy and we have to deal with it.

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