Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2017 23:49:11 +0000 (UTC)
From: Todd Adams
Subject: Re: Chatham Chatlist #5782
I read the responses to Mr. Kish. I don’t agree with labelling people, and the language used often comes to those who reject the existence of the Holocaust, something much more easy to prove.
In an otherwise excellent comparison to the Pascal’s wager (that omits only if you act as if you believe, you will come to believe), it was stated that the evidence for human activity increasing the earth’s temperature is all a matter of probabilities that one can argue about (probably to be able to make the analogy more fitting or more acceptable to people who disagree with the science).
Well, this is true, but to a very limited extent. The evidence that we have that human activity is warming the planet is as strong as the evidence supporting the Surgeon General to require a warning on cigarettes (I understand that’s a controversial example in the Tar Heal state) in the early 1960s and which evidence further corroborated. It is strong enough that many nations have entered into a climate change treaty that seeks to limit increases in carbon dioxide emissions. Whether in the end, it proves out that the release of carbon emissions by the burning of fossil fuels as well as by reducing the earth’s capacity to absorb it by clearing forests, etc., I cannot know because I won’t live long enough. But the large scale global effects (it’s only unclear exactly how large those effects will be and how costly to human beings to avoid them if possible) will be effectively irreversible for a long, long time.
Thank you.