ON GLOBAL WARMING Let me clarify a little my position. I think there are a lot of questions about global warming: how much, and what, should be done. However, I regard two questions as basically no longer worth debating, at least by people with my level of science education:
1) Is AGW happening?
2) Should we do something about it?
The first is a technical question that seems to be largely settled; when you’ve convinced Ron Bailey it’s happening, you’ve convinced me. The second is a moral question that seems obvious: should I drive a huge, empty car many miles when doing so will help flood Bangladesh, merely because the comfy leather seats are right here where I can see them, and the dead future Bangladeshis aren’t? . . . this is a question that seemingly only has one right answer. I say this as one who is conscious that I could use less electricity, and should, and am trying to but not as hard as morality should require. But I digress.
Unfortunately, I think that politics renders the questions that are worth arguing, pointless; we won’t find a political solution to the problem because . . . mmmmmm, leather seats. I’m hoping instead for a technological breakthrough that renders the question largely moot. Meanwhile, I’m buying real estate in the Canadian hinterlands.