I know I’d pay to see that match on Pay Per View

I too prefer to learn,

Except you haven’t. You don’t even know what scientists are saying, not to mention why they are saying it. I notice you completely ignored this part of my post, and Taz’s.

and don’t jerk my knee for anybody.

But that is exactly what you did, you discount several entire fields of science you know nothing about simply because you find it inconceivable that anyone could understand those subjects. How could that possibly be characterized as anything other than a knee-jerk reaction?

You’re quoted text was not written by me, so you’ve misquoted me.

I never attributed the statement to you, if I had I would have put it in quote blocks. Its called paraphrasing, a common practice in the English language. In fact I made sure to quote what you said specifically to make sure that people could see the statement did not appear there.

Attacking an exaggerated or caricatured version of your opponent’s position is a straw man argument, cat man.

True, but my paraphrasing of what you said is neither exaggerated nor caricatured.

Of course I can. Don’t be silly.

Sorry, poor choice of words. You can, but you choose not to. Or else you have some reasonable grounds for dismissing everything we know about several entire fields of science you know nothing about, which I find unlikely given your statements up to this point.

“I, for one, prefer to actually learn something about a subject rather than making a knee-jerk reaction like this. “I don’t understand it, therefore nobody else does” is not really a very persuasive argument, and I find it quite distressing whenever I see someone making it.”

I too prefer to learn, and don’t jerk my knee for anybody. You’re quoted text was not written by me, so you’ve misquoted me. Attacking an exaggerated or caricatured version of your opponent’s position is a straw man argument, cat man.

“Could you just maybe consider the possibility that people who have spent their whole lives studying the subject just maybe know a bit more about what we can and can’t understand than you do?”

Of course I can. Don’t be silly.

It’s not about destroying the planet, it’s about altering the climate. The planet itself will be fine, but the consequences to us could be enormous. We are making measurable changes in the composition of our atmosphere. Maybe we should tread cautiously.

I’m skeptical of the idea that a few billion people can destroy a planet with their lust for fossile fuels, or the farts of their livestock.

Who says we are going to “destroy a planet”? The planet will be just fine, and life will recover in time, it has faced far worse many times in the past (although it is likely many species will go extinct for one reason or another, just as many already have due to humans).

The problem isn’t the planet, the problem is us. Our whole social system is based on fairly stable climate and geography over the last ~9000 years. Human civilization has never faced a situation like this before, and it will most likely disrupt many things that we currently take for granted and depend on. We aren’t likely to die off, but we are likely to go through some very tough, costly, and possibly violent times.

Call me stupid if you must, but I’m not buying the idea that mankind can intervene with forces of nature too complicated and awesome to truly understand or control.

I, for one, prefer to actually learn something about a subject rather than making a knee-jerk reaction like this. “I don’t understand it, therefore nobody else does” is not really a very persuasive argument, and I find it quite distressing whenever I see someone making it.

Could you just maybe consider the possibility that people who have spent their whole lives studying the subject just maybe know a bit more about what we can and can’t understand than you do?

Additionally, anytime throughout my own experience when people claim that our doom is upon us and we have to act now (and it will cost), or we’ll all perish have simply been full of it.

But this is not even remotely similar to what we are saying, it is a blatant straw-man argument.

Black Cat @19 – “We have also known for a long time that the current very rapid change is primarily due to humans…” No. We have been told this by the academia who have been caught red handed fudging data to fit an agenda. Nice try, but false premise.

First, no they haven’t. There is no evidence of wrongdoing, all the supposed evidence of fabrication turned out to be benign comments on well-publicized methodology taken out of context, as at least 3 independent reviews have shown.

Second, even we assume that everyone involved in Climategate completely and totally fabricated every single piece of evidence they used, none of them have anything whatsoever to do with the carbon isotope data. They are involved primarily, if not exclusively, with paleoclimatology, a completely different area of research.

What you apparently fail to understand that there is not just one piece of evidence supporting AGW, but a bunch of independent pieces of evidence from very diverse fields. Even if you throw out one whole field, like paleoclimatology, and every researcher in that field, it won’t hurt AGW at all because of the other independent lines of of evidence from totally different fields.

*ALL* writing on economics is opinion.

but the few studies on the subject that I’ve read that seem to include actual numbers and credible math typically put the cost to economic growth at less then 1% of GDP

And other economists say other things.

There is only one solution here.

CAGE MATCH!

First up: Paul “The Taxinator” Krugman versus Walter E. “The Organ Seller” Williams

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect

Then there’s :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrKfz8NjEzU&p=029130BFDC78FA33

Which shows how climate science has developed over time incl. a discussion of the regional Medieval Warm Period which was once erroneously thought to be global before further studies foudn it wasn’t. This above clip also discusses the “hockey stick” graph and how there’s not just one such graph but rather, now, a whole hockey team based on a lot more things than just tree rings.

Also, please check out this clip :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9SGw75pVas&p=029130BFDC78FA33

Which gives a primer about what we know about climate change and how good the evidence for AGW is.

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PS. Separate post because I can’t seem to post too many links in one comment. That seems to lead to *very* big trouble and comment deletion or it did when I tried it ages ago.