On Wednesday, a judge of the United Kingdom's High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, issued a ruling in a challenge to the use of Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." The judge ruled that, under British education law, the film was "partisan" and could not be shown to students without presentation of different viewpoints. The decision listed nine major factual errors in the film. The judge noted that, as a result of the suit, the British education authorities have already agreed to address the factual errors, and to present other views. Thanks to the Heartland Institute, in Chicago, for its posting of the full text of the decision. (BTW, I will be speaking about the Microsoft case and its implications for future government control of the digital economy, at Heartland's Emerging Issues Forum on October 25.)
And kudos to Great Britain's "The New Party" for bringing the case. (Not that all of The New Party's ideas are good; they want property forfeiture laws which put the burden of proof of innocence on the property owner.)
British High Court decision on "An Inconvenient Truth":
It goes on the detail, in addition to the nine factual errors found in the film, four major points made in the film that are irrefutably supported by the scientific evidence.
Should we conclude that, because Al Gore claimed that polar bears are drowning while swimming to find ice (perhaps mistakenly---I do not know), that global warming does not exist?
Polar bears today number:
A) 1000
B) 5000
C) 10,000
D) 25,000
Click to see the answer.
David, honestly, did you read the opinion?
I suppose the term "major" may characterize the opinion with a term it does not use, but I'm not sure the applicable legal standard in this case. The court isolated these errors among others as "relevant" to the question of whether the school must take "reasonable steps" in the form of a correction and presentation of other views. I assume that "minor" errors would not require the "reasonable steps" the court mandates in this case, but I'm open to the possibility of alternatives.
I would be much less skeptical of Global Warming if the solutions offered didnt always involve more taxes and increased government controls on our lives.
Why should this ruling be applauded?
OTOH, after careful study, I found no reference to guns or the Second Amendment, so I count this post as a net plus for DK. At least he's getting out more.
I applaud the decision. Scare mongering should definitely be tempered in a school setting, and there's no reason not to correct the other trivial errors.
Also, note that the decision goes into some detail about the definition of "partisan" and takes it to mean merely "one-sided". I don't think there's much dispute about that!
Don't make it seem like this judge was ruling the film completely ridiculous.
It seems that your data might be just a little out of date. The USGS and other American and Canadian scientists seem to agree on what is happening, and what is likely to happen, to polar bears going forward. It isn't good news.
What a difference 6 months makes, huh?
But I guess hope springs eternal even among people in denial.
The judge here was trying to determine whether what Al Gore is saying is open for reasonable debate (e.g., whether what he is saying veers from what most scientist think). If it is, then based on the law at issue, the state must present the alternative viewpoint. But that doesn’t make what Gore said an error, hence the judge’s use of quotations around the word error. Error here is being used as a shorthand for something Gore may be wrong about. That’s different from saying that Gore is wrong here (or, in DK’s words, he made major factual errors).
As others have noted, the use of the word “major” is also clearly wrong and I have a hard time believing that anyone would use that word after having read the opinion. That is, it is an error (not an “error”) to claim that the alleged mistakes are major.
Had that part of the opinion been adverted to, maybe the Arctic ice sheet would have been spared the heated gasses emitted here by visiting denialists.
I would be much less skeptical of Global Warming if the solutions offered didnt always involve more taxes and increased government controls on our lives.</i>
Try using energy efficient light bulbs, driving fuel efficient cars, recycling, carpooling, driving less, go to the grocery store with your own reusable bag, and many other ideas that Gore talks about that are not government regulation or more taxes.
Hey, those light bulbs are great. They are easy on the eyes and actually light up a room better than normal light bulbs. Also, they don't get as hot either. I'm no eviro-nut but I have changed all my bulbs to the new ones. I believe even Wallmart has its own brand of bulbs coming out soon.
the opinion's ultimate conclusion was definitely that the film was more "right" than it was wrong. kudos to nobody . . . .
This is a really embarassing attempt at spin.
Gore Derangement Syndrome, anyone?
That's right, a judge ruled there were scientific errors in this film, so let's conclude that anthropogenic global warming is false? Argumentum ad logicam?
And since when is a judge's opinion the conclusive verdict on the accuracy of science? I'm glad intelligent design advocates admitted defeat after the Kitzmiller trial, and of course Justice Holmes was right about the heritability of IQ in Buck, right?
Besides, it seems that, surprise, the judge's ruling was not a perfect review.
I agree with both Kovarsky and fishbane, this is embarrassing.
Posting an opinion article from the S.F. Chronicle, which purports to know beforehand that the polar bear population will be much lower in only forty years 1) directly conflicts with kidblue's [equally] bogus 'analysis,' and 2) is a great example of the absolute lack of scientific rigor emanating from the snake-oil sales force on the Left.
And then we have the equally ignorant and repugnant name-calling ["denialists" -- just like holocaust denialists, get it?] from Sucher, which he uses in place of any reasonable scientific argument.
The pathetic squealing coming from the scientifically illiterate libs is due entirely to the fact that the globaloney facade that passes for liberal thought has taken a big hit from a judge in the UK. Up until now, questioning the bogus claims coming from the "tax 'em more, more, more" contingent has been almost nonexistent. But now the worm is turning. And they don't like it.
The Gorbot and his ilk can not refute the fact - now recognised by the court - that there is no positive correlation between CO2 and global warming, as the judge made crystal clear in his ruling [and that is a major, major finding - despite the lame spin attempts to downplay it by the purveyors of globaloney]. Because now, after losing judicially on their discredited claim that CO2 causes global warming [the very central pillar of every goron's argument], the "carbon credits" and all the rest of the alarmist CO2 claims has been refuted in court.
Oh, the globaloney purveyors won't go away - too many psuedoscientists have too much ego tied up in their falsified CO2/temperature conjecture. But when the spinmeister journos are their 'science' cites, they're certainly getting desperate.
The data in this chart was peer-reviewed in the AAAS journal Science. You can't find any correlation between CO2 and temperatures. Why? Because there isn't any correlation! So much for the central tenet of the gorons, that CO2 causes global warming. The facts show that it doesn't.
Need more? Dr Timothy Ball, PhD in Climatology, refutes AGW here. More here. Also, notice that the purveyors of AGW always select the Arctic only. Why? Because the Antarctic is cooling substantially. And how about that "consensus," huh? Hey! Where'd it go?
The more that scientific rigor is applied to the global warming/AGW conjecture, the easier it is to falsify. That is the reason the Gorebot - and everyone else promoting the falsified conjecture that CO2 causes global warming - runs away from any moderated debate.
Will Al take a check?
You can call him a hypocrite and employ all the sarcasm you want, it doesn't change the fact that anthropogenic global warming is occurring.
Despite that, I hate the idea of a court deciding what is true and what is not. That nonsense better stay in teabag land.
b. So what? Whether there is or isn't significant man caused GW, has little to do with what we should or shouldn't do about it. Ever stop to think that maybe it is, overall, a Good Thing?
Oh, I know.
I heard all that sciency stuff in his movie put him in a very close second for the Nobel science award.
Would those be the ones that have mercury in them and that should be disposed of in a hazardous waste site?
Faced with the greatest crisis in the history of the species, no sacrifice is too trivial, is it?
I'll believe Gore believes Gore when Gore flies coach to Stockholm.
Of course, you are right and the National Academy of Sciences and the majority of the world's Climatologists are wrong.
Bruce:
a. See above, when people specializing in a particular scientific field render an overwhelming consensus on a subject within that field, they are usually right. Then again, biologists are wrong about evolution right? And vaccines are overwhelmingly harmful? Any other woo you want to throw out there?
b. Rapid climate change tends to lead to global extinction level events, will allow for viruses and other pathogens and carriers of viruses to cover larger territories (think Malaria or West Nile), and will lead to less land in an already overcrowded world. There are plenty of other negative affects I haven't touched on yet. I've thought about whether or not it could be a good thing, and it certainly doesn't seem like it will be for the majority of mammals on this planet, perhaps from the view of a pathogen or certain arthropods it could be just what they were hoping for though.
Say, just out of curiosity, what ever happened to all of those climatologists who told us in the 70's that we were all going to be getting a lot colder?
That must have been junk science.
Not like the stuff we have now.
I blame The West, capitalism, and the Bush administration.
Oh, is that why we're not going there any more?
What I would challenge you, David K, Bruce, and other global warming skeptics to do is to try to look at the reports from a variety of sources dispassionately, rather than through a political prism (e.g., "If Al Gore says it, it must be a lie"). It is healthy to be skeptical, but not healthy to be delusional. An example of the latter is the fringe view that HIV does not cause AIDs. Yes, you can find a handful of Phds that say that. But everyone else thinks they are wrong and dangerous crackpots for advancing such a view.
A consensus among birdbrains is a birdbrain consensus.
Lol. Wonderful straw man you have created to knock down there, but I never said it would specifically spread to Hawaii. What I said was that it would allow for the carriers of those diseases to cover larger territories.
Besides, my comments do not represent an official scientific publication on the matter, rather they are the information I have retained from different news outlets and scientific venues. What I would suggest doing is reading the reports yourself from peer-reviewed journals, as my memory is not always perfect.
Gee, now who is hilariously stupid? It was a nice attempt at an appeal to anecdotal evidence too. "It's not happening here so it must not be happening!" Is it nice living in such a small world?
This is called "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence".
A claim that we should do something that may devastate the economy should be distrusted more than the average claim.
You cannot cite to a past failed argument as evidence that this argument has to be wrong. In what world is that logical? There has to be name for that fallacy . . . wait, this is a red herring that uses a one-sided view of scientific accomplishments. Double-whammy there (ignoratio elenchi and slanting) and in one sentence, nicely done!
Using your logic, Christians were wrong about the earth being flat for hundreds of years, so they must be wrong about everything else! Or, the Bible was wrong about the Empire-wide census or where citizens were suppose to report for a census, so it must be wrong about every other fact!
Officious_Pedant:
I do think that's interesting-- but it's just speculation. That's the problem with so many of these alarmist "studies"; they're predicated on underlying assumptions that aren't disclosed, or are merely taken for granted when reported. Then the media reports them as confirming or supporting the assumptions. What are those "[p]rojected changes in future sea ice conditions" anyway?
I also think it's interesting that that study cites the lowest number of polar bears at present that I've seen (16 versus 20 or 25 thousand). But even if it turns out to be true, it's still more than the 5000 bears that existed in the '70s.
While I'm not positive about this, it seems that polar bear numbers are up from the '70s due largely to the effort of conservationists limiting the hunting of both polar bears and there primary prey, seals.
Here are three different articles that respond to your criticism. I hope that helps. (Do I get a bonus for the last one being from Fox News?)
Wish we'd applied this standard to the decision to invade Iraq.
'Malaria is not a tropical disease.'
This has been known to people in the know for a long, long time. Atheotatous says he got his ideas about malaria from 'scientific venues.'
OK, what was this silly crap doing in 'scientific venues'? Were the scientists nothing but ignorant fearmongers? Didn't know the first thing about the etiology of malaria? Or what?
The whole array of coast-flooding, hurricane-intensifying, species-extinguishing fear-mongering is baloney. I like to focus on malaria for three reasons:
1. It is so easy to demonstrate that the fearmongers are talking through their hats on this one.
2. It's one of their favorites, too.
3. If they're that wrong about such a simple thing, why would we give them any credence about something as complex as climate?
From "Driven to Extremes," authored by John Tibbetts in Environmental Health Perspectives:
From "Effect of meteorological factors on clinical malaria risk among children: an assessment using village-based meteorological stations and community-based parasitological survey," authored by Yazoumé Yé, Valérie R Louis, Séraphin Simboro, and Rainer Sauerborn and published in BMC Public Health, v.7; 2007:
From "Malaria risk and temperature: Influences from global climate change and local land use practices," published by Jonathan A. Patz and Sarah H. Olson in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v.103(15):
Prof. Desowitz is correct, malaria is not a tropical disease and once existed all over Europe and the U.S.. However, the increase in mean temperature has allowed carriers in tropical regions to extend their habitats, bringing malaria into elevated regions where, prior to, the climate was inhospitable to localized malaria vectors. While the industrialized world has largely obliterated malaria, the indigenous people in these areas lack the technology and medicine to properly protect themselves from the pathogen. As I mentioned before, while you are living in your tiny world the rest of the planet is dealing with the impact of global climate change. Simply because one negative impact my not directly impact the U.S. does not mean we should not be concerned. Don't you care about all of humanity Eager (couldn't resist)?
The three studies above are published in peer-reviewed journals, respectable scientific venues. It took around 10 minutes to find them. May I suggest you peruse the literature? PubMed is not a bad method of searching. Note, all of the above authors are real scientists.
Finally, you're last point is a logical fallacy. Undermining one point in the argument does not overturn the overwhelming amount of evidence for global warming that has led to a scientific consensus on the topic. Well it does raise the probability the argument is wrong, it does not necessarily invalidate it. Instead of presuming they are wrong, perhaps you should actually do some research and attempt to conclusively prove them wrong.
If you are this ignorant about something so simple, are you also ignorant about everything more complex (hopefully you realize the answer to this is no)?
One last long quote, just for you Harry:
"Impact of regional climate change on human health," by Jonathan A. Patz, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Tracey Holloway and Jonathan A. Foley and published in Nature, v.438.
From Prof. Desowitz:
"Should we conclude that, because Al Gore claimed that polar bears are drowning while swimming to find ice (perhaps mistakenly---I do not know), that global warming does not exist?"
Turn it around. Because global warming is real, should we conclude Al Gore's representation of the consequences or that his ideas for solving it... are valid?
"What makes this judge qualified to pass on scientific conclusions?"
What makes Al Gore qualified to do a movie about the scientific conclusions... btw, when I went to his website he didn't even list the UN panel as a source... only newspaper reports on their report... So, you've got a politician quoting reporters... great…
If the past is any indicator of the future, our planet heats up and cools off.
And it did it without any aid or hinderance from mankind.
The "science" that purports humans are speeding the heating process up is inconlusive. It has not been proved.
And so, I haven't gotten on to the bandwagon of bedwetters pulling the Chicken Little routine.
And I feel free to mock those who have.
So you're not a ""Skeptic"" but you disbelieve something most "bedwetters" with their so called ""PHD's"" believe in? and you reserve the right to mock them?
I'm guessing your knowledge off climatology comes from reading Michael Crichton's "State of Fear."
there are plenty of debates in the scientific community, but they're far beyond the mere fact of whether or not Carbon has the potential to cause warming.
for someone who's "not" a skeptic, you take an awfully disbelieving stance.
He wrote two whole books about it.
Malaria is a disease of poverty. Reduce poverty and malaria will practically take care of itself.
Since carbon reduction schemes increase poverty, they will (most likely) increase malaria.
There, don't say you haven't been warned.
Read the quote, he is saying that global warming will lead to increased habitats for these disease vectors. He specifically mentions Denghe, which is really a misspelling of Dengue by the transcriber. This virus is also specifically mentioned in one of the quotations from a peer-reviewed paper I cited above.
I'm not "cherrypicking" Desowitz, he accepts that global warming is happening. In fact, if anyone is quote-mining Desowitz, it is the person who offers one short sentence from him (that would be you).
Here is another long quotation from Desowitz:
He's talking about some of the papers I cited above. What he doesn't think is that malaria will increase in industrialized nations because they have the resources to quickly respond to and contain any outbreaks. He goes on to mention other diseases.
I suggest you read (if you already haven't) his newest and probably last book on the topic, Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus: Tales of Parasites, People, and Politics.
You'd be better off just admitting you were wrong instead of continually arguing with me about it. After all, a "real scientist" disagrees with you.
We had dengue introduced into my county about four years ago. We eradicated the vectors and now it's gone.
Getting the dengue had nothing to do with global warming. We had it in 1943 and got rid of it then, too.
That's how you handle it. If we had bought carbon credits and waited for the global climate to change, we'd still have dengue.
If you think recycling your shopping bags is going to have any effect on malaria deaths -- already somewhere between 1 million and 2 million a year (I know, I know, most of them are black babies, but I think we should count them anyway) -- without any global warming, you're nuts.
It's a simple message: malaria is not a tropical disease. People do not get malaria because they live in hot places. No remediation of global warming will reduce the number of cases of malaria.
Really, you read it? How is it that you simply keep ignoring this quote from Desowitz: I am not saying it is a tropical disease, and you attempting to respond to that argument is nothing but a straw man. What I have been pointing out continually is that global warming will lead to larger habitats for certain disease vectors, and as is supported by the papers I cited and Desowitz himself admits!
Taking action now to reduce the impact of global warming will help prevent or reduce future global warming. Does that save the lives of those suffering now? No, but it could prevent future suffering. (Nice attempt at another straw man there by the way.)
Seriously, actually respond to what I post instead of the arguments you create. The "real scientist" you cited, Desowitz, states that global warming has led to the spread of malaria into highland elevations. That means, global warming has led to the spread of malaria.
Wow, I'm not even sure what to say to you. It's like you simply read what is in front of you, then fail to acknowledge it and keep spouting the same argument.
I thought what I wrote was fairly clear.
Apparently not.
Here, let me emphasize the part you disregarded:
"If the past is any indicator of the future, our planet heats up and cools off. And it did it without any aid or hinderance from mankind."
So you see, I'm not a "global warming skeptic".
However, when the "science" of Algore's movie wins the Peace prize instead of the Science prize, yeah, I reserve the right to mock it.
All better now?
As stated above:The entire discussion about mosquitos is a strawman argument. The real question is: is global warming caused by CO2? Because if the answer is "No," [and the answer is "no"], then mosquitos are irrelevant.
The central premise of the purveyors of AGW/global warming is that CO2 causes global warming - a failed conjecture that has been repeatedly falsified in peer-reviewed journals.
And without the "carbon" bugaboo, the AGW conjecture fails.
I brought up that point in relation to why we should be concerned about global warming if it is happening, not as proof that global warming is actually occurring. So it wasn't really a straw man since the question was why be concerned at all.
I agree with you that the real question in relation to anthropogenic global warming should be is human activity intensifying or substantially contributing to global warming.
I would cite to the relevant literature to support the connection, but since you seem to be claiming it is all "falsified" anyway I suppose that is pointless.
However, you may want to offer some evidence that all that "falsified" evidence that got past peer-review is actually false. I know I'm curious how you know it is all false.
Apparently we have a giant conspiracy among all of those who are best trained to interpret the relevant data.
to what cause I wonder, oh yes, it must be because they're all clearly socialists that want nothing else than to ruin the economies of the west.
Lol.
China and India: "(snicker)Sounds scary! Sign us up!(snicker)"
Instead of offering any argument at all that attempts to prove peer-review has failed and that all the papers showing a link between CO2 and warming are false you offer sarcasm.
I'm still waiting on some "rational" reason to believe that the majority of the world's climatologists are intentionally fooling the public and how they convinced the majority of the world's scientists, including the top scientists in the U.S. in the National Academy of Sciences, to go along with the "conspiracy."
The changes that all of the handwringers would like to make, things that would drastically affect our economy, demand that responsible people be convinced.
That hasn't happened yet.
Others are busy dry-humping Albore's leg at the thought of more government regulation.
You know, for the children.
A few bloggers question that maybe, sort, kinda, Al Gore has done very very little for actual world peace, and this is "Gore Derangement Syndrome."
I have read of Krugman's take on an actual derangement syndrome, that of the left elite's hatred of G.W. Bush (long before Iraq or 9/11).
thanks
but this could be easily - and more typically - said of those who say that global-warming "sceptics" (or really, anthropogenic sceptics) are akin to Holocaust deniers.
Thus anthropogenic warming sceptics = big oil - don't have to pay attention to them!
Some researcher who has doubts about global-warming doomsayers said hello to someone married to an oil company executive ten years ago, "there in the pocket of the oil companies!"
thanks
He touches on, but does not emphasize enough to suit me, the opposite impact -- that human interference has vastly contracted the range of malarious mosquitoes.
Malaria is no longer the leading cause of death in Illinois, for example, even though -- according to you -- Illinois is hotter than it was.
Since the contraction and expansion of malaria occurred simultaneously on a globe whose climate was either warming, cooling or doing nothing but whatever it was doing, was doing it globally, then climate change cannot be a driver of malaria.
I happen to agree with Swede that the effect of carbon dioxide forcing is unproven, and I accept the QM argument that even if it is forcing, the effect diminishes (because the channels the photons can radiate from become progressively saturated).
Therefore, while you spend more and more to sequester more and more carbon, you have less and less effect on warming (if any at all), and you do less and less -- eventually approaching nothing, it's asymptotic -- for suffering people. Suit yourself.
Of course mosquitoes are a strawman argument. It's all straw. It hasn't even been demonstrated that the globe is warming.
When supporters of AGW make statements like AGW "will lead to less land in an already overcrowded world," it just makes me even more skeptical (cynical?)*. I'm not sure either statement is correct. While rising sea levels would lead to less land, would it lead to less inhabitable land? Also, I'm not sure that the world in "already overcrowded." We may well be undercrowded, at least from my vantage point.
*not skeptical of the science, which I have neither the time, nor the expertise, nor the inclination to investigate. Rather the solutions, which I fear will be way worse than the problem (if it exists). I'm guess I'm just wary of technocrats.
Prof. Kopel: why, specifically, do you give "kudos" to the New Party for bringing this case? A belief that the British court system is the appropriate place to debate issues of scientific fact? A belief that Gore's exaggerations in his film are an important subject for court action? Surely you are not not grateful that the lawsuit has yielded a British court opinion that unequivocally acknowledges the broad scientific consensus around the basic science of global warming as set forth in the 4th IPCC reports?
The Heartland Institute's own synopsis of the decision is both factually inaccurate and misleading. http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22161
It says:
I don't believe the decision anywhere requires the viewing of the "counter-film." Significantly, the "Guidance Note" that the Heartland Institute refers to here includes the following language:
Overall, it's impossible to imagine anyone — even a "skeptic" — reading the decision or the Guidance Note and seeing this as a refutation of the central thesis of the movie.
Wow! You are amazing you know that? Let me put that last sentence in front of you again, this time with emphasis to help you understand it.
I hope that helps, it illustrates that, because of warming, the parasite can now breed in highland regions it could not before! He attributes it directly to warming, not agricultural practices. I know you read his book, but, considering the trouble you are having understanding the above quote, I'm curious if you actually understood it.
Once again, you infer that I'm suggesting that malaria will be spreading to the U.S., but I have not stated this anywhere. Instead, you build up a straw man argument to knock down. I agree with Desowitz that due to our relative wealth we would be able to quickly handle and contain any outbreaks. What I did say is that the habitats for these parasites would increase, which Desowitz agrees with in the above quote.
Finally, as I pointed out to Swede, I am not arguing that the spread of malaria proves global warming, rather I was arguing that the potential spread of parasites is one reason we should be concerned about global warming.
I'd cite the relevant peer-reviewed articles to illustrate the well-established link between CO2 and global warming, but considering how you simply ignored it for the malaria argument I suppose it would be useless here as well. After all, it's a vast "conspiracy" perpetrated by the scientific community.
More precisely, a conspiracy perpetrated by a few people, some in the scientific community, some not, who signed on a lot of not-too-careful fellow travelers.
Hmmm. Where have we seen a similar phenomenon before?
Oh, yeah, Marxism.
Oh, yeah, Laffer curves and trickle-down economics.
More explicitly linked to climate, in the '70s we were assured by all the ecologists that the Sahel was expanding relentlessly south.
If, as the global warmers insist, climate change is going to result in increased droughts or otherwise catastrophic ecological changes, then it is not at all clear whether the range of the anopheline mosquito will expand or contract.
What is clear -- clear beyond argument -- is that the 'cures' proposed for warming over the next half century will have zero effect on malarious areas that already exist where somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people can be expected to die over that time.
Put it in present-value terms. What is the value of a life saved 50 years from now if the same investment could have saved a similar (or maybe larger) number of lives next year?
I know where I want to put my resources.
Care to cite to some source that establishes this vast "conspiracy" perpetrated by the world's leading scientists to suppress our economy?
Again, no point in citing peer-reviewed articles since the organizations that publish those articles are all members of the global warming cabal.
Hoffman has it right, and this was mentioned before. It's a logical fallacy. What does this have to do with the argument? You are swinging at straw men and windmills again Don Quixote.
Not to mention that you do not necessarily have to reduce funding to foreign aid in order to increase spending on alternate energy research (another fallacy, false dichotomy), you could decrease spending somewhere else.
If your view of the possible options for your resources is that narrow, perhaps you shouldn't be handling them.
Knocking off kleptocrats is more my line of approach.
You set him up and knocked him right down!
Anywho, how about this instead "scientists once believed X but were wrong, therefore
theywemustshould be(or even probably are) wrong today when they believe Yskeptical when they believe Y yet cannot prove the theory".There, all better.
You remind me of people who insist evolution hasn't been proven either. The fact that some folks (including a handful of scientists) disagree does not mean their disagreement is reasonable or that proof is lacking.
If your doctor says you need an operation to save your life and only ninety-nine out of a hundred other doctors you consult agree, would that one outlying opinion lead you to scoff at the diagnosis the way you do at global warming? Would it make a difference to you if millions of lives hung in the balance instead of just yours?
Let's try a particular case. You're a pregnant woman going to the lying-in hospital in Vienna in the mid-19th c. Would it make a difference to you if the lone dissenting physician were Ignaz Semmelweiss?
I was hoping I'd remind you of somebody who could be convinced by an overwhelming body of evidence, supported by facts, that could then support important decisions based on that evidence and facts.
Those kind of people are commonly referred to as adults.
And while I can certainly appreciated and believe in the theory of evolution, it's still that; a theory. Not proven.
Of course, nobody is suggesting that we make drastic changes that will effect our economy based on the theory of evolution. Instead, people want more government regulation based on the theory that the earth may be heating up, that humans may be contributing to that process, and that the whole thing might be bad. Armed with just enough knowledge to be dangerous, these people want to act.
Those kind of people are commonly referred to as bedwetters.
And our government makes all kinds of decisions based on scientific theories (such as the theory of gravity). The label of scientific "theory," which is applied commonly to hypotheses that have been tested enough to demonstrate a likelihood that they explain observable phenomena, has nothing to do with whether taking particular action based on evidence supporting or refuting the theory is sound policy or not.
There is slightly more disagreement about global warming, but not enough to disregard the rather enormous amount of proof. While it is possible (in the sense of "not impossible", not in the sense of "plausible") that global warming is not really happening, it makes no sense to insist that we do nothing until that possibility is reduced to zero. Nothing will ever be so certain in life that everybody will agree on it.
Several people on this thread have talked about the cost of combatting global warming, but it never makes sense to decide how to proceed based upon the likely cost of one option without considering the likely costs of the others. The likely cost of ignoring global warming is catastrophic in the broadest sense of the term. The likely cost of cambatting it is small in comparison, even though it is large when compared to almost anything else.
The choice is not between incurring a very high cost and incurring no cost. It is between incurring a high cost and incurring one that is exponentially higher. This should not be a difficult decision.
It is certain that the claims that it is warming at rates that can be quantified to tenths of a degree per year are way beyond anything we are able to measure.
Even if it is warming, it is certain that the approach being advocated -- reducing carbon dioxide -- will offer diminishing returns for exponentially growing costs, if it works at all, which is not certain.
If, as the history of climatology suggests, we are about due for another ice age, then combatting warming might make things very much worse.
So your range of choices is too limited for informed decision making.
I am reminded of a story about Clark Clifford. He was approached by a businessman who presented him with a complicated problem and asked for legal advice.
Clifford advised, 'Don't do anything,' and sent a bill for $25,000. (This was in the '50s, when $25K was real money.)
The businessman was angered and responded that he had a difficult problem and all Clifford had told him was to ignore it and why should he pay the bill?
Clifford responded, 'Because I said so' and billed him an additional $15,000.
Nothing turned out to be the correct course of action and eventually Clifford got paid.
Or so the story goes.
Actually, it is. Hardly anyone claims otherwise. There are some who claim that the warming is natural rather than man-made, but there really isn't much disagreement on that point either. And as I pointed out in an earlier comment, even natural warming is a problem worth addressing.
"Tenths of degrees per year" is a measurable amount, and I don't know why you believe otherwise.
As to the Clifford story, the fact that doing nothing proved to be the right way to deal with that problem has no bearing on whether it would be the right way to deal with any other -- including this one.