To an intelligent person who understands the basic principles of the greenhouse effect, the real questions are "How much?" and "How fast?"
My understanding of climate science is that we don't yet have accurate enough models to make anything more than wild estimates of the economic costs of climate change.
Once we do have such data, nobody will care about what David Brin said.
> To an intelligent person who understands the basic principles of the greenhouse effect, the real questions are "How much?" and "How fast?"
The first question should be 'is this happening' - skepticism is the default position of science. The onus is to prove a hypothesis, not to disprove it.
I honestly don't ever think I will know whether man-made large scale climate change is happening or not - the IPCC, University of East Anglia, Auckland University, and Al Gore have all made very public mistakes and in some cases have been shown to deliberately manipulate data - all within the last 2 years. Meanwhile I keep hearing other credible sources (the Oxford spokesperson on the BBC) still state that the link between man and climate is still not considered proven. Given these two facts, it's very hard for someone without scientific training to identify the credible sources from the incredible ones, and until I can do so, I remain skeptical as I should.
To an intelligent person who understands the basic principles of the greenhouse effect, the real questions are "How much?" and "How fast?"
My understanding of climate science is that we don't yet have accurate enough models to make anything more than wild estimates of the economic costs of climate change.
Once we do have such data, nobody will care about what David Brin said.