Mama's House

Occasionally, Austin loves to do an impression of a stereotypical Republican making unsound arguments both to me and to his co-workers. I don't know if he does this merely as a joke or because he truly believes his impression is The Truth and his exaggerated impression shows the ridiculousness of the "true Republican." Anyway, one of the issues he likes to riff on when he his playing Republican is global warming. His stereotypical Republican denies that global warming even exists by blindly denying all of the science backing it up. Of course, Austin's impression is way off the mark and a more accurate position of those wary of global warming alarmists is given here.

(1) anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, (2) current projections of its expected impact are wildly uncertain, but are not sufficient to justify the costs of an aggressive emissions reduction program

No denial there that Earth is warming or even that human activity is the cause of that warming. But the real concern is what are the costs. Too often, the costs of global warming policy are only associated with what would happen if we don't do what Al Gore tells us we should do without any consideration whatsoever as to what the costs would be if we did what Al Gore asked us to do. Or as George Will put it,

We do not know the extent to which human activity caused this. The activity is economic growth, the wealth-creation that makes possible improved well-being—better nutrition, medicine, education, etc. How much reduction of such social goods are we willing to accept by slowing economic activity in order to (try to) regulate the planet's climate?

We do not know how much we must change our economic activity to produce a particular reduction of warming.

It could cost tens of trillions (in expenditures and foregone economic growth, here and in less-favored parts of the planet) to try to fine-tune the planet's temperature. We cannot know if these trillions would purchase benefits commensurate with the benefits that would have come from social wealth that was not produced.

Hopefully, next time Austin decides to play Republican, he will make this argument.