I just heard Sarah Palin saying that she doesn’t blame all human behaviour on global warming. Okay, let’s be charitable and assume she meant that the other way around. But then she said we should stop arguing about what causes global warming and just focus on how to fix it. As Rachel Maddow pointed out – if you don’t know what’s causing it, how can you know what would fix it?
Incidentally, I like Maddow more than most of the punditti, but her suggestion that we should respond to the current financial crisis with “New Deal” style legislation that helps the poor, as opposed to a bailout plan that helps the rich, makes me tear my hair out. What was the New Deal if not thoroughgoing crony capitalism that shafted the poor on a massive scale? She really needs to read Robert Higgs’ Depression, War, and Cold War and Butler Shaffer’s In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918-1938.
if you don’t know what’s causing it, how can you know what would fix it?
Well, you can know how to put out a fire without knowing what caused that fire. So IMO it is conceivable that a solution to global warming is found without the cause being known. Wether this is likely or not is a different question.
All this assuming (for the sake of argument) that global warming is indeed a problem, something I’m not convinced of.
How about instead of trying to “fix” global climate cycles, we think about adapting to them? And since free markets promote much greater flexibility than government commands, freeing the market is the clear solution to any climate issue. Though I see climate change as a potential problem, I don’t think it will become a real crisis unless government action makes it so.
Well, you can know how to put out a fire without knowing what caused that fire.
If you have enough fire-fighting tools at your disposal. If all you’ve managed to find is a bucket of water, you might need a little more information on whether or not you’re fighting an electrical or chemical fire.
If you have enough fire-fighting tools at your disposal. If all you’ve managed to find is a bucket of water, you might need a little more information on whether or not you’re fighting an electrical or chemical fire.
Not exactly. What you need to know is wether there’s any electrical circuitry or dangerous chemicals around. Wether those caused the fire or not is not really relevand.
Eh. Still analogizes. Another: I can bail out the boat without knowing where the hole is, but if I don’t plug the hole, the boat ain’t gonna stay dry.
Seems like there might be an important difference here between “what caused” and “what’s causing.”