hpeer wrote:
I recently read a pretty good book about the Climate Change argument.
And there is also some pretty interesting research out there if you are
looking for information.

What's the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate
Change Debate Greg Craven

The thrust is not to tell you what will happen but to help people
navigate their way through all the claims and counter claims. He offers
a simplified risk analysis approach to the topic. He also offers his
own personal opinion on the matter. I suggest you read it. It's an
easy read and the technique is useful in a lot of other areas besides.

Something else interesting is a recent Yale/George Mason report on
American attitudes towards climate change. It seems that the deniers
fall into a fairly well defined demographic:
Well paid
Home owners
Older
Well educated
White
Men

research.yale.edu/environment/uploads/CCAmericanMind.pdf

You might ask yourself if your opinion is because of your reasoned and
enlightened thoughts - or because of the group you belong to.

As to my personal opinion - Playing the global warming game is dangerous
and should not be done lightly. If, in fact, GW is a hoax and there is
nothing to do then the worst we could do is to clean up or environment
and improve our gas mileage. That may come at the cost of a recession.

The worst that may happen by "cleaning up the environment" is much worse
than that, and is in fact almost entirely unaddressed by anyone. How
much less CO2 production will it take to change anything? No one knows.
Will it results in massive unemployment and economic hardship, a radical
change in lifestyle and great decrease in quality of life? No one knows.
But, the radical greens don't care, right? Their agenda is something
akin to setting technology back a hundred years or so, with no
consideration for how much suffering it would cause anyone, right? I
mean, you're all sympathetic to that idea, right?

So don't pretend that the worst case scenario is just a little cleanup
and increased gas mileage of cars.

Stephen