Reply To: Might the predictions of climate change be wrong? Or do you believe on faith!

Gallup’s Mirror wrote:

I don’t take weather reports on faith. I accept that tomorrow there is a 20% chance of rain, based on the best information available, and plan accordingly. If I care to check the data, I can see approaching rain clouds on weather radar maps.

A prediction does not have to be certain to be useful in making plans. In a weather model predicting rain, I will not put sealer on my driveway tomorrow. In a model predicting sunshine, I will. I can prepare for both outcomes. In a powerball drawing giving one chance in fifty million of winning, I’ll hold off on hiring a butler until after the drawing.

A lot of money will be diverted and a lot of lives adversely affected based on these climate models, so it’s rather important that they be right. We are asking countries in the developing world to develop much more slowly in order to accommodate possibly flawed calculations. Even if we were to bear the brunt of such changes, even asking countries like China and India and Brazil to bear some of the load will place an unfair burden on them. Unfair, because we gave ourselves such a huge headstart by using fossil fuels like there was no tomorrow. Like there was an inexhaustible supply.

While only a crazy science denier could possibly maintain that human activities have no effect on climate change, it may be that the effect is a much smaller part of the causal system than climate scientists believe based on their models. What do we tell all those affected by our futile efforts then? Oops!!!?