Ghmothwdwhso wrote:
I'll try one more time. I've asked this question before on one of these "Climate change"/"Global warming" threads and haven't received an intelligent answer.
What did humans do to end the last ice age?
You haven't received an intelligent answer because you haven't asked an intelligent question. There are lots of morons on both sides who make dumb arguments. Refuting dumb arguments (or pointing out that they're stupid) is fun, but it doesn't really address the issues at hand. It's important to address the good arguments if you want to convince other people. Undoubtedly, natural forces play the largest role in climate change. No one seriously debates that. The real question is whether the limited role played by humans is exacerbating the natural process and making things worse for us.
To steal an analogy from another thread--
I haven't yet heard anyone suggest that humans make more of a warming impact than nature, but that doesn't seem to be a reason not to do anything. Noting that one variable isn't the primary variable doesn't mean you should ignore it. For example, intelligence matters more than studying for SAT performance. But if someone is stupid, that doesn't mean they shouldn't study--on the contrary, because they can only control that variable, they should do everything they can to increase their chances there, even if the larger variables are out of their control.
Undoubtedly the vast majority of climate change is driven by natural cycles. I haven't heard anyone deny that. But it does appear likely that our actions play at least some role in what's going on. Inasmuch as we can minimize that impact (while balancing it out against affecting the economy today), I think it's irresponsible not to have the discussion and figure out if there's something we can do now not to screw over our kids' generation. Screwing the future to make the present easier is a baby-boomer sort of thing (thanks, mom and dad, for all the taxes and entitlement spending!)--I don't like it when previous generations have done it to us, and it's irresponsible for us to do it to the future.
And then, assuming that's true, the tough question becomes determining how much of a trade off to make in the near future to reduce a slight chance of a potentially massive problem in the longterm. We're not very good at discounting the present to adjust for the future, and this is essentially a policy decision--how many people do we believe we need to lock into poverty now to avoid more in the future? How many people do we need to starve to death now to prevent more in the future? Let's not make any bones about it--significantly expensive carbon abatement strategies that negatively affect GDP today have a real, meaningful impact on the world's poor and directly result in increasing their suffering. But how much of that are we willing to do to prevent a chance of more suffering in the future?
