
Could a Climate Science Expert Change Your Opinion? - B1FF_PSUVM
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156040355101/could-a-climate-science-expert-change-your
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skolos
This line of argument ignores future costs. The side that is skeptical about
global warming is not 100% skeptical. Suppose they can agree that global
warming effect is true with some probability p (say 5%). Then let's consider
two scenarios - we do nothing about global warming, or humans manage to put
resources together and handle it. Say cost of putting resources together is c.
If we don't handle it we screw up the planet and the cost is C (which is
orders of magnitude bigger than c). Then as long as c < p*C the skepticism
should not matter to policy - we should spend resources to handle it. Since C
is orders of magnitude bigger than c even hard skeptics should be persuaded to
act.

The formula changes if the policy is set by generation which would incur cost
c, and different generation incur cost C. That's what happening now - baby-
boomers once again screwing younger generation and not much can be done about
it.

