This is the flip side of an answer I have to keep giving with reference to other fallacy questions: Politics is not logic. In this case, there is a very important aspect of politics most of us ignore. In politics, there are no necessities, there are only choices between alternatives. If all of the alternatives are logically incorrect to different degrees, that does not stop one of them from being the best option.

Theories of politics are moral and logical to various degrees, but they are not entirely ethics or logic, and the standards of ethics or logic do not control them. There are unsolvable issues in ethics and in logic -- there are none in politics. Some direction, be it action or inaction, will be taken.

What direction it is wisest for us to go in the future, and what beliefs should direct those choices, is not a matter of logical, observed, or theoretical fact. Logic relies on some source of premises. And science can only provide those premises on a basis of trust. When it all comes down to brass tax, scientists can only predict things. They cannot know them. That is a fundamental truth of the scientific endeavor.

Any time you are using science to make a decision politically, you are not basing your decisions on fact. You are always relying upon the negotiation process that rationalizes scientific results against the data. Every scientific fact is an appeal to authority. So unleashing basic mistrust on science just means you have to work entirely outside the framework of science altogether, or you have to play the odds.

Given that the scientists are going to be wrong with a given likelihood, what is the best course? What happens if they are wrong, and we make the changes necessary to avoid catastrophe? Can the countervailing position hold up their predictions of global economic collapse? Of course not, economics is science, too. And a science with a far higher risk of being wrong, given that it involves humans making competitive decisions, it necessarily involves feedback loops that no one understands.

So the two sides of this argument are both science, and it does not matter whether either of them has ultimate proof or even complete consensus. The more likely outcome is still that the majority climatologists are correct and the one half of classical economists are wrong.

Pretending that all he has to do is refute your claim introduces the fallacy of the argument from ignorance. Dismantling a proof does not prove the opposite. Even if he destroyed all of your evidence, denying the force of an argument does not offer any reason to decide in any given way. Given that action and inaction are both decisions, the two of you should adopt the same level of burden: He needs to have a position of his own to argue for doing nothing, given the chance there is global warming.

This is the flip side of an answer I have to keep giving with reference to other fallacy questions: Politics is not logic. In politics, there are no necessities, there are only choices between alternatives. If all of the alternatives are logically incorrect to different degrees, that does not stop one of them from being the best option. Some direction, be it action or inaction, will be taken.

What direction it is wisest for us to go in the future, and what beliefs should direct those choices, is not a matter of logical, observed, or theoretical fact. Logic relies on some source of premises. And science can only provide those premises on a basis of trust. When it all comes down to brass tax, scientists can only predict things. They cannot know them. That is a fundamental truth of the scientific endeavor.

Any time you are using science to make a decision politically, you are not basing your decisions on fact. You are always relying upon the negotiation process that rationalizes scientific results against the data. Every scientific fact is an appeal to authority. So unleashing basic mistrust on science just means you have to work entirely outside the framework of science altogether, or you have to play the odds.

Those odds are against the most common counterargument -- that the predicted economic risk of action outweighs the predicted risk of loss due to inaction.

Given that the scientists are going to be wrong with a given likelihood, what is the best course? What happens if they are wrong, and we make the changes necessary to avoid catastrophe? Can the countervailing position hold up their predictions of global economic collapse? Of course not, economics is science, too. And a science with a far higher risk of being wrong. Given that it involves humans making competitive decisions, it necessarily involves feedback loops that no one understands.

So the two sides of this argument are both science, and it does not matter whether either of them has ultimate proof or even complete consensus. The more likely outcome is still that the majority climatologists are correct and the anti-regulatory half of classical economists are wrong.

This is the flip side of an answer I have to keep giving with reference to other fallacy questions: Politics is not logic. In politics, there are choices between alternatives, if all of the alternatives are logically incorrect to different degrees, that does not stop one of them from being the best option. Theories of politics are moral and logical to various degrees, but they are not entirely ethics or logic, and the standards of ethics or logic do not control them.

What direction it is wisest for us to go in the future, and what beliefs should direct those choices, is not a matter of logical, observed, or theoretical fact. Logic relies on some source of premises. And science can only provide those premises on a basis of trust. When it all comes down to brass tax, scientists can only predict things. They cannot know them. That is a fundamental truth of the scientific endeavor.

Any time you are using science to make a decision politically, you are not basing your decisions on fact. You are always relying upon the negotiation process that rationalizes scientific results against the data. Every scientific fact is an appeal to authority. So unleashing basic mistrust on science just means you have to work entirely outside the framework of science altogether.

Given that the scientists are likely to be wrong, with a given likelihood, what is the best course? What happens if they are wrong, and we make the changes necessary to avoid catastrophe? Can the countervailing position hold up their predictions of global economic collapse? Of course not, economics is science, too. And a science with a far higher risk of being wrong, given that it involves humans making competitive decisions, it necessarily involves feedback loops that no one understands.

So the two sides of this argument are both science, and it does not matter whether either of them has ultimate proof or even complete consensus. The more likely outcome is still that the majority climatologists are correct and the one half of classical economists are wrong.

This is the flip side of an answer I have to keep giving with reference to other fallacy questions: Politics is not logic. In this case, there is a very important aspect of politics most of us ignore. In politics, there are no necessities, there are only choices between alternatives. If all of the alternatives are logically incorrect to different degrees, that does not stop one of them from being the best option.

Theories of politics are moral and logical to various degrees, but they are not entirely ethics or logic, and the standards of ethics or logic do not control them. There are unsolvable issues in ethics and in logic -- there are none in politics. Some direction, be it action or inaction, will be taken.

What direction it is wisest for us to go in the future, and what beliefs should direct those choices, is not a matter of logical, observed, or theoretical fact. Logic relies on some source of premises. And science can only provide those premises on a basis of trust. When it all comes down to brass tax, scientists can only predict things. They cannot know them. That is a fundamental truth of the scientific endeavor.

Any time you are using science to make a decision politically, you are not basing your decisions on fact. You are always relying upon the negotiation process that rationalizes scientific results against the data. Every scientific fact is an appeal to authority. So unleashing basic mistrust on science just means you have to work entirely outside the framework of science altogether, or you have to play the odds.

Given that the scientists are going to be wrong with a given likelihood, what is the best course? What happens if they are wrong, and we make the changes necessary to avoid catastrophe? Can the countervailing position hold up their predictions of global economic collapse? Of course not, economics is science, too. And a science with a far higher risk of being wrong, given that it involves humans making competitive decisions, it necessarily involves feedback loops that no one understands.

So the two sides of this argument are both science, and it does not matter whether either of them has ultimate proof or even complete consensus. The more likely outcome is still that the majority climatologists are correct and the one half of classical economists are wrong.