In this speculative article - a view from the future, historians ponder the failure of civilization in face of the global warming - the authors critizize positivism as one problem in facing global warming. I'm not sure I quite understand their point, and anyway I'm more interested in understanding the inherent limits in positivsm and scientific thought.

I understand the problem to be the following:

• The statement "Humanities actions change the climate" is in principle provable and maybe even falsifieable.
• The inverse statement "Humanities actions do not change the climate" is not provable, it could be falsified by the firststatement. The second statement is not provable because at most there can be absence of proof.
• Hence, all the burden of proof lies on the first statement. This makes the second statement effectivly the unproven consensus among those scientists who don't beleive the evidence for the first statement.

bUt is my understanding of positivism here even correct?

In this speculative article - a view from the future, historians ponder the failure of civilization in face of the global warming - the authors criticize positivism as one problem in facing global warming. I'm not sure I quite understand their point, and anyway I'm more interested in understanding the inherent limits in positivism and scientific thought.

I understand the problem to be the following:

• The statement "Humanities actions change the climate" is in principle provable and maybe even falsifiable.
• The inverse statement "Humanities actions do not change the climate" is not provable, it could be falsified by the first statement. The second statement is not provable because at most there can be absence of proof.
• Hence, all the burden of proof lies on the first statement. This makes the second statement effectively the unproven consensus among those scientists who don't believe the evidence for the first statement.

but is my understanding of positivism here even correct?