What a piece of bogus! I know that’s not polite, but if you make so many mistakes in reasoning and then have the audacity to proclaim your argument as watertight you deserve no better.
The two small mistakes: First, it doesn’t matter whether global warming is man made or not – if it destroys the climate we have to do something about it, no matter the cause. Second, the lower left box should also have “global depression” written in it, and not a smiley face. Why would we go into a global depression if we spend money on environmental issues and global warming does not occur, but not go into a depression if we spend the same money and it does occur?
Now the big mistake: You can make the exact same argument about any threat, real or not. You’ll always end up with two rows and two columns, with the left column preferable. For example: There’s an invisible comet that will hit the earth in 30 years – we should put huge amounts of money into spaceflight and equipment for detecting invisible comets. There’s an evil race of rat-people living underground and it plans to take over the world in 10 years – we should build up huge armies to fight them.
Of course those claims are ridiculous, which is the reason why this argument does not apply to them. If you’re a global warming denialist then the claim that there is global warming is ridiculous, too, so the argument doesn’t apply neither. It all comes down to probabilities and doing cost calculations – a simple matrix doesn’t solve anything.
Just for the record: I do believe global warming is happening and that we should do something about it.
http://spanring.eu/ Christian
Agreed, the matrix doesn’t solve anything, it gives an idea of basic options for further discussions. The issue is obviously more diverse than just putting black and white in 4 cells. But I do like the simple approach. You can always split-up cells and provide more detailed views.
I understood the lower-left cell as misspent vs. well spent investments on a global scale:
Let’s say we chose “Action Yes” and invest in R&D programs for wind energy. If global warming is a myth, all investments are lost, we can keep using our cheap coal power stations, dump all research results and wind mills. There won’t be any further use for them, everything lost, economic depression.
If global warming is happening, we’ll replace coal by wind, our wind R&D programmes pay off, create new businesses and all made investments will return, smiling face.