RealClearPolitics - Articles - Apocalypse Now? Highly Unlikely
I well remember the global cooling crisis of the mid 70's -- it was much more academic then political as global warming has been, but anyone with any brains KNEW that we were on the verge of an ice age. "Shortage" was also the major watchword -- we were "out" of oil, metal, food -- you name it. "The end was near" -- unless of course we turned to the brilliant leadership of more Democrats. I remember the Carter drumbeat on campus -- one which I listened to and proudly went out and cast my first ever Presidential vote for that great reformer from Plains!
This is especially true:
The areas that I know the very most about are areas where I have very little to no "belief" -- I know both what I know, and what I don't know. The set of what I don't know is always painfully larger than the set of what I do, but that is the price of knowing -- it much increases dealing in probability and reduces dealing in certainty. Such is the shape of the real world.
I well remember the global cooling crisis of the mid 70's -- it was much more academic then political as global warming has been, but anyone with any brains KNEW that we were on the verge of an ice age. "Shortage" was also the major watchword -- we were "out" of oil, metal, food -- you name it. "The end was near" -- unless of course we turned to the brilliant leadership of more Democrats. I remember the Carter drumbeat on campus -- one which I listened to and proudly went out and cast my first ever Presidential vote for that great reformer from Plains!
This is especially true:
Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."
The areas that I know the very most about are areas where I have very little to no "belief" -- I know both what I know, and what I don't know. The set of what I don't know is always painfully larger than the set of what I do, but that is the price of knowing -- it much increases dealing in probability and reduces dealing in certainty. Such is the shape of the real world.
Indeed.Because of today's economy, another law -- call it the Law of Clarifying Calamities -- is being (redundantly) confirmed. On graphs tracking public opinion, two lines are moving in tandem and inversely: The sharply rising line charts public concern about the economy, the plunging line follows concern about the environment. A recent Pew Research Center poll asked which of 20 issues should be the government's top priorities. Climate change ranked 20th.
Real calamities take our minds off hypothetical ones. Besides, according to the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade, or one-third of the span since the global cooling scare.
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