Jonah Goldberg tries to fool you:

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Global cooling costs too much (h/t/ BusyBusyBusy), Goldberg tries to make the following argument:

That all of the prosperity generated in the 20th century is due to the buring of fossil fuels, and that the resulting global warming wasn't a problem.

He does it by presenting incomplete statistics and with faulty logic. Here is a breakdown of his key assertions:

Goldberg writes	he implies	what he doesn't tell you
The Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century
while it increased its GDP by 1,800%,	The growth is huge.	1,800% over 100 years is equal to an annual increase of 3% over the same period.
by one estimate.		where that estimate comes from
How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800% is unknowable,
but let's stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity	The 20th century prosperity was wholly dependent on the burning of fossil fuels.	It's a false (implied) linkage. That there was increased prosperity due to a number of factors, including burning fossil fuels, doesn't mean that the warming was the result of all of that economic growth.
and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious).
Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West.	Burning fossil fuels for energy was a significant factor in the development of medicine and other intellectual pursuits.
Given the option of getting another 1,800% richer	All of us can look forward to getting richer.	GDP can grow simply due to population growth, in which case nobody gets richer. Per-capita GDP can be stagnant even though the aggregate GDP increases.
in exchange for another 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer,	Global warming in the 21st century will be as much, but not greater than the 0.7 °C, that took place during the 20th century.	That's not what the scientists predict. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict that global temperatures are likely to increase by 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) between 1990 and 2100.
I'd take the heat in a heartbeat.

Goldberg deliberately uses numbers in such a fashion so that unpleasant facts are obscured. He likes to talk in terms of degrees Celsius, which don't sound too bad to Americans who think in terms of Farenheit. He low-balls the estimates of global warming. It's actually worse than that. He says we should expect a rise of 0.7 °C when the lowest IPCC estimate is 1.1 °C (and could be as much as 11.5 °F - which would be a disaster). And he claims a 100% causal relationship between "prosperity" (which he broadly defines to include non-economic factors like science and medicine) and global warming.

When you can't make your case honestly, it's a sign you don't have a case to make.


posted by Quiddity at 2/09/2007 10:55:00 AM