[bobbydroptables]

I think only snowwrestler has a good point. "Waiting for the science" is the same as saying "we know for a fact that burning carbon is safe" if both of those result in burning unsustainable amounts of carbon.

>I'd say having 70% of the information, something like that.

This is still missing the point. This means that you need only 31% of science to continue burning carbon, but you need 70% to stop burning carbon. You have created an asymmetry that's not justified by anything (let alone science). Public policy cannot be agnostic about the science. It's not possible.

If you say "let's wait" you're saying "it's safe to keep doing what we're doing" even though you don't have any justification for that.

To put it really simply, you've created a default bias. There is no reason to assume the default is better than a given alternative. It needs to be justified. If you can justify it, fine and good, let's do it. But no one has.

[pdonis]

> If you say "let's wait" you're saying "it's safe to keep doing what we're doing" even though you don't have any justification for that.

As I responded elsewhere in this thread, by this criterion, we should stop pretty much everything we are doing. Which is not a viable option, never has been, and never will be.

[bobbydroptables]

>As I responded elsewhere in this thread, by this criterion, we should stop pretty much everything we are doing. Which is not a viable option, never has been, and never will be.

No, I'm not saying this. I'm saying we need to stop pretending its sustainable to keep burning carbon at the rates we are. It's not sustainable and we need to take painful steps immediately to stop this.

It does not mean we need to "stop doing pretty much everything we're doing". Not sure where you get that idea. It means we need to stop allowing every Cletus in Kentucky to buy an F-350 and pay $1.89 for a gallon of gas to cruise 56 miles to the local Walmart to buy factory farmed beef and a bunch of plastic sh!t shipped across the globe from 12 different parts of China.

The idea is we should live in reality, not that we shouldn't live.

[pdonis]

> It does not mean we need to "stop doing pretty much everything we're doing". Not sure where you get that idea.

Because your own stated criterion is that we need to be able to justify what we're currently doing based on scientific knowledge. We cannot justify most of the things we're currently doing on that basis.

> The idea is we should live in reality

We apparently don't agree on what "reality" actually is, at least with respect to how much of an emergency CO2 emissions are. You think they're a dire emergency. I think they're not an emergency at all. You will, I take it, claim to justify your belief that they are a dire emergency based on some kind of scientific knowledge. But it isn't. Nobody has a good enough predictive track record about the climate to make such a claim. So this claimed "knowledge" isn't actually knowledge at all; it's just people's beliefs and hypotheses and speculations. And that isn't a good enough basis to dictate public policy to everyone. Which is one of the key points the article we are discussing in this thread is making.

[bobbydroptables]

>We cannot justify most of the things we're currently doing on that basis.

Exactly my point. Why do you think we need to have a higher justification for good ideas (engaging in sustainable behavior) than for bad ideas (engaging in unsustainable behavior)?

>We apparently don't agree on what "reality" actually is, at least with respect to how much of an emergency CO2 emissions are. You think they're a dire emergency.

>Which is one of the key points the article we are discussing in this thread is making.

And the point you're still missing is that not doing anything to stop risky behavior is making an assumption that it is safe to continue the risky behavior. That assumption is not grounded in anything.

[pdonis]

> Why do you think we need to have a higher justification for good ideas (engaging in sustainable behavior) than for bad ideas (engaging in unsustainable behavior)?

You're misstating the alternatives. We're talking about public policy. The alternatives for public policy are "don't dictate what everyone must do in area X" or "dictate what everyone must do in area X". The former does not need a "higher justification". The latter does.

[bobbydroptables]

>You're misstating the alternatives.

No.

>We're talking about public policy.

Yes.

>The alternatives for public policy are "don't dictate what everyone must do in area X" or "dictate what everyone must do in area X".

The world is not this simple. Regardless, we must dictate that people cannot inflict externalities on third parties without compensation.

>The former does not need a "higher justification". The latter does.

Where are you getting this idea? You're just stating a conclusion without any support. I can do that too:

You are wrong, I am right. You need to scientifically justify acts that have harmful externalities. You do not need to justify harmful acts that restrict harmful externalities.

Wow, this is easy! I should have been arguing like this all along!