[soldarnal]

The most devastating problem to Pascal's wager, in my opinion, is the many claimants problem - the idea being, "Which god?" The one whose favorite number is 1? 2? 3? etc... I think the same problem will ultimately be devastating to any attempt to apply it to global warming. Which solution? We only have finite resources. Do we build a giant solar shade or do we implement a cap-and-trade solution? There are perhaps an infinite number of possible solutions, each a claimant upon our wager.

[tome]

Each solution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions pulls in more or less the same direction. Choosing a god to worship certainly does not!

[soldarnal]

Presumably the goal isn't reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but maintaining global temperatures, in which case possible solutions do pull in many different directions...

But anyway, that misses the point. The wager isn't cost-benefit analysis where probabilities and expected values are certain; it's decision making in the absence of compelling evidence. What you have essentially done is respond to the multiple claimants problem by saying, "But any form of belief in the Christian God pulls in more or less the same direction." In the uncertainty that the wager confronts, however, "reducing CO2 emissions" and "increasing CO2 emissions" have the same expected value - that is, they are equal claimants. Hence my point that the multiple claimants problem is equally devastating when the wager is applied to global warming.

[randallsquared]

Waiting to do something drastic until we're forty or fifty years richer and more technologically capable seems like an easy answer, assuming you're willing to agree that we're getting more capable of solving the problem faster than the problem is worsening. And assuming that the recent plateau doesn't signal the beginning of the end of the interglacial, which, I'm sure you'll agree, would be a far worse problem than global warming...