5 easy ways to refute arguments against anthropogenic climate change, risks to/from the poor, an alternative growth theory

I never expect to convince a fervent denier of climate change, but I hope to dissuade other people from buying into their nonsense.

Fact - CO2, NOx and CH4 are greenhouse gases.

Fact - increasing the proportion of these greenhouse gases warms the earth. Hence, the name greenhouse gas. This can be easily verified experimentally by comparing incoming transmission of UV and the visible light spectrum to the transmission of outgoing infrared and other heat diffusion, for each greenhouse gas. This has already been done.

Fact - the long term effects of short term warming are not completely understood. There are numerous positive feedbacks and numerous negative feedbacks. A positive feedback is something where the initial cause starts a process that makes that process speed up. An example is melting ice, which increases the rate of warming since there is less ice to reflect sunlight directly back to space. A negative feedback is something where the initial cause starts a process that acts against the initial cause. It's not clear which of these are greater. An example is that many plants grow faster when things are warmer, which increases the rate of carbon uptake in ecosystems (however, decomposition also increases with temperature, and we don't know which effect is larger at the global level, although there are certainly plenty of estimates). There are plenty more of each kind of feedback. In balance, it looks like things will warm up a heck of a lot more before control mechanisms inherent to our global climate kick in.

Fact - yes, yes, it's true that temperatures fluctuate over time, and that once upon a time it was much warmer and sea levels were much higher than today. A recent article in Science suggests that the seas were as much as 200m higher than today many, many millions of years ago. However, that changes absolutely nothing about the fact that rapid increases in greenhouse gases will lead to an unprecedented rate of climate change, at least in the short term (that is, over the next hundreds or thousands of years). The global poor, who have the least capacity to adjust in a system of entrenched property rights, will face the most severe of these devastating consequences. It's tragic.

That said, with due respect to the important role that property rights and land titles play in offering collateral or leverage that facilitates investment and thus growth. This will be a tough nut to crack. We can't expect the global poor to just sit back and watch themselves get screwed. Pure strategies such as playing nice or playing dirty are not an option. We have to look out for our interests, which will necessarily include supporting the ability of the global poor to achieve long term economic independence in the face of the significant challenges that will be faced over the next few generations.

Fact - yes, there are millions of factors other than greenhouse gases that affect the climate. Fine. Sure. Whatever. Add it to the models. It doesn't mean that greenhouse gases are not greenhouse gases.

This is my analogy for those who look to sun spots or whatever else to explain global warming. Imagine this - I tell you that a good bowl of chili has tomato sauce and beans in it. The shrill and irrational response is that there are absolutely no beans in the chili, since, as we are all well aware, some people put green chili's in their chili. ... To which I think, WTF? ... but tomato sauce and beans are the main ingredients in my chili?

For the record, I predict that Malthusian outlooks will become increasingly relevant. He was right in his own time, then largely irrelevant through the industrial revolution due to rapid growth of productivity and the fact that people chose to consume rather than breed as they got richer, but now we're approaching new limits. Hence, the focus on women's rights and education as tools to minimize population growth rates, as well as conservation movements.

You think there are no limits to growth? I think there are no limits to personal growth that can be found through spiritual and philosophical inquiry and the exploration of our creative potential. Now that kind of growth is not amenable to a Malthusian outlook.