Krugman's Wager

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman weighs in with an argument to DO SOMETHING!!!! about global warming:

It's true that scientists don't know exactly how much world temperatures will rise if we persist with business as usual. While there's a chance that we'll act against global warming only to find that the danger was overstated, there's also a chance that we'll fail to act only to find that the results of inaction were catastrophic. Which risk would you rather run?

It wasn't so long ago that global warmists were acting as if their alarming forecasts had already come true, even likening skeptics to Holocaust deniers. Now they are reduced to saying we really don't know if global warmism is true or not, but since the consequences are so dire if it is, we'd better just assume that it is and act accordingly.

If this sounds familiar, perhaps you've heard of Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French theologian who argued that faith was a good bet, in that the payoff is "an infinity of an infinitely happy life." If the probability of God's existing is anything greater than zero the rational thing to do is bet on God. [snip]

One difference between Pascal's Wager and Krugman's is that whereas Pascal was making a case for individuals to embrace faith, Krugman is arguing for collective action--which is to say, he wishes to use the power of government to impose his beliefs on others....

[at great cost - and I'm not talking the trillions of dollars but millions of lives likely to be lost as a direct result of retarding the progress of 3rd world nations. all to make politicians more powerful and corporations more money]

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