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WashACE Blog
Monday, February 16, 2009
Contrasting Views on Climate Change
Posted by Richard Davis on 2/16/2009 12:21:00 PM
Friday, the Seattle PI carried yet another editorial urging lawmakers to pass the governor's climate change cap-and-trade legislation. There are, of course, plenty of good reasons to delay. Yet, the PI says:
Smart policymakers will choose to confront what science is telling us about how global change will hurt the state.
The absolute certainty in science expressed there made this George Will column timely. He riffs on the "global ice age" predicted thirty years ago, citing a number of examples where environmental doomsayers have been, well, off the mark. Read the whole thing.
He also cites a rule with which I was unfamiliar. ...Gregg Easterbrook's "Law of Doomsaying": Predict catastrophe no sooner than five years hence but no later than 10 years away, soon enough to terrify but distant enough that people will forget if you are wrong.
Of course, if we pass economy-killing regulations based on flawed science, people are unlikely to forget in five, ten, or twenty years. However you feel about it, there's no reason for Washington to rush ahead of national policy.
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