I agree with you when you place the global warming and the demografic explosion as the world’s worst ills. Even without considering the hypothesis stated in your post of a sudden change in global climate equilibrium. In the last 15th days I visited the republique of Maldives which is the first country that will disappear if the oceans level keep raising at the same rhythm. As I read there, the oceans level is raising 10/15 mm/year. Considering that the highest point in Maldives is 2 m, this beautiful and unique country will disappear in 150/200 years!

Alex Pinto (a portuguese follower of your posts)

Combating disease and mitigating hunger are solved problems. We have eradicated some diseases completely from the earth (polio, smallpox), and many countries in the world have reduced the problem of hunger to extremely low levels by historic standards.

By contrast, global warming mediation will be hideously expensive by any stretch, with resulting benefits that are slim to none. Kyoto, as controversial as that is, is thought to be woefully inadequate at stopping global warming. Moreover, plausible theories exist that attribute nearly all global warming to natural causes, such as increases in solar output. Thus, we are spending an enormous amount for little gain that we have some (however small) reason to believe may be illusory.

Also, before one can dismiss the economists, one must prove that one can spend $50 billion on the global warming problem and get a better bang for the buck than for the other things. That’s doable (say, on alternative fuels research), but it’s certainly not enough to slam-dunk the economists for foolishly ignoring the problem.

However, on the flip side, there seems to be little concern over the idea of scaring people into giving up their freedoms
(and massive amounts of money) for federal security against environmental threats. We have witnessed with our own eyes thousands of people killed
from terrorist attacks; what we have with environmental studies, however, are merely hypothesizing, estimates, and predictions
(that have been going on for decades and have never come true to the extent predicted, by the way).

I strongly support littering fines, energy conservation, and personal stewardship of the environment. Let us not, however,
allow a political figure to cater to hysterical emotions and allow us to cede our freedoms to tyranny to embark on a massive
and vexing Gaia campaign any more than we would allow a political figure to overestimate the threat of terrorism.

You are on very thin ice here. An African could then say that you should stop fighting terrorism, because terrorism is reducing world population and so preventing global warming.

God Save America With Such Judges.

However in regards to this:

“The AIDS epidemic … is also readily controllable, without medical intervention, by avoidance of promiscuous sex.”

What role has promiscuous sex played in the success of the human species?

How would human behavior differ today if those having a predilection for promiscuous sex been exterminated by a virus millennia ago?

Is it possible for those with a predilection for promiscuous sex to alter their behavior? Or mightn’t one be about as successful at halting this behavior as one would be in urging dolphins to stop screwing each other wantonly?

Which is all to say: that remark was a bit too flip.

More plausibly, any increase in cloud cover will serve to moderate the warming trend, acting as a negative feedback effect to stabilize the climate and avoid the most extreme negative predictions. Present climate models have difficulty with this phenomenon and it is an active area of research. It is exactly this sort of uncertainty which makes people hesitant to believe the dire warnings of disaster which you are offering here.

-kd

Interesting that you’d bring up Malthus, who environmentalists touted for years as the Mesiah. The coming population catastrophe. Yada, yada, yada, yada. Well, it never materialized. The nuts go back to the drawing board, and we’ve got another dime-a-dozen doomsday scenario–the looming global warming catastrophe.

Posner has read Malthus. If we were to feed/medicate everyone, we wouldn’t be feeding anyone shortly.