Wikipedia defines fallacy:
In informal logic and rhetoric, a fallacy is usually incorrect reasoning in argumentation resulting in a misconception. By accident or design, fallacies may exploit emotional triggers in the listener or interlocutor (e.g. appeal to emotion), or take advantage of social relationships between people (e.g. argument from authority). Fallacious arguments are often structured using rhetorical patterns that obscure the logical argument, making fallacies more difficult to diagnose.
Donald Boudreaux can't avoid it:
Writing recently in the Washington Post, environmental guru Bill McKibben asserted that the number and severity of recent weather events, such as the tornado in Joplin, Mo., are too great not to be the result of fossil-fuel induced climate change. He suggested that government's failure to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases will result in more violent weather and weather-related deaths in the future.
And pointing to the tragedy in Joplin, Mr. McKibben summarily dismissed the idea that, if climate change really is occurring, human beings can successfully adapt to it.
There's one problem with this global-warming chicken little-ism. It has little to do with reality. National Weather Service data on weather-related fatalities since 1940 show that the risks of Americans being killed by violent weather have fallen significantly over the past 70 years. ...
This decline in the absolute number of deaths caused by tornadoes, floods and hurricanes is even more impressive considering that the population of the United States more than doubled over these years—to 308 million in 2010 from 132 million in 1940.
Contrary to what many environmentalists would have us believe, Americans are increasingly less likely to be killed by severe weather. Moreover, because of modern industrial and technological advances—radar, stronger yet lighter building materials, more reliable electronic warning devices, and longer-lasting packaged foods—we are better protected from nature's fury today than at any other time in human history. We do adapt.
Of course, this happy trend might not continue. Maybe the allegedly devastating consequences of our "addiction" to fossil fuels, and the rapid economic growth these fuels make possible, will soon catch up with us. Maybe the future will be more deadly.
I reject this pessimism. I do so because economics and history teach that human beings in market economies have proven remarkably creative and resourceful in overcoming challenges. And there's no reason to think that this creativity and resourcefulness will fail us in the face of climate change. ...
So confident am I that the number of deaths from violent storms will continue to decline that I challenge Mr. McKibben—or Al Gore, Paul Krugman, or any other climate-change doomsayer—to put his wealth where his words are. I'll bet $10,000 that the average annual number of Americans killed by tornadoes, floods and hurricanes will fall over the next 20 years. Specifically, I'll bet that the average annual number of Americans killed by these violent weather events from 2011 through 2030 will be lower than it was from 1991 through 2010.
If environmentalists really are convinced that climate change inevitably makes life on Earth more lethal, this bet for them is a no-brainer. They can position themselves to earn a cool 10 grand while demonstrating to a still-skeptical American public the seriousness of their convictions.
But if no one accepts my bet, what would that fact say about how seriously Americans should treat climate-change doomsaying?
Do I have any takers?
Several comments, the most important is the first:
- Not taking this bet does not indicate that you don't strongly believe in your climate change doomsaying convictions. You might wish to avoid the bet so that you won't be hoping that lots of people die over the next 20 years so that you might win $10,000. Jeez.
- I agree with Boudreaux that environmentalists are overplaying the natural disaster card when arguing for climate change policy. Based on my limited understanding of climate science, the effects of climate change on severe weather are one of the most uncertain impacts. Lots of deadly tornados in 2011 could be random variation.
- I disagree with the knee jerk reaction that anything government has a hand in is bad. Much of the reductions in damages (e.g., lives lost) is due to federal government policy. That the marketplace would have undertaken the necessary research and funding of public goods is an assertion.
- It is my understanding that the current benefit cost analyses that support some sort of climate change policy are using a social cost of carbon of around $25 and this estimate does not include much in the way of lives lost from natual hazards (note: I may be wrong on this). So, the theme of the entire piece (people in market economies can adapt to natural hazards so we don't need climate change policy) misses the larger point.
- There is not much respect for scientific consensus, or a hat tip to scientific uncertainty. It gets rougher as the comments over at Cafe Hayek oddly exult in the climate change denialism piece and then degenerate into the political left bickering with the political right.
