Comment 26506

By A Smith (anonymous)
Posted September 10, 2008 at 20:37:37

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what the long term trend in our climate is. I do know, however, that human beings have a great track record of being wrong when making long term predictions.

I used Newton's third law of physics to illustrate the point that human actions and intentions do not operate in a vacuum. Whatever humans attempt to accomplish, there are always unexpected side effects. These side effects almost always surprise people, and yet they happen consistently.

A great example of this is the tax system. As top marginal rates have dropped, actual taxes paid by the rich has increased as a share of total taxes. I doubt most people understand that this has happened, since it is counterintuitive.

The fact is, human beings tend to think of only cause and effect, whereas in the real world there are also secondary effects, tertiary effects and so on.

Therefore, with regard to climate change, scientists tabulate the actions of human beings, and they come up with a probable result. This is where the story ends for them.

The problem is that the very result that the scientists come up with will now become a cause in and of itself. It will go on to effect the climate as well, and likely in the opposite direction to the predicted result.

The world tends to work like a pendulum, constantly going back and forth between positive and negative, male and female, light and dark. Therefore, when the experts predict negative results, this very action will act as a cause that will produce effects. These effects will be in the opposite direction to what the cause predicted in the first place.

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