The stakes are high for not taking action and frankly even if you don’t believe in global warming there are significant advantages to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

As for the economic downsides of reducing carbon emissions, well, let’s say, that there isn’t a consensus on that

I’ve seen the comparison made between Global Warming and the Y2K crisis. There were many doomsday type predictions back in the late 90′s. None of them really panned out.

Was it because it was mostly hype or because private industry took the problem seriously and shelled out hundreds of billions of dollars to deal with the issue? Probably some of each. In any case, all that spending didn’t in fact result in a huge economic downturn. On the contrary, the economy was growing at an astronomical rate.

Associated Press
December 8, 1997, Monday, BC cycle
SECTION: Washington Dateline
HEADLINE: WASHINGTON TODAY: Global warming debate generates much heat
BYLINE: By DONALD M. ROTHBERG, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON

One conservative group criticized the news media for accepting claims that there is widespread scientific agreement on global warming. The Media Research Center cited “a recent Gallup poll” that said only 19 percent of the members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union think that a warmer climate has been the result of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Gallup organization said the poll was taken in October of 1991. It noted that some people, opposed to claims that human-induced global warming is occurring, “have used the study to support their position.”

“These writers have taken survey results out of context that appear to show scientists do not believe that human-induced global warming is occurring.”

The statement from Gallup noted that when asked if they thought human-induced global warming was occurring, 66 percent of the scientists surveyed said yes.

Edit – only warning. If you cannot make your point without name calling, you do not have one. See comment policy.

Gaius at the wonderfully-named Blue Crab Boulevard takes a look at the supposed scientific consensus regarding man-caused global warming and finds it, like much of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to be junk. And, for well-res…