I believe the argument is supposed to counter the prevalent viewpoint that global warming is automatically a bad thing that will cause huge catastrophes without critically examining these claims. This doesn't automatically follow, and that it even may actually have some unexpected positive impacts. It's not a simplistic case of climate change solely being 'bad'.
In my view, the global warming "debate" ultimately comes down to three core questions:
1. How large is the effect of global warming?
2. What effect will this have on the planet and its inhabitants?
3. What is the correct, proportional, response?
As you get further down the question becomes broader, more complex and more difficult to answer as it's reliant on the answers to the ones above.
One extreme is that the effect will be huge, it will have a devastating effect and threaten the human race, and so the proportional response is to focus and invest an almost infinite amount of resource on global warming as a threat. The other extreme is that the effect is marginal, it will do little to change the planet, therefore few-to-no resources should be dedicated to it.
But there's actually a huge, largely forgotten, middle ground. What if the effect is quite large, but the effect is largely changing worldwide weather cycles, so the best investment is to attempt to limit against further climate change and divert resources towards the humanitarian aspect and industrial projects to mitigate the problems instead, while watching and re-evaluating how these things progress to get a better picture of the true scale of the problem? This seems the pragmatic 'solution' that the real word politicians are trying to take, but you don't hear much about it compared to the more extreme viewpoints, not least because it doesn't make for as good headlines as 'the destruction of the world'.
In my view, the global warming "debate" ultimately comes down to three core questions:
1. How large is the effect of global warming?
2. What effect will this have on the planet and its inhabitants?
3. What is the correct, proportional, response?
As you get further down the question becomes broader, more complex and more difficult to answer as it's reliant on the answers to the ones above.
One extreme is that the effect will be huge, it will have a devastating effect and threaten the human race, and so the proportional response is to focus and invest an almost infinite amount of resource on global warming as a threat. The other extreme is that the effect is marginal, it will do little to change the planet, therefore few-to-no resources should be dedicated to it.
But there's actually a huge, largely forgotten, middle ground. What if the effect is quite large, but the effect is largely changing worldwide weather cycles, so the best investment is to attempt to limit against further climate change and divert resources towards the humanitarian aspect and industrial projects to mitigate the problems instead, while watching and re-evaluating how these things progress to get a better picture of the true scale of the problem? This seems the pragmatic 'solution' that the real word politicians are trying to take, but you don't hear much about it compared to the more extreme viewpoints, not least because it doesn't make for as good headlines as 'the destruction of the world'.