The biggest problem is the hysterical rush to drastic policy “solutions” based on the sort of logic comment Ben shows:

@Ben OK, how sure are you that global warming is a hoax? Are you 80% sure? So, there’s a 20% chance that a catastrophe will happen that will have drastic negative impacts on the human race as a whole. When there’s vast agreement on man-made climate change, that has to give you SOME pause, right? Are you willing to gamble when the potential cost is so much higher than the current cost or preventive measures?

There are at least three problems with Ben’s “precautionary princple” logic:

1) He divides the possibility space into only two parts: no change and catastrophic change, then assigns an arbitrary but high probability to the latter. This is fallacious. The probability of “catastrophic” climate change is very low.

2) He fails to perform an cost/benefit analysis. What is the cost of doing something now vs letting the effect happen? Warming hysterics rarely understand that the incredible amount of CO2 emissions changes needed to make an impact (per the AGW models themselves) would be economically disastrous. They also probably think that we can all just cut back a little luxury, missing the fact that major economic costs on the wealthy of the world will literally kill the very poor.

3) He fails to consider other possible catastrophies, including those of high probability, and they their prevention should compete for attention and resources. How much is he advocating that we do to reduce the impact of inevitable global pandemics? How about preventing biological warfare? How about the lower probability but vastly more damaging inevitable asteroid strike?