From: richp@access2.digex.net (Rich Puchalsky)
Subject: Re: Response to critics on Benefits of Warming
Date: 20 Mar 1995 02:46:07 GMT
Message-ID: <3kiq9f$k88@news3.digex.net>

Tom Moore (moore@Hoover.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
:Leaving aside recent centuries when technological advance and the industrial 
:revolution has limited the influence of weather on mankind, I challenge you to 
:find many examples where colder periods coincided with good times for humans 
:or where warm period coincided with bad periods.

Why should I counter-argue against you using what I beleive to be a fallacious
method?  If you really think that a long list of chosen outliers culled from a
database can prove a trend, then I advise you to read the Greenpeace list of
recent bad storms, etc.  They've already done the same thing you did, except
that they at least used recent rather than historical data.

Me:
: >I ask again: do you really think that turning the Midwest into eastern
: >Colorado (quoting from your paper) is not going to be expensive?

: Not all of the midwest and grain production would move north into Canada for 
: no net loss to consumers.

Sigh.  It is truly scary that this is an economic expert speaking.   I think
we should move all car manufacturing to Hawaii (more pleasant there), move
all industry out of California to avoid the risk of earthquakes, and then
perhaps burn down Houston and move it somewhere a bit cooler.  According to
your new economic theory, there should be no costs associated with these 
actions, right?  Or at least the one-time cost should be less than re-tooling
factories for greater energy efficiency and to make more efficient products, 
which is a large component of the precautions we should be taking about
global climate change.