The article makes a false assumption. He starts by saying that AGW has the ball, but then carries that on through the rest of his reasoning as a proxy for "global temperatures will be 6 degrees higher in 2100 hundred has the ball", although he doesn't come out and say it.<p>Few educated people disbelieve in the evidence for some AGW. There are a few things that many of us <i>don't</i> believe.<p>We don't believe that there is any reasonable evidence that the magnitude and impact of AGW will be dire. When the IPCC reports come out, there is tons of evidence for weak AGW. But that tons of evidence applies to weak AGW. Each of those studies is evidence for modest claims. It doesn't matter if you accumulate 10 times as many studies supporting those modest claims, it will not be evidence for the incredibly less likely hypotheses that they are made to do work for by the press and politically-motivated scientists.<p>In fact, there's plenty of reason to believe increased temperatures will be a net benefit to humanity. Humanists, but not reactionaries, should be open to this. There is no reason to believe we're currently at our "ideal temperature", and there's no reason to freeze our current ecosystems in time as if they're sanctified objects of a disorganized but fervent religion. Regardless, the claim that rising temperatures will leave us worse off isn't remotely proven.<p>The author waves his hands by the "cost-effective things we can do to mitigate global warming" as if such a thing exists in the current public debate. Almost every proposal normally under discussion in the public venue have overwhelming costs.[1]<p>This is a costs/benefits judgment, and you can't make that judgement without knowing the benefits. On an episode of Mad Men, Don Draper is standing in the living room with his wife and the interior decorator. His wife asks him what he thinks about the new furniture and its arrangement. He says, "Well, it's kind of hard to judge without knowing the price." People seem to forget that.<p>Concerning the benefits, there is no plausible, let alone tested, theory of risk prediction for climate temperatures in 2100. At all. So we're not talking about science here anymore. When you say, well, we can't calculate the risks, but the worst case is the extinction of mankind, you're getting dangerously close to the St. Petersburg paradox. Spreading FUD is a principal mechanism by which con men of all stripes manipulate.<p>[1] Although I'm all for as many nuclear reactors as we can build. By the steady resistance to this cheap and plentiful source of new energy, it's clear that a certain segment of the alarmist AGW movement is only willing to solve our energy problems by putting a cap on human productivity.<p>Edit: Meant to write 6 degrees higher, not 106, in the first sentence.