Mitt Romney softens his position on climate change - PostPartisan - The Washington Post
“I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans,” Romney continued. “What I'm not willing to do is spend trillions of dollars on something I don't know the answer to.”
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Regardless, just because a negative outcome is uncertain doesn’t mean you ignore the possibility. Especially when the experts insist that negative outcome is both preventable and extremely likely to happen if nothing is done. Businesses and households hedge against risks, for example by spending money on insurance.
Romney’s statement is like saying that you don’t need flood insurance unless you know — for sure — that you are going to have a flood. Actually, it’s even worse. It’s like saying that when thousands of specialists have told you that you are very likely to have a flood.
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I live on a ridge several hundred feet higher than a local creek. CAGW, Stephen Stromberg, is like thousands of insurance company-funded "specialists" telling me I need flood insurance when such a runaway, catastrophic event is nearly impossible due to other factors (negative feedbacks), physics, and plain country common sense.
The insurance metaphor doesn't work. Insurance is a system for saving a pot of money that gets paid out if disaster occurs.
The government equivalent would be to run a massive budget surplus to pay out in years to come. You know, don't spend it now on things that either might not come to pass or might not solve the problem but rather save it for paying out in the future.
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