Kurtzman Responds

Mr. Stern, for all of his admirable bravado, apparently fails to read my original article. Mr. Stern is free, as he does, to contest the arguments in Swindle. This, however, entirely misses my point. My thesis, as I made clear many times throughout my article, is that arguments that global warming is caused by CO2 emissions are based on imprecise science, and grounded in a sensationalizing culture that has been encouraging grander and grander claims about the danger that these emissions pose. At present, no one knows how dangerous, if at all, these emissions truly are. Citing Swindle, I argued that we cannot “err on the safe side” by cutting all emissions, without attending to the economic consequences of doing so. As Swindle (and many academic papers) shows, this causes a wealth reduction which falls particularly hard on the developing world. Those who question the danger posed by carbon emissions are increasingly demonized, in the manner of Holocaust deniers, by those such as Mr. Stern who do not acknowledge (or do not understand) the politics of science.