Global Warming Is Five Questions

In discussing with folks the issue of global warming, particularly the Kyoto treaty, I have always tried to frame the issue of global warming as a series of questions:

1. Is the planet's surface warming?
2. Is this demonstrably a bad thing (or, should we desire to do something about it)?
3. Are we even able to do something about it?
4. What are the costs of doing something, relative to the benefits?
5. How should we do it, and who should do it?

I have always been amazed at how too many people quit thinking through the issue after they answer the first question. Maybe that is because the answer to question #1 is about the only answer that science can give us something affirmative, and perhaps then the only thing that global warming absolutists can cling to in order to impose their vision of society on us. Nonetheless, that is not my point. You can decimate the argument for a Kyoto at any point past #1 really. Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek seems to have thought through the questions and decimates the argument for a regime like Kyoto somewhere around #5.