I used to smoke, but gave it up because the statistical correlations between smoking and cancer suggested that it was a reasonable speculation that there was a causal link between the two, although this has never been proved to my knowledge.
Well, let's go scientific. There is no such thing, ever, as "proved", only "best understanding". By that standard, smoking is shown to create chemicals that in other animals (the ethics problem being what it is) cause cancer, and to apply those chemicals to the same membranes in humans. This is not proof. This is, however, a very likely mechanism.
Studies of smokers show much higher cancer rates for exactly the kind of cancers that would be expected.
This is not proof. There is no such thing as "proof" scientifically, but there is gobs of evidence, and mechanism.
I am not likewise willing to devastate the american economy,
Argues facts not in evidence. There is no evidence that the american economy must be devasted. There is evidence, in fact, that it will operate more efficiently and with less harm to the environment if it operates in more efficient (i.e. less wasteful) fashions. This is not devastation, it is an increase in efficiency.
If done sanely, the biggest result is an increase in employment in the short term, of workers building the necessary infrastructure to make the economy more efficient.
If we don't make it more efficient, we go the way of the old steel industry, who has already learned this lesson, so these are changes that are necessary EVEN WITHOUT GLOBAL WARMING.
though, on such slim evidence as statistical correlations.
Again, we have both statistical evidence and well-understood mechanisms. The two issues are not very different.
Your instance on proof is saying, exactly, if you are speaking scientifically, that you will NEVER do this, no matter what, as there is no such thing as PROOF in science, only massive evidence.
And with the multitudes of variables affecting the planetery surface, oceans and atmosphere, I 'm skeptical that the they are really being sufficiently sorted out to determine a causal connection.
Argument to ignorance. The level of CO2 and the temperature are measurements. We need to understand what's going on, but we can see that CO2 is an issue, as is methane, and that we ought to do something, regardless of where the CO2 and methane come from, human or not, because regardless, it's going to seriously affect us.
Arguing that we don't know it all is again the same as arguing that we never, ever, do anything, because we never, ever, know it all.
And you, too, are skeptical about unproven claims -- right?
