Do Anthropocentric Indirect Arguments Have Any Scientific Validity? A Commentary on Anthropocentric Indirect Arguments for Environmental Protection, by K. Elliot

摘要

Dr. Elliot argues that environmental protection and climate change issues would find a larger and more supportive audience if presented in less apocalyptical terms and more in a context in which mitigation and adaptation strategies are shown to be beneficial to the consumer. While this is an interesting ethical and philosophical argument, it remains to be seen whether achieving these proposed benefits is scientifically plausible. As discussed below, some of the proposed anthropocentric indirect arguments (AIA) are scientifically legitimate and have reasonable probability of penetrating the mass audience, which often finds itself polarized by the apocalyptic rhetoric. Indeed, the very notion that human-induced climate change should be characterized as apocalyptic is one that is completely scientifically irresponsible; humans have no capacity to change the climate on the scale of the past paleoclimate amplitudes.