Hal, yes, it would be interesting to check the supposed bias of failing to anticipate “paradigm shifts.”

I do not see a conection between the frog story and the factual integrity of the rest of the movie. I presume that any fact checkers would focus their efforts on Gore’s main argument rather than on the analogies. It does not seem illogical that they would focus their efforts on what they perceived as the most important parts of the movie.

The straightforward conclusion is that the change will not happen, and that proponents are getting themselves worked up over an unlikely possibility. However many times I’ve seen the counter-claim that this is actually a result of this supposed human bias, that people can’t accept the possibility of radical change until it is upon them.

While there are certainly historical cases where people failed to anticipate a change, there are many more cases of predicted changes which never occured. So it’s not clear that a generally skeptical attitude towards such predictions represents a bias. In the same way with the frog story, it might be reasonable not to hop out of the pot when the water gets warm, if most of the time it turns out to cool off again.

Also, studies on Climate history, cosmic rays, and solar heating show that there “is a clear limit to warming effect of a doubling CO2 concentrations of 1.5C”. This peer reviewed work has been dismissed from the climate change debate by pro-AGW activits on the grounds that the author says he was mis-quoted and “Cosmic Rays” are not a major contributor to contermporary GW. It’s true that the author has been misquoted, but not in the way that the activists imply. In the paper where he addresses the problem of people misquoting his work, it is clear that he maintain that doubling CO2 concentration does have a limited impact of 1.5C of warming. His complaint is that people have said he attributed modern termperature increases to “Cosmic Rays”. He actually attributes it to Solar Radiation. Cosmic Ray changes cause very slight warming and cooling trends over hundreds of millions of years, all else equal. Solar radiation is more volatile in the shortrun and has a much stronger effect on global temps. An unrelated complaint is used to dismiss the authors substantive claims.

It’s my contention that if AGW was a serious problem, it would be much clearer. Our impact on climate, though observable through extensive analysis, seems slight compared to natural variation. I think I came up with the perfect metaphor for the AGW debate in Arnold Kling’s Optimistic Prognosis thread:

As baby boomers look forward to the day that 90 is the new 60, I look forward to the day that I’m nastalgic for being 11 and jerking-off to scrambled cable porn, so that I too can get excited about global warming.