<If one saw a truck bearing down on them, they might figure it would brake. After all, they usually do. As it gains speed and comes closer, they can still believe that. There will come a time when a prudent person would move. The truck still might stop, but it would be reasonable to do what they could to protect themselves.

Or, they could rant and rave about someone saying the truck was going 70 mph when in fact it was only going 53. They could carry on about how they were being lied to, the press was deliberately trying to make their situation look more precarious than it really is. A truck going "only" 53 clearly isn't as deadly as a truck going 70. Goofier.



The reason the analogy was ignored is that there is no real validity to it. There is still controversy over whether the truck is moving at all, much less how fast. And there is a lot more risk, economic and political, in the measures proposed for dealing with global warming than the act of simply moving out of the way of a truck.

The proposals for dealing with global warming involve massive economic impacts, which makes the question of the reality of the phenomenon a lot more important. The option of wrecking our economy and standards of living "just in case" global warming is real (or if real, caused by human activity), is not an attractive one.

A better analogy is if a doctor told you there was a possible tumor in your leg that could render it useless, but he wasn't quite sure. If the treatment was a cheap injection with no side effects, you might take his word for it and get the shot, just in case. If the treatment was amputation at the hip, a second opinion, or maybe a fifth, might be in order.