I Do Battle with the Global Warming Crowd

I’m a big fan of the Freakonomics blog at the New York Times.  The Steves, as they are known there, have really tweaked the noses of the environmentalists in their newest book, “SuperFreakonomics”, and the war has raged on their blog.  Today’s installment of the kerfuffle is here, and is about the supposed misrepresentation by the Steves of Ken Caldeira, one of the leading climate experts.  As you can see, the Steves did no such thing, at least not intentionally.  The whole flame war started with this post and continued here, here, here and here.  You will see comments from me throughout these posts and Nathan Myrhvold even quoted me directly in his response, here.  The Steves continue to tweak, with today’s posting, noted above and this one as well
Today’s article has a comment from a guy named Rob; here is his comment, followed by my response.  I thought some of the ideas in my response were worth posting here.
“Are all the new right-wing fans of Levitt and Dubner actually as happy with SuperFreakonomics as they sound? After all, this is a chapter that says flat out that global warming is real and humans caused it.
If the Steves’ venture outside of their area of expertise helps the debate turn into “global warming is real and we should do something about it” (the environmentalist position) versus “global warming is real and we should do nothing about it” (the SuperFreakonomics position), that’s at least an improvement.
— Rob”
“Rob@3: Speaking as a "right winger", global warming (or more specifically, climate change) is real. The book does not say that humans alone caused it and it for sure doesn't say that it is worth completely remaking the world's economy in order to stop it. The cost-benefit analysis doesn't work. The world is not going to end because of warming.
Al Gore and the like have sown fear that the planet's coastal areas will be inundated. According to the book, the seas have been rising now for 12,000 years. They've risen 425 feet in that time frame and most of that was in the first 1000 years. Most projections have the seas rising about 18 inches over the next 100 years. So, when the seas rise that .18 of an inch each year, at some point the people in Miami will walk out, see the ocean at their back door, and do something about it. They may build a seawall, they may move or they may dig a moat. And they will bear the cost for that and that is as it should be. But they're not gonna have to swim out of there.
My own personal theory is that Florida is just one giant sandbar anyway. If you look at the way that it is shaped, hurricanes come in from the Atlantic, hit the coast and carve out the coastline as they turn and move north. Over a few hundred thousand years, it is bound to erode the coastline and it has exactly zero to do with man's activities. The harm comes from man having built in that area. Take a look at this Google satellite image, link here.
See that underwater ridge offshore of the east coast of Florida? Follow it up the coast; it exactly follows the existing coastline. Do you think that once upon a time the Florida coast was a bit further out at sea? Now zoom out even further, so that you can see both the east and west coasts of Florida and you can see that what is left of Florida is far smaller than what must have existed billions of years ago. For that matter, the entire eastern coast of North America looks like it was bigger. What's going on in Florida is Mother Nature running her course, nothing more. Ocean currents and winds and storms are and have been eroding the coastline and won't stop or even slow down because we suddenly stop emitting carbon.
I love Google's satellite view.
-DaveyNC”