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The general test is whether the claim is precise enough to be falsifiable -- is there an outcome (or a set of data, etc) which will unambiguously prove that claim to be wrong, with no wiggle room to back out?
And, by the way, IPCC reports are, of course, full of quantified claims like the one I mentioned. There might be concerns with data quality, model errors, overconfidence in the results, etc. etc, but the claims are well-quantified.
That is fair, so why was the claim that cars are a net positive not nearly as thoroughly scrutinized as my counterargument? I can't help but notice some favoritism here...
Was such an analysis done? Recently? Is this such common knowledge that nobody bothered to refute it?
Edit: my imagination only stretches so far as to see climate change being the only heavy counterargument to the virtue of cars. Anything else seems relatively minor, i.e deaths from motor accidents, etc.