I haven’t read the Bret Stephens Column on Climate Change
and I’m not afraid to admit it.
I have read more than 700 words of tweets about it.
I have two thoughts on the meta discussion.
First Jonathan FBD Weisman is a remarkably unpleasant person.
In this twitter comment thread he repeatedly typed “you didn’t read the column” in response to criticisms of his criticism of critics of the column. He accused people he didn’t know of intellectual dishonesty based on his reading of their tweets.
He is a reporter. His claims of fact are supposed to be based on evidence. I think his certainty based on nothing demonstrates that he can’t do his job. This aside from the fact that he is being very very rude to customers.
Oddly, I have found Weisman’s reporting to be credible and interesting (I keep track of my thoughts on him because of his profane quarrel with Brad). I am alarmed to find I have trusted the claims of fact of someone who makes claims of fact with reckless disregard. I guess his editors restrain the recklessness which twitter allows. I will continue to treat his reporting as normal NY Times reporting (which I tend to trust).
Second Jonathan Chait is very very hard on conservatives (yeah a shocker). He wrote
… an approach that makes sense if your highest priority is limited government, and you are attempting to reason backward through the data in a way that makes sense of a policy allowing unlimited dumping of greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere. That is a tic of American conservative-movement thought — the conclusion (small government) is fixed, and the reasoning is tailored to justify the outcome. Nearly all conservatives argue this way, and if the Times is going to have conservative columnists — which, in my opinion, it should — they’re going to engage in this kind of sophistry.
I note that the conclusion doesn’t follow. If “Nearly” all but not all conservatives argue this way, the New York Times could probably hire one of the few who doesn’t. My problem (which I posed to myself before reading Chait’s post) is to name a conservative who doesn’t argue that way. If not Bret Stephens who ?
Can you think of a non sophist conservative ? Is there anyone who draws conclusions based on reasoning and evidence (rather than choosing reasoning and evidence based on the conclusion) who is a conservative in good standing with the conservative movement ? I can’t come up with a name.
Now I haven’t read anything by Bret Stephens. Maybe he is the one. But the discussion of his first NY Times column makes me think I should look elsewhere. But where ? I repeatedly have the sense that I have found a reasonable and reasonably honest conservative, but then he* breaks with the movement (sometimes because he was fired for heresy).
*yes all of them are men: Bruce Bartlett, Josh Barro, John Cole.(others I have forgotten).
This may seem unrelated to the topic, but it is not. You don’t like the results, you just change the facts.
“President Donald Trump said in a radio interview Monday that if Andrew Jackson had been president in 1860, the Civil War would have been averted. “Had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” he stated, and asked, “why could that one not have been worked out?”
I asked David Blight, a Yale University historian whose work has focused on slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, what he thought of Trump’s remarks. Here’s his response:
“Worked out?” God!…
Well, I just read these postings? So he really said this about Jackson and the Civil War? All I can say to you is that from day one I have believed that Donald Trump’s greatest threat to our society and to our democracy is not necessarily his authoritarianism, but his essential ignorance – of history, of policy, of political process, of the Constitution. Saying that if Jackson had been around we might not have had the Civil War is like saying that one strong, aggressive leader can shape, prevent, move history however he wishes. This is simply 5th grade understanding of history or worse.”
An awful lot of it going around these days. And it is going to get worse ..
“I think we all understand that nobody cares about Donald Trump’s relentless lying. We’ve certainly been hit over the head with it enough times. Still, the sheer volume is pretty staggering. Here’s the Washington Post’s roundup of Trump’s first hundred days:
488: The number of false or misleading claims made by the president. That’s an average of 4.9 claims a day.
10: Number of days without a single false claim. (On six of those days, the president golfed at a Trump property.)
4: Number of days with 20 or more false claims. (Feb. 16, Feb. 28, March 20 and April 21.) He made 19 false claims on April 29, his 100th day, though we did not include his interview with “Face the Nation,” since that aired April 30.
Five lies per day! And not just any lies. Trump’s lies are so much more brazen than that. He’s the first president to have hacked the modern media so thoroughly. He realizes he can literally say anything he wants and it doesn’t matter if the Washington Post or anybody else calls him out later. The only thing that matters is that he said it and it got on TV.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html?_r=0
It says right at the top there: The Opinion Pages: OP-ED COLUMNIST.
I was taught at least by seventh grade that editorials are the facts-free section of the newspaper, and if I didn’t understand it then, I surely understood it once I read the Wall Street Journal.
I read the entire column. He engages in the same sort of dishonesty used by the tobacco industry to sow doubt about the link between cancer and smoking. Unfortunately, even more people stand to suffer and die by this sort of non-denial denialism.
This is because conservatives are hired to advance an agenda. David Frum also comes to mind. Liberals generally have day jobs.
I’ve read the op-ed. It is no different than every form of climate deniers’ foundation they use for denying the consensus that temperatures will increase with increasing anthropomorphic GHG emissioins.
It preys on uncertainties which are translated to disbelief in sciences conclusions. The op-ed even ends with promoting this notion further:
“Perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it.”
A reasoned conversation requires reasoned understanding of the science related to warming by GHG’s. The physics involved is very often and not unsurprisingly misused and misunderstood even by otherwise well regarded engineers. Does anyone actually believe the public in general can have a “reasoned conversation” that will provide any value add what-so-ever to the subject?
There’s pretty good history among humanity to show that if you don’t understand something, and if you have a vested interest in any form of refuting what-ever it is you don’t understand, there’s no incentive to even begin to try to understand. People who fear change, no matter what it’s cause(s) have a vested interest in making sure the change(s) don’t occur.
The op-ed is a piece that promotes climate science denial by uncertainties… no different than any other form of denial used in climate science over decade or more that I’ve been paying close attention.
FYI, I’m a scientist who spent a career in high tech R&D as a strange hybrid engineering and science…. referred to as a “wild duck” type, but with a stellar record of refuting the engineering conclusions by the use of science to create huge changes and directions in the industry. i have to spend considerable thinking power and resort to re-reviewing what i used ot know just to keep up with the foundations and basis for understanding climate science.
Does any body really think this is easy stuff to understand in it’s scientific foundations? I’ve even run across academic’s with doctorates in physics who make the occasional erroneous inferences and use of physics related to climate change… so to think that people untrained in science can hope to actually understand the basis for climate scientists conclusions is pure bullshit… they know a-priori that this is a useless exercise. Their intent is to further promote uncertainties by the public and translate it to disbelieves in science. . .
Robert,
You absolutely should read the artical you are posting about. I did and have no idea why the libs’ panties are so twisted. He merely suggests there may be some uncertainty, like there should have been re. Hillary. What, absolutely NO uncertainty? You are sounding like the religious movement others accuse you of. No blasphemy, no apostasy, you must believe! (Even though our models have been wrong).
I wasn’t commenting on Stephens but on Weisman and Chait.
I don’t know of anyone who says there is no (or little) uncertainty about global warming. I have read many people who argue that the uncertainty is a reason we should do more than would be optimal if we were certain. Chaits linked post basically makes this argument.
In any case, my post didn’t say anything about global warming. I am not sounding like a religious movement. You asserted that I, Robert Waldmann, am when you wrote “You”.
Also I recommend http://crookedtimber.org/2007/04/11/when-i-hear-the-word-culture-aw-hell-with-it/
Which seems highly relevant to the discussion.
Robert,
You’re right. Sorry.
” What, absolutely NO uncertainty? ”
There is uncertainty about the exact rate at which warming will occur, the precise tempo of ocean rising and coastal flooding, the detailed nature of new desert formation.
There is no uncertainty that global warming is happening, that humans are and have been a critical driver and that only human intervention can blunt the consequences. Of these conclusions, there is as much “uncertainty” as there is about planetary motion in our solar system, the atomic theory of matter, that humans once shared a common ancestor with other primates, that cigarettes and asbestos can cause cancer and the earth is billions of years old.
There are no scientists who deny that man-made greenhouse gas emissions do not trap heat and warm.
There is quite a bit of dispute on what feedback mechanisms occur to either amplify or dampen that effect. The catastrophic warmers believe in a high degree of positive feedback (unstable) and amplification of the initial effects. The luke warmers believe in a negative feedback system (stable).
So far the data supports the luke warmers.
Catastrophe has not occurred. What also needs debated is how best o reduce CO2. “Political Science” supports carpeting the earth with windmills and solar panels and using a lot of taxpayer dollars to do it.
Actual science i.e. CO2 emissions indicate that countries that are hydro/nuclear dominant are the lowest CO2 emitters.
See here
http://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=map
Green is good. If you go to sow ranking you’ll see what I mean.
There is still a good amount of science to discuss and debate.
“There is no uncertainty that global warming is happening”
If someone offers a million to 1 odds on a $1 bet against getting heads 8 times in a row, a statistician (who had reason to believe it was a fair coin) would take it because the odds of throwing 8 heads in a row are not zero. The probability of 14 record high temperatures is also not zero. I believe that the problems with global warming debates for most people are 1) they do not understand confidence limits and can’t tell the difference between uncertain and unlikely, and 2) they cannot conceive of how disruptive climate change can be. But I don’t believe that you will solve the problem by asserting that a very small number is zero.
I’m thinking there is a middle ground. Folks can acknowledge that man made global warming is occurring yet still engage in debate about the magnitude, it certainly isn’t settled, and what we should do about it.
I think if folks can get off of the mantra that not only is it settled, but its eminent catastrophe and these mandated government policies are the only solutions we can have make progress. And using terms like “deniers” is pretty much the anti-thesis of science.
Jim,
“the luke warmers are right”.
There is absolutely no data that exists in any way, shape or form that shows this thought is correct.
And if you deny science, you are a denier. This bs about “levels” ignores that the vast majority of the deniers have only retreated to that position because their original thought was rendered down to the offal it is.
Jim first thanks for the long thoughtful comments.
On lukewarmers vs positive feedback panickers, I think the evidence is very weak (although “absolutely” is a word I absolutely never use). In this case, uncertaintly (and there is a lot) is a reason to do more to fight global warming. A 10% chance that there is positive feedback & a catastrophe for a given policy is plenty of reason to choose a different policy.
I am quite confident that current estimates show wind cheaper than nuclear. I see 2 alternatives. Big government subsidies for wind or bigger government subsidies for nuclear.
Notably, you didn’t mention how much public money was irreversibly sunk in the countries which use a lot of nuclear power.
hydro is great if you have lots of water in one place above sea level to power it.
Personally, I like the idea of producing hydro at night & solar during the day — the reservoir is therefore used to store energy at very low cost compared to batteries. I am not an engineer, but I think this would mean adding more dynamos to existing hydro power plants (with like a huge syphon brining the water to them when they are on)
I really have no idea if this is feasible. It probably isn’t becaues no one who knows anything ever mentions it.
“Stephens’s arguments against climate-change alarmism has been around long enough to earn a name: “Lukewarmism.” Lukewarmers are conservatives who acknowledge that humans are warming the planet, but “they’re not convinced there’s a substantial risk that future warming could be large or its impacts severe, or that strong mitigation policies are desirable,” as the Guardian defined them. The climate scientist Michael Mann wrote about this “new breed” of denier in his 2016 book, The Madhouse Effect:
The most insidious form of climate change denial, by some measure, is denial of the seriousness of the threat and the monumental nature of the effort required if we are to avert dangerous climate change. As outright denial of the scientific evidence becomes ever less credible, a new breed of climate change denier, a kinder, gentler sort of denier, has appeared on the scene to exploit the new niche that is emerging in the world of climate change contrarianism.
As Vox’s David Roberts explained in a Twitter rant this week, conservatives have always opposed liberals’ proposals for addressing climate change: international agreements, federal regulations, taxpayer-funded investments, etc. Conservatives argued against these policies by simply claiming the problem wasn’t real. But as the science on climate change has firmed up, “open denialism has become gauche, just a little too crude,” Roberts wrote.
Enter the “lukewarmers,” whose arguments still originate from the same ideological position—that the government shouldn’t try to solve the climate crisis, or at least not try too hard—but appear to be based on sound science. Except they’re not. ”
https://newrepublic.com/article/142421/rise-kinder-gentler-climate-change-deniers
Thanks Emichael, though I’d say it a bit differently:
There are two scenarios:
1) warming will not continue to increase to a significant adverse level but remain relatively flat forever… because there’s no evidence that it will continue to increase into the future. This is the Lukewarmers position.
2) warming wll continue to increase at increasing rates into the future to levels which markedly change the ability of humans and other life-forms to thrive, perhaps even exist at all, due to increasing concentrations of GHG’s in the atmosphere, based on the physics of interactions of matter. This is known as SCIENCE.
Lukewarmers are science denies. It’s really just that simple.
The only questions science has is how long the warming will take (e.g. the rate of warming and it’s acceleration rate with time, and the ultimate level it will reach. Science also has uncertainties about the effect of the rapid rate of warming on the ability of the ecosystem to make adjustments, though the evidence and expectations are that the ecosystem cannot respond fast enough and thus there will be other even more adverse effects.
Basically I think the whole global warming issue is on the wrong track.
Nobody questions science when it provides or is expected based on science to provide benefits. They only question it when they have a motive to question it.
The motive is normally either they fear adverse consequence or they have a vested present or future interest in direct opposition to the science’s conclusions.
If you tell people the adverse consequence based on science will not occur because science is wrong, then you remove their fear and we all know everybody has mental incentive to avoid fears and anxiety Thus people have a vested interest in believing that science is wrong. .
The other motive is vested interest in economic forms, life-style, and fear of changes that may make their life more difficult or significantly different in the negative sense than they would prefer This might be characterized as maintaining the status quo.
The present and past tack to obtain changes in GHG levels and mitigate or avoid the consequence of global warming has relied or tried to rely on convincing people that science is correct The need to convince is due to the fact that political decisions are required to make any material changes to avoid the consequence of global warming on humanity in the future.
This tack cannot succeed. Evidence is clear thus far that only rhetoric has changed… there has been no material significant change in reductions of GHG’s to any levels that will mitigate or reduce the rate of global warming in any material respect.
The reason it cannot succeed is that there are too many global interests in maintaining the status quo in fossil fuel use as an energy supply and there’s yet no replacement possibilities that will change this. Wind & Solar are a minuscule proportion of total energy consumption and there’s no plan or scenario which will change this condition. EV’s aren’t even relevant as solution, though it’s been very profitable to say it is.
When science can’t provide a viable alternative at equal or acceptable costs to replace fossil fuels or capture GHG’s in waste products then there is no way to change vested interests in either people’s mental fears or their material interests. Thus political opposition to changing anything in a material and significant sense will continue and even increase.
I will add that political power changes are a constant so that the solution will not be achieved by political means…. quite evident at present in the U.S. but also in prior political realms in Europe. Furthermore and to elaborate a bit, the conservative elements in politics has been successful over several decades to reduce the public trust in gov’t in general and this is true in the US and Europe.
The only currently viable and known alternate energy source with the ability to reduce GHG emissions by the material and significant levels necessary over the long term is nuclear energy. I’m opposed to this, but I will acknowledge that this is a simple and viable solution. Whether it’s really a solution however is another open issue… warming or nuclear waste contamination … which death would you prefer?
The only real and viable long term solution is a massive increase in energy efficiencies where there is more than ample available means staring us in the face every day.
Those energy efficiencies come at a cost however, and thus there’s more than ample opposition to vested interests since those costs are also vested interests in profits to capital owners and adjustments to consumer conveniences and “freedoms” in uses of their private property.
However, gov’ts can make the transition to much greater energy use efficiencies with far less impact on the economy and consumers by making transferring transition costs via tax changes and/or fee adjustments, rebates, etc. as well as by adjusting some private property “freedoms”
So I think the only viable tack to resolve the issue with any material and significant effect can only come from the massive increase in energy efficiencies … all of which are well within current technological means, and I’m sure can be even made the more-so by new technical R&D effort… it’s only a matter of incentive..
Remember that the energy efficiency improvements have to applied globally not just in the U.S. or Europe or China. to have the long term effect to prevent global warming from continuing. Those efficiencies provide net present benefits as well as long term benefits, and buy more time to discover or invent alternative energy sources means.
.
Longtooth,
Did you know that:
1) Atmospheric CO2 levels are at relative historic lows?
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=%2fiGAikV3&id=F0899A74DC3BCAC02FF5A05A42B2460C4978C2E8&thid=OIP._iGAikV36AV7Oast9OpgtgEsDL&q=historic+co2+levels&simid=608040376982242625&selectedIndex=0&ajaxhist=0
2) 97% of the CO2 occurs naturally, not by man:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=pOgFtAgV&id=C42B3705F2968C5FC02F2151C75CB2200530DD8C&thid=OIP.pOgFtAgVHmVGHy5DMvm3vwEBDh&q=man+made+co2+percentage&simid=608027552193183942&selectedIndex=8&ajaxhist=0
3) That from 1900 to 2000 that C02 has increased from 300 ppm to 360 ppm? That’s 60 parts PER MILLION
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=3724ZZIC&id=299B1EECAA64B8E8635068AF04F4887B1E721100&thid=OIP.3724ZZICplghxHc-Ymmb4wEsD5&q=amount+atmospheric+co2+has+increased+ppm&simid=608052574670882390&selectedIndex=3&ajaxhist=0
4) That CO2 accounts for only .03% of the atmospheric gases?
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=nKhbBw%2bE&id=AFA972FCC0F9A8AA88AD7DD3EC4B0E0568D7872F&thid=OIP.nKhbBw-E3NQycuZKdY1WTQEsDI&q=co2+percentage+of+atmosphere&simid=608009667940191997&selectedIndex=5&ajaxhist=0
5) That science has identified numerous factors that influence global climate to include: solar fluctuation, ocean currants, solar winds, the moon, water vapor, volcanic eruptions, cloud cover, volcanic eruptions, changes in the earth’s orbit, and yet this minute change in a trace element is causal?
6) Dinosaurs once lived in Antartica, glaciers once extended to Arizona, all WITHOUT ANY HUMAN CAUSED C02. Have these factors been disabled?
7) And if the Earth warms slightly, this might be a good thing. There is the Medieval Warm Period, where temps exceed today’s (wine grapes were grown in Greenland). A period of mankind flourishing.
8) All the AGW models have failed to perform. All the evidence that C02 and global climate are linked has been debunked. ITIB. “It’s the Ideology Baby.”
Longtooth,
I can tell from your comments you are a smart guy. Emichael and Joel, not so much… they just parrot DNC talking points. What you should understand is that they, meaning government, want to regulate your CO2 output, which is pretty much to say, regulate your life. The formula is simple and time proven: create a crises, they come along to save the world (which entails paying them appropriately), and you lose your freedom (which they will sell back to you at a price). Don’t fall for it.
I love statistics. I find them a great decision making tool. So let’s just say that the chance of human C02 is the driving factor in global climate is 10%.
And let’s just say the chance of it being bad for humans is 40% (feel free to substitute your own estimates). That means the chances that humans are causing climate change and that it will be bad for us are 4% (.10X..40). So what amount are you willing to gamble on a 4% chance of winning?
Sammy, just to be clear, I have no problem with gov’t’ regulating my or anybody else’s CO2 output. Just as I have no problem with gov’t regulating smog output from vehicles, or civil rights behavior, or speed limits on highways, or any other traffic rules, since all of these regulations and many more are for the mutual composite benefit of the whole…. and in Climate change, the whole of humanity on the globe.
As for your love of statistics, I suggest you read the IPCC technical report and put those statistics together with appropriate weightings before you stick arbitrary numbers on specific event probabilities.
Sammy, btw, I’m well aware of the formula.. “create a crises….”, etc. However it’s always a gov’t entity that creates these cirses …. never independent science.
Sammy,
You need to return to school, they left something out.
asd:
If you are real, you are free to comment. 1st comments go to moderation. If you are a spammer, you will get caught up again by the system.