Republicans and Climate Change
Republicans in this country are coalescing around a uniquely dismissive position on climate change. The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones. -- Ronald Brownstein, National Journal
Horrors! But before respectable opinion condemns Republicans to the dark ages, consider the philosophy of science behind the dominant kind of climate science. Not long ago, the champions of science that shows significant recent climate change were champions instead of science that showed significant recent global warming. That strikes me as a clear move in the right direction. It's not just semantics: it would seem the science suggests that we're looking at a set of fresh changes in climate, rather than a series of steps marching upward along a sloping graph toward Planet Toastycinder.
And yet! If you think about this shift from an epistemologically modest pro-science perspective, you're led to think -- aren't you? -- that the important conclusion to draw is that our science, given current conditions, can't see into our climate future with much specificity. I don't mean to say that any scientist who claims our world could soon see harmful climate changes is a crackpot. I'd like to suggest that we should really be more worried about catastrophic changes in climate that our science can't predict than the ones that it says it can. I keep waiting for some high-profile scientists to say, "Hey, folks, look: something horrible might happen soon if we continue down the current road. We're unable to say what, or when, or how. But our global weather patterns, for instance, aren't chiseled in stone. They can change, to awful, unpredictable effect. And even a little change in one place can mean a huge change elsewhere."
But that's a view that points away from the rule of science and back to politics, so I'm unsurprised that it isn't popular on the progressive left. The trouble with the climate science vanguard is its insistence upon a very particular kind of fortune-telling -- one in which all the need for deliberation and judgment has been removed, and there's nothing left to do but act as the experts demand. That's not the only kind of fortune-telling science can offer. And Republicans, with their taste for orderly predictability and their distaste for sudden, sweeping changes, will likely better appreciate a science of climate change that warns against the consequences of human activity that can't be predicted or spelled out in advance.
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May '10
Re: Republicans and Climate Change
Patience. In a decade or three they'll come around. But don't expect an apology.
May '10
Re: Republicans and Climate Change
And, when the rubber met the road, the United States Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto. What says Mr. Brownstein to that?
Jun '10
Re: Republicans and Climate Change
From my perspective, the Left's confidence that we can alter the course of the Earth's climate variation, by changing our energy use, seems silly, and is just typical of their hubris. For some reason, they believe that they can create utopias in every facet of life, but in fact, they always make things worse by trying. I don't believe in utopia on Earth. I believe in adaptation.
Jun '10
Re: Republicans and Climate Change
Let’s see, what’s not to love about climate change theory:
1) It is now known that CO2 is a lagging indicator of warming and the lag time may be as long as 800 years, so no change in CO2 output can affect temperature. Wag the dog, anyone?
2) Man produces between 3 and 5% of all atmospheric CO2, so if we stop all production of CO2 we will have no effect on temperature.
3) Warm periods have in past been very good for mankind, food production increased, populations rose, and people lived longer. The last point is moot in that not all feel a person living longer is a good thing.
4) Warming proponents faked the science by altering temperature data, a sure sign that the science is beyond question.
5) Clouds are one of the most important feedback mechanisms in climate modelling, yet the computing physical hardware does not yet exist to model clouds in the atmosphere. But no worries, we can slip in some balancing assumption.
6) The sun, the source of all heat and light on this earth, according to the warmists, has nothing to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming.
May '10
Re: Republicans and Climate Change
You're thinking about this too deeply, James.
Yes, conservatives would like to see more humility in scientific predictions, including acknowledgement of what we cannot predict. But the climate disaster nonsense isn't just a problem of people pretending to know more than they really do. It's a bold and simple lie. Plain evidence (like humanity's past experience with warmer global temperatures) was willfully ignored. Both political and economic gains have depended entirely on that lie.
The epistemological significance of the anthropogenic global warming disaster theory (and its recent transformation into "climate disruption") is the Left's willingness to deny plain reality and their ability to hoodwink millions on the Right through saturation propoganda.
And it is perhaps proof that peoples who have lost sight of the divine drama in which we all participate are desperate to be saved from ennui... so desperate to experience a calling that they rush to serve before really knowing their causes or masters. It's a nursery for dictators.
Jul '10
Re: Republicans and Climate Change
Here's my libertarian take on climate change: I intend to consume all the hydrocarbons I possibly can, leaving your children to freeze in the dark.
Edited on Oct 10, 2010 at 1:44pmSep '10
Re: Republicans and Climate Change
According to Brownstein, Republicans are both "coalescing" and "stampeding" toward an unusually backward view. Since stampeding sounds faster, I guess those folks will get there first, and we coalescers will sort of drift in and stick to 'em. Lucky for Brownstein that he thinks and writes so much more clearly than we do.