“Interests, Ideology And Climate”: For Republicans, Overcoming Pride And Willful Ignorance Is Hard
There are three things we know about man-made global warming. First, the consequences will be terrible if we don’t take quick action to limit carbon emissions. Second, in pure economic terms the required action shouldn’t be hard to take: emission controls, done right, would probably slow economic growth, but not by much. Third, the politics of action are nonetheless very difficult.
But why is it so hard to act? Is it the power of vested interests?
I’ve been looking into that issue and have come to the somewhat surprising conclusion that it’s not mainly about the vested interests. They do, of course, exist and play an important role; funding from fossil-fuel interests has played a crucial role in sustaining the illusion that climate science is less settled than it is. But the monetary stakes aren’t nearly as big as you might think. What makes rational action on climate so hard is something else — a toxic mix of ideology and anti-intellectualism.
Before I get to that, however, an aside on the economics.
I’ve noted in earlier columns that every even halfway serious study of the economic impact of carbon reductions — including the recent study paid for by the anti-environmental U.S. Chamber of Commerce — finds at most modest costs. Practical experience points in the same direction. Back in the 1980s conservatives claimed that any attempt to limit acid rain would have devastating economic effects; in reality, the cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide was highly successful at minimal cost. The Northeastern states have had a cap-and-trade arrangement for carbon since 2009, and so far have seen emissions drop sharply while their economies grew faster than the rest of the country. Environmentalism is not the enemy of economic growth.
But wouldn’t protecting the environment nonetheless impose costs on some sectors and regions? Yes, it would — but not as much as you think.
Consider, in particular, the much-hyped “war on coal.” It’s true that getting serious about global warming means, above all, cutting back on (and eventually eliminating) coal-fired power, which would hurt regions of the country that depend on coal-mining jobs. What’s rarely pointed out is how few such jobs still exist.
Once upon a time King Coal was indeed a major employer: At the end of the 1970s there were more than 250,000 coal miners in America. Since then, however, coal employment has fallen by two-thirds, not because output is down — it’s up, substantially — but because most coal now comes from strip mines that require very few workers. At this point, coal mining accounts for only one-sixteenth of 1 percent of overall U.S. employment; shutting down the whole industry would eliminate fewer jobs than America lost in an average week during the Great Recession of 2007-9.
Or put it this way: The real war on coal, or at least on coal workers, took place a generation ago, waged not by liberal environmentalists but by the coal industry itself. And coal workers lost.
The owners of coal mines and coal-fired power plants do have a financial interest in blocking environmental policy, but even there the special interests don’t look all that big. So why is the opposition to climate policy so intense?
Well, think about global warming from the point of view of someone who grew up taking Ayn Rand seriously, believing that the untrammeled pursuit of self-interest is always good and that government is always the problem, never the solution. Along come some scientists declaring that unrestricted pursuit of self-interest will destroy the world, and that government intervention is the only answer. It doesn’t matter how market-friendly you make the proposed intervention; this is a direct challenge to the libertarian worldview.
And the natural reaction is denial — angry denial. Read or watch any extended debate over climate policy and you’ll be struck by the venom, the sheer rage, of the denialists.
The fact that climate concerns rest on scientific consensus makes things even worse, because it plays into the anti-intellectualism that has always been a powerful force in American life, mainly on the right. It’s not really surprising that so many right-wing politicians and pundits quickly turned to conspiracy theories, to accusations that thousands of researchers around the world were colluding in a gigantic hoax whose real purpose was to justify a big-government power grab. After all, right-wingers never liked or trusted scientists in the first place.
So the real obstacle, as we try to confront global warming, is economic ideology reinforced by hostility to science. In some ways this makes the task easier: we do not, in fact, have to force people to accept large monetary losses. But we do have to overcome pride and willful ignorance, which is hard indeed.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, June 8, 2014
“Gutlessness And Disingenuous”: While Our Planet Melts, GOP Pleads Ignorance”:
It is irreversible now.
And there’s a word that should get everybody’s attention. Last month, two groups of scientists, publishing separately in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters, issued reports that came to alarmingly similar conclusions: The melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet has reached a point of no return. If greenhouse gases stopped spewing forth tomorrow, we’d still face the grim prospect of steadily rising seas from this unstoppable melt.
So it would be a good idea to save what ice we still can. Or else condemn our grandchildren to vie for beachfront property in St. Louis on a planet of shrinking land, diminishing resources, and growing population.
This week, thankfully, the Obama administration — once noteworthy chiefly for its disinterested torpor where climate change is concerned — proposed politically risky new Environmental Protection Agency standards requiring deep cuts in carbon pollution levels at U.S. power plants by 2030. And the opposition party? Their attitude is summed up by the headline of a recent story on Politico: “Republicans on climate science: Don’t ask us.”
Writer Darren Goode reports that the GOP has adopted a new global warming “talking point.” Which is that they are not equipped to talk about it. As in Speaker John Boehner telling reporters, “Listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change.” And Florida governor Rick Scott demurring that, “I am not a scientist.” And a spokeswoman for the billionaire Koch brothers, the deep pockets of the right wing, saying, “We are not experts on climate change.”
The gutlessness, disingenuousness and sheer cynicism of this new tack are difficult to overstate.
For the record, most of us are not experts on climate science. But most of us have the good sense to listen to those who are.
The right, however, prefers to pretend there is some sort of “debate” in the scientific community over whether human activity is raising the temperature of our one and only planet. There isn’t. Indeed, that finding is accepted by 97 percent of climate scientists. This, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science that, with 121,000 members, is the world’s largest general science group.
So the GOP’s “debate” is three scientists out of a hundred. Heck, you could probably find three scientists out of a hundred who think smoking is good for you.
Our planet is at a point of crisis. The ice is melting, the sea levels are rising, the oceans are acidifying, drought patterns are changing, precipitation is increasing, extreme weather is growing ever more common. Yet for Boehner, the salient issue is that “every proposal that has come out of this administration to deal with climate change involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs.”
Not to be glib about unemployment and recession, but if asked to choose between dinging the U.S. economy and killing the planet on which that economy depends — assuming that were even a real choice — it’s hard to imagine most of us would prioritize the former. And if the Democrats’ ideas are so bad, fine. Where are the Republican proposals? As was the case with health care, why are they once again late in their discovery of a critical problem and bereft of serious solutions therefor?
Here is an idea. The two parties should work together as if they were composed of adults to find a way to save our planet. Instead, the GOP is buck passing with an eye on the midterms. Ninety-seven percent of experts say we don’t have time for these shenanigans, yet Boehner and company pretend there’s still some kind of “debate” going on. Ninety-seven percent.
Maybe the GOP isn’t good at science, but surely they understand basic math.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami, Herald; The National Memo, June 4, 2014
“No Expert In Election Law Either”: Florida Governor Rick Scott Is Also ‘Not A Scientist’
Florida governor Rick Scott (R) ripped a page from Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) science-denying playbook on Tuesday, when he dodged a question on climate change by insisting “I’m not a scientist.”
As Marc Caputo reports in The Miami Herald, the latest example of Scott’s climate-change trutherism came during a question-and-answer session in Miami:
Q: Do you believe man-made climate change is significantly affecting the weather, the climate?
Scott: “Well, I’m not a scientist. But let’s talk about what we’ve done. Through our Division of Emergency Management — the last few years, three years – we put about, I think, $120 million to deal with flooding around our coast. We also put a lot of money into our natural treasures, the Everglades, trying to make sure all the water flows south. So we’re dealing with all the issues we can. But I’m not a scientist.”
Q: In 2011 or 2010, you were much more doubtful about climate change. Now you’re sounding less doubtful about man-made climate change because now you’re not saying ‘Look, I doubt the science.’ Now you’re saying: ‘I’m not a scientist.’ Am I right in guessing that?
Scott: “Well, I’m not a scientist. But I can tell you what we’ve accomplished. We put a lot of effort into making sure that we take care of our natural treasures – the Everglades, making sure water flows south, any flooding around our coast. So we’re doing the right thing.”
Question (asked by citizen-activist): So do you believe in the man-made influence on climate change?
Scott: “Nice seeing you guys.”
The governor’s dodge is a rather weak case for refusing to fully confront Florida’s looming environmental crisis. After all, Scott is also not an expert in election law, but that didn’t stop him from illegally attempting to purge Florida’s voter rolls.
If Scott is interested in the opinion of actual scientists on the matter, however, they have been very clear that the climate is warming, likely due to human activities.
Scott’s response is nearly a carbon copy of the one offered by Senator Rubio in 2012, when he infamously responded to a question on the age of the Earth by telling GQ reporter Michael Hainey “I’m not a scientist, man.” Rubio has since devolved on the issue, going from refusing to engage with science to flatly denying it.
Scott’s has moved in the opposite direction. Although he now refuses to discuss science, during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2010 Scott proudly stated that he does not believe in climate change.
The governor’s attempt to sidestep questions on the topic will likely resurface during his re-election campaign. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has named Scott as one of the top targets of his $100 million campaign to boot climate-change truthers from office in November, and Scott’s awkward answer seems tailor-made for an attack ad.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, May 28, 2014
“Blisteringly Ignorant”: The Republican Reaction To The Polar Vortex Explains Why So Many Scientists Are Democrats
When I walked to work Tuesday morning, it was 4 degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest temperature I’ve experienced in the last two years living in Washington, D.C. The cold snap has sparked the inevitable snow trolling—that this weather somehow disproves climate change’s existence—from A-list conservative commentators like Matt Drudge, Erick Erickson and the usual stable of Fox pundits. This is only a rawer form of the climate-change denial that is now party dogma, comporting with, for starters, the party’s 2012 presidential candidate and the entire Republican membership of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. They are, of course, completely wrong. But this kind of Lysenkoist behavior isn’t just wrong; it has catastrophically discredited the party among scientists.
The Republican position here, at least as outlined by its loudest and most influential members, seems to be this: The theory of global warming predicts that everywhere will be hot all the time. Therefore, the continued existence of cold things disproves the theory. Donald Trump tweeted, “We are experiencing the coldest weather in more than two decades-most people never remember anything like this. GLOBAL WARMING anyone?” Some guy at Red State gloated over the fate of the climate research vessel Akademic Sholkalskiy, and Rush Limbaugh joined in with similar thoughts:
It’s an abject, total fraud. Well, obviously there is no melting of ice going on at the North Pole. If they’re gonna tell us the polar vortex is responsible for this cold, that means record cold is also happening in the North Pole, which means there isn’t any ice melting, and we know about the global warming expedition that went down to the South Pole, Antarctica, to prove that the ice is melting.
It’s almost impossible to overstate how blisteringly ignorant this sounds to a scientist. The argument, if it can be dignified as such, is 100 percent straw man. As far as the Akademic Sholkalskiy is concerned, the vessel’s mission was general climate research, not to disprove the existence of sea ice (we use satellites for that kind of measurement, cause the Earth is real big), and the International Panel on Climate Change never predicted that all sea ice would be gone forever. The vessel was trapped by weather-shifted pack ice, not unseasonable overall ice coverage. And while it is true that (unlike in the Arctic) Antarctic sea ice has been growing, for a variety of reasons, Antarctic land ice, which is what matters for sea level rise, is melting fast.
And contra Limbaugh, as Climate Central’s Andrew Freeman details, there is a strong case that even the current cold snap in the U.S. can be laid at the doorstep of climate change. Climate models predict that typical wind patterns will be disrupted, and that’s exactly what is causing freezing Arctic air to pour across North America. Meanwhile, the Arctic itself is correspondingly much warmer than average—on Tuesday much of Alaska was warmer than Atlanta and Mobile.
But the most elementary subtleties of reasoning are lost on many Republicans, who descend into anti-intellectual capering at the slightest provocation. Surely this is part of what accounts for the yawning partisan affiliation gap among scientists. A 2009 Pew poll found that 55 percent of scientists identified as Democrat, and just 6 percent as Republican.
These days, top Republicans are constantly yowling about things—from climate change to evolution—that aren’t just controversial, but preposterous. Even a scientifically informed business person might be able to look past that stuff, but such beliefs are radioactive in the scientific community. What’s more, the GOP won’t allow within its ranks anything less than angry denials of settled scientific consensus—admit climate change is real, and you’ll be frog-marched out of office. By contrast, the Democrats have a few scientifically challenged loons (vaccine deniers and GMO paranoiacs come to mind), but they don’t suffuse the party.
Democrats no doubt benefit in the long run from the GOP’s denialism, but it’s a shame nonetheless. Ideally, both parties would agree upon an empirical reality, allowing a policy debate over values and priorities, not inconvenient facts. Some have predicted that a new generation of GOP leaders like Chris Christie will finally take on the party’s willful ignorance of climate change, but there’s little sign of that. And until then, scientists will keep supporting one side overwhelmingly.
By: Ryan Cooper, Web Editor, The Washington Monthly; Published in The New Republic, January 8, 2014
“Limbaugh Solves Weather Mystery”: Polar Vortex Is A Liberal, Mainstream Media Hoax Designed To Sell Global Climate Change
Who knew that Rush Limbaugh—in addition to his many “talents”—possesses a deep knowledge and understanding of climatology and meteorology?
While Limbaugh’s biography reveals no apparent training in such matters, that small detail did not prevent Rush from declaring the severe cold snap—produced by the distortion of the polar vortex and currently affecting much of the United States—to be nothing more than a hoax, proclaiming —
“We are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country. And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented. Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have. It’s called the ‘polar vortex.’ The dreaded polar vortex.”
Limbaugh continued his rant by noting that liberals are “in the middle of a hoax, they’re perpetrating a hoax, but they’re relying on their total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warming. So they created the polar vortex, and the polar vortex, something’s happened, and that cold air which normally stays is in the North Pole, something’s happening, something deeply mysterious and perhaps tragic is happening.”
Apparently, Rush has been so busy studying his weather charts that he failed to notice that Fox News, Newsmax and other conservative media outlets have decided to join the liberal media hoax by discussing the polar vortex as part of their own weather reports—and yes, they are using that precise phrase—over the past few days.
And with good reason.
You see, there is nothing deeply mysterious nor tragic involved with the existence of a polar vortex (except for the few human tragedies that always seem to accompany severe weather situations) and what happens when the weather pattern becomes distorted. What’s more, I have yet to hear any suggestion from liberals, conservatives—or any branch of the media—indicating that there is some mystery or tragedy at work.
I’ve only heard Rush Limbaugh suggest that others are suggesting the same.
Still, Limbaugh insists that the whole affair has been “created” by the liberals and the mainstream media to feather the arguments in support of global warming and climate change.
A polar vortex is a circulation of strong winds that surround the northern pole (although there is also a polar vortex surrounding the southern pole) that swirl in a counterclockwise direction, creating a low pressure weather pattern. The strong winds typically keep the seriously cold air “locked into” the Arctic region. But, on occasion, the vortex (winds) become distorted as a result of the strength of the winds lessening, causing the vortex to ‘dip’ down to the south, allowing the frigid, arctic air to escape and spill down to the south where they bring very cold temperatures to the Northern Hemisphere—including those we are currently experiencing throughout much of the United States.
Thus, it is not the polar vortex that the liberals and media allegedly “created” that is causing our really cold weather-it is the distortion of the polar vortex that bears the blame. And while Santa Claus may not truly live at the North Pole (I hope I haven’t ruined the Santa Claus thing for Limbaugh), the polar vortex is real and very much does.
The entire process is nothing new.
Cold periods frequently result from distortions of the polar vortex, but as they occur at different times, in different parts of the world and with different levels of severity, we here in the United States tend not to focus on them unless the frigid air comes our way. Indeed, just last year, many parts of Europe experienced frigid air during the Easter season as a result of a distorted polar vortex which sent the arctic air in their direction instead of our own and produced an Easter far colder than what they were experiencing during the Christmas season.
So, Rush…I’m afraid the vast liberal conspiracy did not “create” the evil sounding bit of science-fiction entitled the polar vortex as a means of selling global climate change. You’re going to have to give credit for the existence of a polar vortex to a much higher authority.
Of course, without any desire on Rush’s part to actually explore this weather phenomenon on a scientific level—a complete misuse of Limbaugh’s time as, God forbid, his audience might learn something of scientific value—and whether or not the distortion of a polar vortex might actually be the result of climate change, Limbaugh’s latest bit of buffoonery does raise for us the question of whether or not climate change does bear some blame for extreme changes in weather patterns.
The answer is that your guess is as good as mine.
In fact, your guess is as good as the climate scientists who, for many years now, have been attempting to discover whether there is a connection between the distortion of the polar vortex and any man-made climate change. As this research has been going on for quite some time, it would appear that Rush Limbaugh was a more than a little late to pick up on this bit of conspiracy as I don’t recall him discussing this back in 2001 when the first studies on the subject began to emerge.
“Studies published since 2001 suggest a link between extreme weather and the polar vortex, in recent years more research identified interactions with Arctic sea ice decline, reduced snow cover, evapotranspiration patterns, NAO anomalies or weather anomalies which are linked to the polar vortex and jet stream configuration. However, because these are considered short-term observations (since ~13 years) there is considerable uncertainty in the conclusions. Climatology observations require several decades to distinguish natural variability from climate trends (emphasis added.)
Apparently, an effort on the part of meteorologists and television weather reporters—including those over at Fox—to teach us a little something about what is causing an unusual and difficult weather pattern can only equate to conspiracy in the mind of Rush Limbaugh who has single-handedly managed to create a conspiracy where none could possibly have previously existed.
I guess that is ‘business as usual’ for Rush when forced to get the anger flowing on a slow, “first day back to work” for the new year.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, January 7, 2014
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