The Anti-Denialism Deniers
| Tue Oct. 27, 2009 8:25 AM PDT
In the LA Times today, Jonah Goldberg takes on the global warming movement:
The push in Congress for a huge new carbon tax is a dangerous farce. Yes, it's true that CO2 levels and global temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution, and that's something to take seriously. But the political reality is that truly meaningful global restrictions on CO2 emissions in the near future simply will not happen, and pretending otherwise is a waste of time, money and political capital.
....That's the case Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner make in their book, "SuperFreakonomics," which is already being torn apart by environmentalists horrified at the notion they might lose their license to Get Things Done as they see fit.
Is the atmosphere getting too hot? Cool it down by reflecting away more sunlight. The ocean's getting too acidic? Give it some antacid.
The technology's not ready. But pursuing it for a couple of decades will cost pennies compared with carbon rationing.
I've read a million anti-warming diatribes in the past few years, but something about this one irritated me more than usual. I think it was the desperately flip tone. Goldberg clearly doesn't want to be part of the outright denialist school — they're a wee bit too vulgar, I suppose — but he wants to deny nevertheless. So he tosses out a few jokes, takes on the weakest possible arguments for addressing climate change (they want to kill your dog!), and then latches on to Levitt and Dubner's new book as a supposedly sober and scientific way of advocating total inaction. Never mind that Levitt and Dubner themselves, as well as everyone quoted in their book, has stated clearly that CO2 reduction is essential, should be pursued with vigor, and that geoengineering research should be done in addition to, not instead of, greenhouse gas reductions.
And this, whether or not Levitt and Dubner intended it, is the problem with their book. They may include sentences here and there implying that geoengineering is a last resort, not a first one, but that's very clearly not the lesson most people have taken away from their discussion. The lesson most people have taken away is the one that Goldberg obviously took: we should throw a few billion dollars into 18-mile sulfate tubes, stop worrying about global warming, and get back to business. L&D really owed it to their readers not to allow anyone to reasonably leave with that interpretation.
As for Goldberg, he wonders somberly why public belief in global warming has declined lately and decides (natch) that it's the Democrats' fault for actually trying to do something about it. The fact that his side of the aisle has waged a blistering, no-holds-barred denialism war for the past few years apparently has nothing to do with it. But he should be more willing to take credit for a job well done. Conservatives hate international treaties, they hate business regulations of any kind, and they hate Al Gore. Convincing the public that global warming is just a liberal fraud is sort of a trifecta for them. Nice work.
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Comments
Heavy metals in your food?
Submitted by B on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 9:03 AM PDT.
Heavy metals in your food? Add some dimercaptosuccinic acid to your breakfast cereal as a chelating agent.
Well, nice diatribe of your
Submitted by James2 (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 9:13 AM PDT.
Well, nice diatribe of your own there Kevin. Lets not overlook the fact that you address exactly NOTHING in the excerpt of Goldberg's 'diatribe'. All he's saying is that the cap and trade bill is a huge pile of shit that will accomplish nothing other than making a few key connected players a huge pile of money.
For somebody that spends an awful lot of time decrying the ills of big business, you willingly overlook some of the most egregious examples.
i don't drop in to kevin's
Submitted by howard (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 12:28 PM PDT.
i don't drop in to kevin's comments very often any more, but it's reassuring when i do to see that james2 is still as stupid as the last time i saw his remarks.
there is nothing to address in goldberg's piece but the man is an ill-informed buffoon who has not a substantive argument to be made. it would be a waste of kevin's time to pretend otherwise, which is what james2 wants us to do.
Oh please, political hacks
Submitted by trotsky (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 9:17 AM PDT.
Oh please, political hacks will cherry-pick. If not from the Superfreakonomicists, then from someone else.
"That's the case Steven D.
Submitted by low-tech cyclist on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 9:38 AM PDT.
"That's the case Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner make in their book, "SuperFreakonomics," which is already being torn apart by environmentalists horrified at the notion they might lose their license to Get Things Done as they see fit."
Would be a pleasant surprise if Lucianne's Not-So-Little Boy actually addressed the critics' arguments, rather than making bullshit claims about ulterior motives that wouldn't matter even if true.
Seeing is believing:
Submitted by anomaly on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 9:40 AM PDT.
would be reality based (scientific) analysis.
And what if beliefs are effecting your ability to see?
That would be faith based analysis.
See for yourself:
Sea level is rising.
Land glaciers are melting.
Average worldwide temperatures are up.
Extreme weather events of all types seem to be increasing in numbers.
The tundras are melting.
Ocean acidity levels are rising.
Species everywhere are shifting ranges and active seasons.
Conservatives hate ...
Submitted by rbe1 (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 9:55 AM PDT.
Oh, that's OK, I hate most of these conservatives. Fact is that most of them are not real conservatives. I would suggest we just apply the appellation wackos instead. It's much more accurate, though I wouldn't be adverse to ignorant slobs either.
Geoengineering
Submitted by The Steve Formerly Known as Steve (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 10:14 AM PDT.
It's interesting that the deniers have latched onto geoengineering as a panacea for climate change/AGW, especially since these "solutions" (and I use the term advisedly) would be longer term and more far reaching than any carbon cap or other limitation on our ability to despoil the environment might be.
Who would run the sulfur dioxide pumps? What sort of international agreements would be necessary? Who would pay for this massive project? The UN? The US certainly couldn't. And one wonders where all the raw material would come from and what happens when we run out. The "World Government" necessary for such a scheme would set the hair of most conservatives on fire.
But this is really all about choosing up sides and supporting the home team and has nothing to do with reality. One suspects that if science was proposing a geoengineering solution, the deniers would be advocating carbon caps and fuel efficiency.
I'm reminded of the Monty Python's Flying Circus "Argument Sketch".
[. . .]
Palin: You most certainly did not.
Cleese: Look, let's get this thing clear; I quite definitely told you.
Palin: No you did not.
Cleese: Yes I did.
Palin: No you didn't.
Cleese: Yes I did.
Palin: No you didn't.
Cleese: Yes I did.
Palin: No you didn't.
Cleese: Yes I did.
Palin: You didn't.
Cleese: Did.
Palin: Oh look, this isn't an argument.
Cleese: Yes it is.
Palin: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.
Cleese: No it isn't.
Palin: It is!
Cleese: It is not.
Palin: Look, you just contradicted me.
Cleese: I did not.
[. . .]
And so forth.
Kevin: Nice closing
Submitted by Chicounsel (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 10:18 AM PDT.
Kevin:
Nice closing paragraph there. It sounds exactly like what a person Jonah is describing here in his column would say:
Indeed, in response to popular reluctance, the Jeremiahs are not only getting more shrill, they're starting to resent democracy itself, sounding more and more like they want to make an end-run around the people.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for example, has made no secret of his envy for China's ability to Get Things Done. In 2005, he wrote: "I cannot help but feel a tinge of jealousy at China's ability to be serious about its problems and actually do things that are tough and require taking things away from people." And just last month, he lamented that the GOP's refusal to bend to Democratic cap-and-trade proposals demonstrated that our system of "one-party democracy" is worse than China's "one-party autocracy."
That his argument made no sense only underscores his eagerness to compliment a totalitarian regime.
Meanwhile, an international bureaucracy pushes "global governance" to combat climate change, heedless of popular sentiment. America's founders revolted to protest too much taxation and too little representation. The notion that America will sacrifice its sovereignty and treasure -- and dogs! -- to reduce warming by a fraction a century from now is absurd.
If you cannot afford -- politically, morally or economically -- the solution to a perceived problem, then it's not a solution. We cannot afford to end the use of carbon-based energy, so a better strategy is to develop remedies for the bad side effects of carbon use.
_____________________________________________________________________
He is exactly right. There is no way this country will ever agree to a treaty that subjects the inalienable right of Americans to engage in the "pursuit of happiness", otherwise known as economic freedom, to a world governing body who is worried about how much carbon dioxide they are generating by their pursuit of happiness and what impact it will have on the global climate now or in the future or on anybody else.
And if anybody has a problem with that, then they can come over here and try to stop us.
what's your solution?
Submitted by MobiusKlein (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 11:20 AM PDT.
So what would your solution be to the 'Too much CO2 in the atmosphere' problem?
Treaties - out
Reducing energy use - out
Geoengineering - a partial solution at best - out
So we're left with
Live with it, and the rest of ya'll can suck it.
Somehow, that does not seem very, uh, Christian to me.
And why "pursuit of happiness" the same thing as economic freedom? It isn't for me.
It's so sad that you don't
Submitted by James2 (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 11:47 AM PDT.
It's so sad that you don't realize that economic freedom is a necessary prerequisite for whatever you decide your "pursuit of happiness" is. Even if you have no desire to acquire economic wealth, the economic freedom of others directly contributes to your ability to pursue whatever your ultimate goal is.
Read my comment
Submitted by MobiusKlein (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 11:57 AM PDT.
I was saying that the two things are not the same.
Sure, there is overlap. Some folks more than others. But worship of Mammon is not pursuit of happiness, or even real 'economic freedom'.
mobiousklein, you're much
Submitted by howard (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 12:31 PM PDT.
mobiousklein, you're much too intelligent to waste your time on james2, who wouldn't know what economic freedom is if it punched him in the nose.
but i actually wanted to say something to chicocounsel: i remember the many times you criticized george bush for his remarks about how much easier life would be under a dictatorship, don't i? you mean i don't? you mean you're a frickin' hypocrite? imagine that, a dumbass right-wing thug being a hypocrite.
What is freedom anyway?
Submitted by stand on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 7:36 AM PDT.
You speak of economic freedom as if it were some objective, immutable thing. It's not. There are a whole host of things that I am not free to do. I don't have the freedom to defraud other people in pursuit of my own happiness. What environmentalists are saying is that we are, in effect defrauding our descendants by not seeking sustainable means of living. Cap and trade systems seek to address our accounting failures by attaching real monetary value to things that we currently take for granted.
What is freedom anyway?
Submitted by stand on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 8:17 AM PDT.
You speak of economic freedom as if it were some objective, immutable thing. It's not. There are a whole host of things that I am not free to do. I don't have the freedom to defraud other people in pursuit of my own happiness. What environmentalists are saying is that we are, in effect defrauding our descendants by not seeking sustainable means of living. Cap and trade systems seek to address our accounting failures by attaching real monetary value to things that we currently take for granted.
Funny definition of 'democracy' you've got there.
Submitted by low-tech cyclist on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 11:44 AM PDT.
"Indeed, in response to popular reluctance, the Jeremiahs are not only getting more shrill, they're starting to resent democracy itself, sounding more and more like they want to make an end-run around the people."
Maybe you're confusing "41 U.S. Senators" with "the people." As has been noted far too often for you to miss:
1) The big problem in 'getting things done' in our democracy is the ability of 41 U.S. Senators to block anything and everything from getting done.
2) Those 41 Senators may well represent an even smaller fraction of 'the people' than their fraction of the Senate would indicate.
3) And it's worse than that: as we all know, corporate interests give lavishly to politicians regardless of geography, while actual citizens tend to contribute much more to the campaigns in their own states. But as Nate Silver pointed out a few months back, small-state Senators don't have very many citizens in their states, so it's easy for the corporate contributions to swamp those from the citizens.
This doesn't have much effect on Republicans, who largely vote the corporate line anyway, but it has a big effect on small-state Senate Democrats. Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Tom Carper, Joe Lieberman, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus - practically all of the Dems who are problematic on anything that threatens corporate interests are from small states. (The only real exception is Evan Bayh, who represents Indiana.)
So conflating lefty grousing with the difficulty of 'getting things done' with a dislike for democracy is bullshit. Maybe that's how Tom Friedman thinks, but he's no liberal.
Why do some of the same
Submitted by Mercer on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 12:16 PM PDT.
Why do some of the same people who stress the urgency of action on global warming also insist on rebuilding New Orleans?
If you believe Al Gore's forecasts New Orleans will be even more under sea level and hurricanes stronger. Spending money on New Orleans under these conditions is a big waste of government money. How many prominent environmentalists have criticized this waste?
it is fascinating to read
Submitted by howard (not verified) on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 12:34 PM PDT.
it is fascinating to read down these comments and see all the various right-wing stooge talking points about global warming, but mercer's takes the cake! al gore doesn't provide "forecasts," he tells you what the broad consensus of climate scientists thinks. and the goal is to prevent the problems, not to allow them to occur.
other than that, your comment makes total sense.
Have you ever heard of the Netherlands?
Submitted by Jeff S. on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 4:20 PM PDT.
Mercer, your comment isn't particularly relevant.
27% of the Netherlands land area, where over 60% of the population lives, has been below sea level for hundreds of years. With enough resources, it's possible to build effective flood protection, for the Netherlands and for New Orleans.
It might be possible to
Submitted by Mercer on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 6:38 PM PDT.
It might be possible to have effective flood protection but I don't see how it is an intelligent use of US tax dollars. The US is not Holland we have plenty of safer land for people to live on and trillion dollar budget deficits. Do you think rebuilding houses below sea level is a better use of money then spending it on health care?
Same people?
Submitted by B on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 8:06 PM PDT.
As a practical matter I figure we should have a phased withdrawal of New Orleans and I've argued this since before Katrina. If we don't stop dumping sediment down the deep water channel, it would be best to avoid all permanent settlement on the delta.
I think the problem of global warming is urgent and business as usual is a fairly ignorant way to proceed, but I'd rather tackle the problem more indirectly by promoting family planning, women's rights, efficiency, and alternative energy. If I was czar I'd pay for it with a small but growing tax on oil and coal.
give or take a couple orders of magnitude.
Submitted by jhm on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 1:04 PM PDT.
I would advise not letting "a couple of decades" go without response.
Deferring to the professionals:
The geo-engineering option that is being talked about here is the addition of SO2 to the stratosphere where it oxidises to SO4 (sulphate) aerosols which, since they are reflective, reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the ground. The zeroth order demonstration of this possibility is shown by the response of the climate to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 which caused a maximum 0.5ºC cooling a year or so later. Under business-as-usual scenarios, the radiative forcing we can expect from increasing CO2 by the end of the century are on the order of 4 to 8 W/m2 – requiring the equivalent to one to two Pinatubo’s every year if this kind of geo-engineering was the only response. And of course, you couldn’t stop until CO2 levels came back down (hundreds, if not thousands of years later) without hugely disruptive and rapid temperature rises. As Deltoid neatly puts it: “What could possibly go wrong?”.
Sulfate aerosols will also
Submitted by B on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 8:11 PM PDT.
Sulfate aerosols will also catalyze destruction of ozone in the stratosphere. So we need to load up on sun screen for the next few thousand years.
Geoengineering deserves to
Submitted by J. Frank Parnell on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 6:36 PM PDT.
Geoengineering deserves to be studied, but will inevitably be fraught with difficulties and unknowns. It is sad to see Freeman Dyson (who truly deserved to get the Noble prize with Richard Feynman) propose super carbon storing trees as the solution. Unfortunately, trees are mainly composed of lignin and cellulose, both of which have well defined molecular structures with fixed carbon ratios. The only way to make a tree store more carbon is to make it grow faster, but this is exactly what foresters have been working on for over a hundred years with some success but nothing like what it would take to solve global climate change.
A silver bullet clean energy solution
Submitted by dobermanmacleod on Tue Oct. 27, 2009 8:49 PM PDT.
While I too am angered by writers like Goldberg who are so flippant and shallow about global warming, every mainstream writer seems to be out of touch with this emerging energy technology that changes everything:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1iqa0dSJO0
Check out above link to a 2 and a half minute youtube video of a CNN report. What are the odds that the independent testimony below is fraudulent (not bloody likely unless you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist)? Here is a silver bullet technology: clean cheap and abundant energy.
In a joint statement, Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary, Rowan University Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Amos Mugweru, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Dr. Peter Jansson P.E., Associate Professor of Engineering said, "In independent tests conducted over the past three months involving 10 solid fuels made by us from commercially-available chemicals, our team of engineering and chemistry professors, staff, and students at Rowan University has independently and consistently generated energy in excesses ranging from 1.2 times to 6.5 times the maximum theoretical heat available through known chemical reactions."
Also, check out this article: http://green.venturebeat.com/2008/05/30/blacklight-power-claims-nearly-f...
Kevin wrote: "... something
Submitted by SecularAnimist (not verified) on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 8:43 AM PDT.
Kevin wrote: "... something about this one irritated me more than usual. I think it was the desperately flip tone."
Gee, I guess what irritated me the most was the blatant lies.
Levitt is a hack. His work -
Submitted by MVE (not verified) on Thu Oct. 29, 2009 1:53 PM PDT.
Levitt is a hack. His work - both academic and non-academic - is strictly designed to draw attention. Routine flaws in his methodology, analyses, and argumentation mean that most academics outside the "isn't it fun to do quirky econometric analysis" camp can no longer take him seriously. Levitt and Dubner want to sell books and boost fame. It's no accident that their latest offering has been "mis"interpreted.
Maybe Tommy Franks was wrong.
Submitted by QMF (not verified) on Thu Oct. 29, 2009 2:41 PM PDT.
Douglas Feith isn't the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.
Jonah Goldberg is.
