I have a somewhat different take than Donna Gratehouse in her earlier post on Paul Krugman’s latest column.
The “Foxification” of the news is all about creating a fact-free world. “We report, you decide.” In other words, everything is reduced to mere opinion, there are no known or quantifiable facts on which we should all agree as a starting point. This is the antithesis to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous quote: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
We get this from conservative blog trolls on this blog all the time. The conservative mindset is “Don’t bother me with the facts, I know what I believe!” Much of what they believe, however, is simply flat out wrong, and unsupported by the facts.
The New York Times Paul Krugman discusses the epistemic closure of the conservative mind in his latest column. Hating Good Government:
It’s now official: 2014 was the warmest year on record. You might expect this to be a politically important milestone. After all, climate change deniers have long used the blip of 1998 — an unusually hot year, mainly due to an upwelling of warm water in the Pacific — to claim that the planet has stopped warming. This claim involves a complete misunderstanding of how one goes about identifying underlying trends. (Hint: Don’t cherry-pick your observations.) But now even that bogus argument has collapsed. So will the deniers now concede that climate change is real?
Of course not. Evidence doesn’t matter for the “debate” over climate policy, where I put scare quotes around “debate” because, given the obvious irrelevance of logic and evidence, it’s not really a debate in any normal sense. And this situation is by no means unique. Indeed, at this point it’s hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it’s unshakable dogma, across the board. And the real question is why.
Before I get into that, let me remind you of some other news that won’t matter.
First, consider the Kansas experiment. Back in 2012 Sam Brownback, the state’s right-wing governor, went all in on supply-side economics: He drastically cut taxes, assuring everyone that the resulting boom would make up for the initial loss in revenues. Unfortunately for his constituents, his experiment has been a resounding failure. The economy of Kansas, far from booming, has lagged the economies of neighboring states, and Kansas is now in fiscal crisis.
So will we see conservatives scaling back their claims about the magical efficacy of tax cuts as a form of economic stimulus? Of course not. If evidence mattered, supply-side economics would have faded into obscurity decades ago. Instead, it has only strengthened its grip on the Republican Party.
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And the list goes on. On issues that range from monetary policy to the control of infectious disease, a big chunk of America’s body politic holds views that are completely at odds with, and completely unmovable by, actual experience. And no matter the issue, it’s the same chunk. If you’ve gotten involved in any of these debates, you know that these people aren’t happy warriors; they’re red-faced angry, with special rage directed at know-it-alls who snootily point out that the facts don’t support their position.
The question, as I said at the beginning, is why. Why the dogmatism? Why the rage? And why do these issues go together, with the set of people insisting that climate change is a hoax pretty much the same as the set of people insisting that any attempt at providing universal health insurance must lead to disaster and tyranny?
Well, it strikes me that the immovable position in each of these cases is bound up with rejecting any role for government that serves the public interest. If you don’t want the government to impose controls or fees on polluters, you want to deny that there is any reason to limit emissions. If you don’t want the combination of regulation, mandates and subsidies that is needed to extend coverage to the uninsured, you want to deny that expanding coverage is even possible. And claims about the magical powers of tax cuts are often little more than a mask for the real agenda of crippling government by starving it of revenue.
And why this hatred of government in the public interest? Well, the political scientist Corey Robin argues that most self-proclaimed conservatives are actually reactionaries. That is, they’re defenders of traditional hierarchy — the kind of hierarchy that is threatened by any expansion of government, even (or perhaps especially) when that expansion makes the lives of ordinary citizens better and more secure. I’m partial to that story, partly because it helps explain why climate science and health economics inspire so much rage.
Whether this is the right explanation or not, the fact is that we’re living in a political era in which facts don’t matter. This doesn’t mean that those of us who care about evidence should stop seeking it out. But we should be realistic in our expectations, and not expect even the most decisive evidence to make much difference.
As my late father always said, “Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one.” The opposite is also true.
There you go again, mixing a few selected facts in with a lot of opinion and arriving at a predetermined conclusion and stating it as if it is last word on the subject.
Where climate change is concerned, there is likely change taking place. There is some sound science that supports that, though not to the point of irrefutability that you imply. But that isn’t where the real disagreement lies…the real disagreement is whether or not man is the cause of the climate change. And AZBlue Bunney, there is NO positive evidence of that anywhere. There is a lot of supposition, conjecture, opinion, fear mongering, doom mongering, “what ifing” and outright guesswork being handed out as science, but there is nothing certain known about mans effect, if any, on the climate. And there is evidence that man may not have anything to do with it. Zealots like yourself want the United States to curtail its productivity and standard of living over a potential that has no hard evidence to support it.
If there is any group that has closed its mind to the possibility there might be another perspective, it is liberal Democrats. You are so smug in your self assuredness that you cannot even imagine you might be wrong. I see that in your writing, in particular. You couldn’t see an alternative point of view if your life depended on it.
Steve, you seem to be saying that there is no positive evidence a connection between the level of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses and the change in climate.
So, let me ask you, is there a connection between the level of CO2 and the acidification of the oceans, a link that an equally overwhelming consensus of scientists claim exists, or is the increasing acidity of the oceans just “happening” as well?
Were you even aware of the problem with the increasing acidity of the oceans?
Is there enough of a possibility that greenhouse gasses have a pernicious effect that we should be erring on the side of limiting the increase in their levels, or should we just blindly go forward? When you think about it, Steve, the rational test is not whether there is enough certainty of a link between human conduct and climate change (or ocean acidification), but whether there is enough certainty of the lack of such a connection. Because if that test can’t be met, the rational choice is to err on the side of avoiding disaster.
Yes, I do think the CO2 does have an effect on climate change. I am also aware that CO2 has been increasing over the last several years. That is why I say that I do not necessarily disagree about climate change. Where I do not agree is to automatically blame mankind for the climate change that is taking place. Even the doomsayers acknowledge that the amount of CO2 man puts into the air is a tiny portion of the CO2 put into the air by nature. The doomsayers theory is that the natural CO2 is processed by the earth, but the manmade CO2 just accumulates. Therefore, mankind is responsible for increasing CO2. But there is a different theory that has science behind it that shows it is ten times as likely that the excess atmospheric CO2 is coming from natural sources, namely the warming ocean surface, as it is likely that it is coming from manmade sources. In other words, the climate change would be occurring even if man wasn’t here.
Yes, I was aware of the recent rise of claims that oceans acidity is rising. The oceans, of course, are alkaline, so the rise in acidity really means it is a lessening of the alkalinity. I looked up the figures for that, and the figures are inconsistent and varied. However, all of the figures are tiny changes and the changes are inconsistent around the world. There are claims this is killing the coral reefs, but there is no real evidence of that. It appears to be something that is expected to happen more than is actually happening. More doom mongering…
No, I don’t believe we should further curtail our Nations economic growth or lower our standard of living based upon the doom mongering of scientists and others who have been wrong in the past and who have been discredited by falsifying data. That is a ludicrous path to follow especially if we decide to let China and India continue to spew out pollution as much as they please because of some misplaced sense of guilt at our success in the past. That demonstrates that we are not serious about doing something about climate change. It does demonstrate that we ARE serious about punishing the United States to assuage liberal guilt and to humble ourselves before the world.
Okay, so now you say that CO2 does impact climate change. You also know that it is in the last 100 – 150 years that mankind’s CO2 emissions have skyrocketed. And you know that global temperatures have increased markedly in the last two decades, at the same time CO2 levels crossed historically high thresholds.
Yet you do not believe we should act. You would continue spewing CO2 into the atmosphere because a few developing countries whose per capita emissions are a fraction of ours are not taking action quickly enough for your taste.
I play golf. I know that each time I play there is a one in a gazillion chance I could be struck by lightening and die. I play anyhow. But if someone told me with certainty that if I played on Saturday I’d have a 50% chance of being killed by a lightening strike, I’d stay home. On similar reasoning, it would be rational in my mind to enact policies to force selfish Americans to stop buying gas guzzling SUVs. You disagree. So, how high would the likelihood of a fatal lightening strike have to be before you’d pass on Saturday’s round?
You use the “per capita” measurement for CO2 output, and it is very clever that you do. That puts Canada and the United States at the top of the heap for polluting. But that is NOT the best way to measure CO2 output. If CO2 output matters, then it should be the total amount being spewed into air, regardless of population. The United States would still be #2 and would therefore be penalized harsher than countries with lesser outputs. BUT such curtailments of industry and transportation – which is a drastic measure – should occur only when it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the problem is being caused by man. To take action prematurely is foolish.
Your straw man scenario of golf is incomplete as you describe it. If a source told you with certainty that your chance of being hit by lightening was 50%, I could see you hesitating. But what if that same source had been wrong in the past and had been known to use falsified data, would it carry as much weight with you? Further more, what if there were other sources that told you your chances of being hit were much less and they had the data to prove their point? The decision whether to golf or not would get very confusing. And if you truly LOVED golf, would you be willing to give it up on the chance the naysayers might be correct, or would you want more proof?
Bob, I am neither uninformed nor an idiot. I read material from both sides of the argument before I begin to formulate my opinion. I take many things into consideration and I am willing to change my mind when presented with well reasoned and factually supported arguments. I may someday see this issue as you do, but not right now.
In addition to Jonathan Haidt’s TED Talk, one can find another scientific insight on the difference between liberals and conservatives at … http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/can-your-genes-predict-whether-youll-be-a-conservative-or-a-liberal/280677/ . As with Haidt’s analysis, ” Scientific research shows political partisanship transcends economics, environment, and upbringing.”
Do you not see the irony in using an OPINION piece, especially one that is so flawed from the onset, in support of this argument?
For example: “It’s now official: 2014 was the warmest year on record.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/01/18/ooops-nasa-now-38-sure-2014-was-warmest-year-on-record/
When you click through to the Daily Mail article cited, the dispute is about which year might have been the hottest year: “Another analysis, from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, drawn from ten times as many measuring stations as GISS, concluded that if 2014 was a record year, it was by an even tinier amount. ‘Therefore it is impossible to conclude from our analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year . . .”
The dispute is not about whether global warming exists, which is the point of the Hot Air article.
BTW, this is the whole point of the scientific method, that these scientists publish their findings in peer reviewed articles to be tested and replicated, and a new hypothesis stated if the observable evidence suggests a different result or possibility. It is a scientific process, not just an uninformed opinion “that is what I believe” or “that is how I feel,” which is Krugman’s point.
“The dispute is not about whether global warming exist……”
Precisely Blue! And this is where Krugman et al mischaracterize the debate, Wish to frame the debate to fit their ideology, or are ignorant of the real debate which is the cause of the warming, i.e. Man-made or a natural occurrence. And the scientific consensus here would seem to dispute Krugman’s man-made view or, in fact, that it is even a crisis.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/
To better understand the interesting differences between liberals and conservatives, see the following, evidence-based, 18 minute TED Talk by Jonathan Haidt. (www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind). You will find that the notions of “hatred of government” and “reactionaries” are woefully inadequate.
Her name was patricia schroder and she would have made a great president!
On the tv show run for your life many years ago ben gazzara said to the red neck “with reasonable people I will be reasonable and with unreasonable people I will be unreasonable!” The problem with too many democrats is that they want to be reasonable with unreasonable people. Example I asked a democratic woman in 1992 why she was for bubba as I told her congressional medal of honor winner bob kerry would make a much better president then bubba. She said I can’t vote for bob kerry he is to macho he reminds me of my ex-husband! You prefer the lounge lizard to a congressional medal of honor winner? She said yes, gave me a dirty look and walked. We need tough liberals not alan alda. By the way I was supporting a congress woman I believe from colorado who’s name escapes me who was a lot tougher then bubba!