Climate change skeptic Arnold Kling on The Great Global Warming Swindle:
It comes across as very persuasive, but I take the view that you can make a persuasive propaganda film for just about any position on any subject.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
So does Arnold Kling speak for you? I don't remember your stated position on global warming. Citing Kling in that manner indicates you are a "skeptic."
There is no doubt in my mind that global warming is occurring and that human activity has exacerbated it. It's common-sensical that exponential increases in emissions will alter the composition of the atmosphere. CO2 may not be a "pollutant" but neither can you breathe it in ever-higher conentrations and survive; never mind what it's global warming effects might be; and there is a LOT of peer-reviewed science indicating that it does contribute to GW.
The real "swindle" here is that propaganda film to which Kling refers.
Rob,
So you're saying Kling's backhanded slap at "An Inconvenient Truth" is true?
That's what I read it as, anyways.
p.s. Didn't you get the memo? It's Climate Change now, not Global Warming. Cover all the bases, in case it starts cooling off.
p.p.s. To what extent CO2 contributes and what level it should be at is an interesting question which I think is far from solved. Until someone can do the science and tell me that X ppm is the right level so we can work towards it, I'm really not so interested in solutions that "might" work.
Science first, politics second.
liberalrob -
While you infer that Megan is a "skeptic", that does not seem clear to me.
The point I took away is that she agrees with the idea "that you can make a persuasive propaganda film for just about any position on any subject".
(Which would have been clearer if it had been put in quotation marks, or tagged as a blockquote - but if you follow the link you can tell those are Kling's words, and not Megan's.)
As for Megan being skeptical - well, Megan?
Megan believes in anthropogenic global warming. It is one of her few flaws.
As far as Megan's position, she has supported carbon taxes several times, so it's pretty clear she accepts the premise that carbon emissions are causing a big problem.
I generally consider the term "skeptic" to be a positive one, usually associated with scientists and critical thinkers. I'm disturbed by the ANGER that results from suggesting that there may be any scientific uncertainty. It has become politics, rather than science. As Eliezer at Overcoming Bias would say - arguments are like soldiers, and the only acceptable ones are the ones on our side. If you question anything remotely related to Global Warming / Climate Change, you are simply labeled as "one of them" and given an angry barrage of name calling and accusation of being either stupid or in league with Big Oil.
Economists and Engineers (I'm the latter) have something major in common: they constantly look at things as tradeoffs and seek to find efficient solutions to problems of limited resources. I don't at all question the notion that the planet is warming, and I'll happily grant the premise that it's the "fault" of human emissions. But the big big question is:
If you want me to divert X dollars of economic productivity to reduce carbon emissions, in order to prevent Y dollars of future damage, what is the relationship between X and Y?
If we cut global emissions in half and keep it there, at tremendous cost to everyone living, will that completely solve the warming problem? Or only make it a tiny bit better? If we do nothing, by what degree will the negative effects outweigh the positive ones? (like land that becomes arable, to name one example). How much do we help ourselves by cutting emissions by 10%, as opposed to 8%?
Because there doesn't seem to be a clear answer to these questions - and they're tremendously complex, so I realize that coming up with and agreeing on an answer is probably nearly impossible - it's hard to make a case for exactly what we should do. Exactly what the caps in cap-and-trade should be, exactly how much reduction the taxes should target, exactly what should be done about developing nations' rapidly increasing emissions.
So without anything exact, we pick arbitrary targets (oh, 20% reduction sounds good) and fall into "good guys cut their emissions, bad guys drive SUVs." Which doesn't really sound like science to me. I like skeptics, and I like numbers that come from data.
CAL: Stop it. Believing in AGW is absolutely not a flaw on Megan_McArdle's part. Oh, it certainly would be if she were just blindly believing it because it confirms a previous prejudice, or if she were just trying to be "hip" or "gain cred" in doing so. But that is ABSOLUTELY not the case here. I can 100% guarantee you that Megan_McArdle has come to this position based on a careful analysis of the empirical data, and scientists' incessant, PROVEN ability to predict future climate, given a GHG emission input, and she is quite able to list the critical experiments and findings, since she knows it off the top of her head.
Right, Megan_McArdle?
Person: Why say "Megan_McArdle" like you'd say "Liz Lemmon"? Channeling your inner Tracy Morgan?
Flash_Bazbo: That's just a software thing that has to do with how screennames are recognized stored. If you see my previous posts, you'll see the same thing with e.g. Rob_Lyman.
And what's "Liz_Lemmon"?
Person,
Assuming sarcasm, and it isn't a big assumption, I think you are being unfair to MM. I see no evidence she doesn't honestly believe in AGW and trying to get an 'in' by jumping on the AGW bandwagon while still espousing free trade ideas is going to get her nowhere. There is a curious confluence between AGW believers and socialists.
Geoff,
Well said. There is another tradeoff as well between fixing the problem now versus fixing it in 50 years. Who knows what technologies will be available or where the science will be? Destroying wealth today and impoverishing millions of people now alive on the chance that it will be cheaper than fixing it later and that our great great great grandkids, once born, will be better off because of it seems dicey on the one hand and incredibly cruel to todays poor on the other.
The reason I put "skeptic" in quotes is because it has become the fashionable term for GW opponents; presumably more genteel that "denier," "obstructionist," or "know-nothing." It was the selection of that quote as "quote of the day" and the way Kling was identified prominently as "Climate change skeptic" that gave me the impression that Megan might lean that way. She has since clarified her position.
So in the meantime, we should just let the good times roll, right? And if 20 or 30 years from now science finally does pin down with 99% certitude the maximum sustainable CO2 load, and OOPS we already passed it 5 years ago, what then?
On the other hand, what if we crush the economy trying for a solution that's ineffective.
Or we crash Earth 1.0 when we sequester all the CO2 at the bottom of the ocean, killing all plant life?
There's all sorts of ways that doing something could be worse than doing nothing, and all sorts of ways that doing something could be a waste of time and energy.
And if 20 or 30 years from now science finally does pin down with 99% certitude the maximum sustainable CO2 load, and OOPS we already passed it 5 years ago, what then?
Does the "scientific consensus" stretch as far as providing a probability number for this event?
We're doing a fine job crushing the economy right now, with fantasyland mortgages and voodoo economics. It could hardly be worse working on reducing emissions. And who's to say that our solution would be "ineffective?" Again, either you trust scientists to tell you what will be effective, or you don't. I'm in the first camp.
ROFL.
What's wrong with being in the pocket of big oil? It pays pretty well. Actually, when I worked as a contractor with BP, I found that BP was obnoxious about environmental issues. Many BP employees are strong believers in the global warming alarmism. I'm sure there are some hypicrites, but many of the rank and file are True Believers.
EI