alarmists

10:10 = Economic Illiteracy

by Alex Schibuola on October 7, 2010

in Economy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Zeitgeist

10:10 Video: Blowing Up Children (Viewer Discretion Advised)

What an inspiring film — people who refuse to cut their personal CO2 emissions are sentenced to death.

The economic illiteracy of these particular global warming alarmists is on fine display. Under the assumption that global warming alarmists are in favor of producing alternatives to fossil fuels; here’s the mistake in their plan to cut fossil fuel emissions:

If everyone decreases their use of fossil fuels the result is a decrease in demand for fossil fuels. The price of fossil fuels falls relative to alternative forms of energy. If fossil fuels become relatively cheaper than alternatives (read another way: alternatives become relatively more expensive), then alternative energies become less economically viable and we only end up prolonging our use of fossil fuels.

A better alternative if they do want to promote the use of alternatives would be this: Have everyone increase their consumption of fossil fuels by 10 percent per year, thus driving up the price of fossil fuels and making alternatives relatively cheaper.

So now, anyone who does not increase their consumption of fossil fuels should be summarily executed.

I wonder if the use of reason would warrant me being blown up.

Follow the Money? That’s Exactly What Rent-Seekers Do

by Iain Murray on January 11, 2010

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Sanctimony

This fellow from New Zealand appears to think that Climategate proves that the big money is in climate skepticism. How does that work?

Here’s my attempt to follow his argument: The US Government has spent $79 billion in the past two decades on climate science. But Big Oil and Big Coal want a piece of this. They spend heavily on lobbyists to get it. They would be well served by certain provisions in bills and international treaties. [I agree with this so far...] But “the aims of the climate change lobby groups and the large industries they represent dovetail quite nicely with the arguments put forward by the sceptics.” So [he implies] therefore the skeptics have all the money.

Huh?

Global warming skeptics don’t want carbon capture and storage. They don’t want targets for emissions reduction. They don’t want international treaties and thousand page bills that take money out of the productive class and spend it on vastly expensive ways of doing things we know how to do already. Global warming skeptics do not want “a seat at the table.” They don’t think there should be a table in the first place.

Our science blogger friend has confused skeptic with rent-seeker. We skeptics have a grudging respect for our ‘alarmist’ opponents. In most cases they have a sincere belief that there is a serious problem and want to solve it. (Part of the problem revealed by climategate was that many of them, however, want to solve the problem by any means necessary and are insincere in their methods). Rent-seekers, on the other hand, want to exploit such beliefs for personal/corporate gain*, at the expense of the rest of us. Therefore rent-seekers are a bigger problem than alarmists, because they do indeed bring the big bucks. That’s why rent-seeking businesses want carbon capture and storage, which they will be paid handsomely for. They want international treaties and thousand page bills that contains nice incentives for them, their executives and their shareholders. They want the free market distorted to their benefit. The ends they desire, however, are completely different from those desired by the skeptics. Their aims do not dovetail with the ends of the skeptics in the slightest.

That’s why the big money is with those looking to establish a regime for emissions reduction. Now those thieves have certainly fallen out, and there are still some honorable types who want no handouts to big energy companies at all, but the money is certainly on that side of the aisle.

If genuinely skeptical groups have gotten as much as $790 million total worldwide for global warming efforts since 1989 – 1 percent of that devoted to climate science – I’d be extremely surprised. A tenth of that amount is more likely in the right ballpark. You can’t change that by lumping rent-seeking industries in with skeptics. Rent-seekers really do follow the money.

* Rent-seekers are also only too happy to exploit belief in the free market, arguing for free enterprise up until they can see a benefit from government restricting market entry, and so on.

Obama’s Anti-Science Czar

by Marc Scribner on July 14, 2009 · 1 comment

in Culture, Environment, Natural Resources, Odds & Ends, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Last week, Michelle Malkin posted on the disturbing past of Obama’s Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology–more popularly known as the “science czar”–John Holdren. The page Malkin links to containing  scans of a past publication is offline as of this writing, but I’ll re-post an excerpt from her site below:

In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;

• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;

• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;

• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Holdren has a long history of associating with Malthusian doomsayer Paul Ehrlich, and as Ehrlich’s “scholarly” co-author as recently as 1995. CEI Energy Policy Analyst William Yeatman chronicled Holdren’s history of alarmism and playing fast and loose with the facts back in January of this year. Included among Yeatman’s findings:

• Holdren’s fiction: In 1969, Holdren claimed: “If population control measures are
not initiated immediately and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear
will not fend off the misery to come.”
• Reality: Global population growth continued unabated and people today are
wealthier and healthier than they were in 1971.
• Holdren’s fiction: In 1973, Holdren encouraged a “decline in fertility to well
below replacement” in the United States, because “280 million in 2040 is likely to
be much too many.”
• Reality: Currently, the U.S. population is 304 million.

Holdren was also party to the wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich (on Ehrlich’s side, of course), which famously debunked Ehrlich’s dire predictions on resource depletion. So, the man President Obama selected as his primary science and technology advisor has consistently been proven wrong and is a protege of one of the biggest scientific fraudsters of the 20th century. Here’s to “Change we can believe in!”

ADDENDUM: CEI Fellow in Regulatory Studies Ryan Young examined Holdren’s peculiar brand of “science” late last year:

The most important part of the scientific method is its humility. At its very heart is the ability to admit that maybe, just possibly, you could be wrong. If that’s what the evidence shows, then it’s ok to admit it. If you (gasp) don’t know something, that’s ok, too. Instead of just making up an answer, you try to find it out.

The new political science is very different. It replaces humility with Certainty. A large part of the politicized scientist’s job is simply to disagree with the other party. It’s an effective way to raise funding. At least, it is when funding is allocated by political means.

Holdren displays all the hallmarks of The Certainty. For one, he accuses people who disagree with him as being operatives of the other party. Of course they’re wrong, just look at how they vote!

This is not a strong argument. Neither is his primary defense for his party’s preferred global warming policies – the argument from authority. Scientific consensus is on his side. Of course, there once was a time when scientific consensus said that the earth was flat, and the center of the universe. The world as it actually is matters more than merely what people think about it. Millions of people can be wrong, and often are.

Holdren’s hysterics are reminiscent of something the great Nobel economist Friedrich Hayek discussed in The Constitution of Liberty way back in 1960:

Ever since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have recognized that ‘the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow with the advance of science.’ Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by many scientists, that the range of our ignorance is steadily diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehensive and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom.

Gore Rebuffs Press, Admits Failure, Still Adored

by Iain Murray on November 11, 2008 · 2 comments

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming

Paul Krugman once accused me of Gore Derangement Syndrome. In response, I suggested that he and others suffered from Gore Blindness Syndrome. Here’s another example of that at work, where a reporter manages to write an adulatory piece about our former Vice President despite said paragon having completely rebuffed him when he asked him a question. As he indicates, Gore has made a habit recently of refusing to allow any interviews. Given that he’s the undoubted leader of a worldwide political movement, one would have thought that the press might be as annoyed about this as they were when another potential Vice President didn’t appear to be giving interviews.

Anyway, perhaps the most interesting thing about the event Mr Gore was attending was his admission of failure:

Mr. Gore said that he feared that his advocacy work, spearheaded by his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” has not done its job. “I feel, in a sense, I’ve failed badly,” he said. “Because even though there’s a greater sense of awareness, there is not anything anywhere close to an appropriate sense of urgency. This is an existential threat.”

It appears Mr Gore will not be content until we are all, every last one us, as completely dedicated to global warming mitigation as he is. Yet how is he to instill his required sense of urgency without resorting to shriller and shriller alarmism? His acolytes will almost certainly take up senior positions within the new Administration, but the nation is still likely to balk at the price tag of his solutions. The environmental movement was spending about $100 million on global warming before An Inconvenient Truth came along. With his vast resources – about $300 million, he suggested – and a probable increase in parallel efforts, plus foreign campaigns, it’s quite possible that the climate alarmists are spending half a billion dollars worldwide on the issue annually. Is it possible we’ll see that increase? And if that doesn’t work, what then? One thing’s for sure, Gore isn’t going away, except from reporters.