Not sure what's going on over there in conservative brains. First, it's Ross Douthat pleading for "complexity" in film and literature instead of a simplistic good v evil dichotomy, and now it's Red State's Vladimir nihilistic sophistry on climate change:
One thing a scientist must know is how ignorant we are about a lot of things; otherwise, we don't need scientists to discover new stuff. But the remark points to a naive hubris that is pretty pervasive among a "consensus" in the scientific world.
Just fifty years ago, the few believers in "continental drift" were derided by the geologic establishment as kooks on the fringe of science (if not worse). But evidence accumulated, and the theory, repackaged in the '60s and '70s as plate tectonics, is now recognized as the grand unifying theory of earth science.
So-called "Progressives" have a tendency to evaluate everything in life as if it were a deterministic, zero sum game. What goes up, must come down. In with the good, out with the bad. What goes around, comes around. Input X necessarily results in Output Y.
But real life systems don't often obey these rules; they tend toward chaos and often lead to counterintuitive conclusions. In business, they often create examples of The Law of Unintended Consequences.
The Laffer Curve is a perfect example. To a "Progressive", if you want the government to have more tax revenue, you raise tax rates. Cutting tax rates only benefits "the rich".
But the real world is governed by the chaotic rules of economics and personal choices. Arthur Laffer made the simple observation that if tax rates are zero, tax revenue is zero. If tax rates are 100%, tax revenue is also zero. Somewhere in between is a maximum, and tax rates above that optimum rate actually result in less tax revenue.
Businessmen don't need to have this concept explained, so they tend to be conservatives. Academics, trade unionists and Hollywood types will never get it, so they become "Progressives".
Pretty funny stuff, eh? Of course, the plate tectonics idea is a good example - only it's the Vladimirs of the world who are the left-behind skeptics decrying climate change as kook-ish. As for calling progressives "deterministic" and implying they're simplistic? Bad maneuver using to the Laffer curve as evidence, that over-simplistic and crudely deterministic bow hastily scrawled onto a napkin in a 1974 political meeting and ever since used to support the most simplistic conservative tax-cut rhetoric, that raising taxes invariably leads to lower government revenue, and cutting taxes leads to greater revenue. (Both are canards divorced from the reality of the actual, complex marketplace.)
All this complex thinkin' leads Vladimir to this post: "The Unbearable Complexity of Climate," whose basic premise is that the climate is very complex and we don't understand it completely; therefore, it's possible climate change may not be happening, and, therefore, doesn't need to be addressed. Follow this line of reasoning to its ultimate, late-night-smoking-pot-at-college conclusion, and nothing is worth doing or believing because, ultimately, no system or object is capable of being understood completely. Not climate change, not the existence of your friends, and certainly not the Laffer Curve's efficacy (or lack thereof) for predicting tax revenues.
Why get out of bed in the morning when your alarm goes off, when there's a chance all life on the planet will be obliterated during your morning commute by a wayward asteroid?
If the climate is as all-unknowable as Eschenbach claims, then there's a chance that climate change is happening...right? And do you, in good faith, knowing that there's a chance - what with the unknowable-ness of climate - that climate change will make the Earth uninhabitable for humans, do you in good faith sit by, or worse, actively obstruct any measures that might mitigate the possibility of ecological disaster?
That, of course, is countering the argument with their own brand of sophism. In reality, climate scientists do have more than a passing familiarity of climate science, and there is actual evidence of climate change accompanying varying carbon dioxide rates. And we should probably form policy around the evidence at hand.
But just as Ross Douthat isn't really pleading for more complex movies about war, neither are these folks concerned about shades of gray in scientific discourse. They're all engaging in sophistry to obscure facts that are politically unpalatable to them. A climate change "skeptic" represents a political position, not a scientific one. Such a "skeptic" doesn't question climate change, he rejects it out of hand, and opposes any political solution to reduce carbon emissions. Not because there's a good reason to, but because it happens to stake out a position defined by political allies.
And to what end, is the question? To defend the interests of Big Oil? |
