Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. explains why some leftist bloggers set themselves up for failure when they espouse their intellectual superiority. Screaming “hell, high water, global boiling, climate disruption, etc ” while at the same time saying “you’re too dumb to understand it” looks to be an epic “failure to communicate”.
He writes:
If you spend anytime at all perusing the blogosphere, you will find a common theme coming from self-described liberal or progressive bloggers, and that is that those on the political right are ignoramuses.
The argument is that they are just too stupid to know what’s what – they are even anti-science, rejecting knowledge itself — and consequently they support dumb candidates advocating ignorant policies. Such arguments are particularly evident in the corner of the blogosphere that discusses the climate change issue. This line of argument of course is a variant of the thinking that if only people shared a common understanding of scientific facts they would also share a common political orientation (typically the political orientation of whomever is expressing these views).
Read his whole post here where he explains why.
Or buy his book:
The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming is now available at Amazon.com
Why has the world been unable to address global warming? Science policy expert Roger Pielke, Jr., says it’s not the fault of those who reject the Kyoto Protocol, but those who support it, and the magical thinking that the agreement represents.
In The Climate Fix, Pielke offers a way to repair climate policy, shifting the debate away from meaningless targets and toward a revolution in how the world’s economy is powered, while de-fanging the venomous politics surrounding the crisis. The debate on global warming has lost none of its power to polarize and provoke in a haze of partisan vitriol. The Climate Fix will bring something new to the discussions: a commonsense perspective and practical actions better than any offered so far.
Editorial Reviews via Amazon
From Publishers Weekly
Pielke (The Honest Broker) presents a smart and hard-nosed analysis of the politics and science of climate change and proposes a commonsense approach to climate policy. According to Pielke, the iron law of climate policy dictates that whenever environmental and economic objectives are placed in opposition to each other, economics always wins. Climate policies must be made compatible with economic growth as a precondition for their success, he writes, and because the world will need more energy in the future, an oblique approach supporting causes, such as developing affordable alternative energy sources rather than consequences, such as controversial schemes like cap-and-trade, is more likely to succeed.
Although some may protest on principle the suggestion that we accept the inevitability of energy growth, Pielke’s focus on adaptation to climate change refreshingly sidesteps the unending debate over the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and opens up the possibility for effective action that places human dignity and democratic ideals at the center of climate policies.
The book is available at Amazon.com and I think it is destined to be a best seller in the “Global Warming” category.
The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming is now available at <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Fix-Scientists-Politicians-Warming/dp/0465020526/&tag=wattsupwithth-20″ target=”_blank”>Amazon.com</a><!–more–>
Why has the world been unable to address global warming? Science policy expert Roger Pielke, Jr., says it’s not the fault of those who reject the Kyoto Protocol, but those who support it, and the magical thinking that the agreement represents.
In <em>The Climate Fix</em>, Pielke offers a way to repair climate policy, shifting the debate away from meaningless targets and toward a revolution in how the world’s economy is powered, while de-fanging the venomous politics surrounding the crisis. The debate on global warming has lost none of its power to polarize and provoke in a haze of partisan vitriol. <em>The Climate Fix</em> will bring something new to the discussions: a commonsense perspective and practical actions better than any offered so far.
Editorial Reviews via Amazon
From Publishers Weekly
Pielke (The Honest Broker) presents a smart and hard-nosed analysis of the politics and science of climate change and proposes a commonsense approach to climate policy. According to Pielke, the iron law of climate policy dictates that whenever environmental and economic objectives are placed in opposition to each other, economics always wins. Climate policies must be made compatible with economic growth as a precondition for their success, he writes, and because the world will need more energy in the future, an oblique approach supporting causes, such as developing affordable alternative energy sources rather than consequences, such as controversial schemes like cap-and-trade, is more likely to succeed.
Although some may protest on principle the suggestion that we accept the inevitability of energy growth, Pielke’s focus on adaptation to climate change refreshingly sidesteps the unending debate over the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and opens up the possibility for effective action that places human dignity and democratic ideals at the center of climate policies.
The book is available at <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Fix-Scientists-Politicians-Warming/dp/0465020526/&tag=wattsupwithth-20″ target=”_blank”>Amazon.com</a> and I think it is destined to be a best seller in the “Global Warming” cate
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Actually those on the extreme left often ascribe more sinister motivations: that those who don’t believe are “evil”. For example, I read recently that deniers are “out to destroy the planet”. Silly claim to be sure.
At this point I do not care what the bloggers espousing CAGW have to say.
I am personally working the political front to kill AB32 in Calif and the US EPA’s endangerment finding on CO2. Killing these for the next 5 to 10 yrs should do it.
It feels real strange as one who considers himself as liberal voting a straight Republican ticket for the first time.
The congressional hearing on the subject that will be held next year should be interesting as the Republicans look to take over the House. Power of the purse will also go a long way to stop most of the foolishness.
Elitism, pure and simple. “We’re smarter than the unwashed masses”.
Perhaps high intelligence and educational achievement don’t always translate into being right.
In any case, I always been amused by people who view themselves as members of an elite class (the intelligentsia) espouse unending support for democracy… except when the masses disagree with them.
good Lord
They’ve made fools out of themselves and it’s our fault………..
And people on the Right don’t say folks on the Left are Stupid?
I think the truth is most people who think AGW is real don’t understand the science and most people who don’t believe AGE is real don’t understand the science. How many people got A’s in science? It is the same with evolution or even ghosts. For most people it boils down to which sources of information do they trust. Liberals are more likely to believe in ghosts (1). Conservatives are more likely to reject evolution (2).
(1) http://www.gallup.com/poll/17275/OneThird-Americans-Believe-Dearly-May-Departed.aspx
(2) http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx
In the early 1900’s it was liberals who rejected evolution because they confused it with Social Darwinism. Now conservatives reject climatology because they think – wrongly – that it threatens the free market system. Once you’ve decided what you want believe it is easy enough to find and string together bits of evidence that support that belief. Hopefully as people’s economic fears wane they put a little more thought into their longer term interests.
The phenom even has a name: The Dunning-Kruger Effect
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.[2]“
And I’m sorry, I have to quote wackipedia as a source… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
What’s the evidence, apart from Pielke’s own political prejudices, to support assertions that accusations of ignorance and stupidity come more frequently from “self-described liberal or progressive bloggers?”
We’ve seen many, many such accusations on this blog, for instance.
@Paul Coppin, it fits Barrie Harrop like a pair of pants on your local corner streetwalker.
And i thought leftism is caused by DRD4.
>>The argument is that they are just too stupid to know what’s what
Yes, it’s because 50% of the population are below average intelligence. (Median is about equal to mean for IQ). It explains why more people believe in alien abduction than AGW.
Gneiss,
If you were not being so busy being an “elitist” you could have read the source;
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications/p20/2008/Table%2005-1.xls, that Roger provided.
[Trimmed, Robt]
Thomas Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions” is the last word, I think, on explaining the Leftist mindset. I’ve read most of it twice.
It’s one thing to believe an activist, and quite another to believe an activist and to jump off a cliff because he asks you to do so. Amazing how many are prepared to so just that.
If you’ve ever served on a jury you’ll know that a college degree isn’t a vaccination against foolishness, and that many people without such qualifications are shrewd and sensible and often a very good judge of character. People without a college education may not know enough to judge the science accurately. But they know enough to judge the character of the scientists who are telling them these things. They are going to be asking themselves – “Do I trust these people”? That is why climategate was so damaging to the AGW crowd.
To those such as Obama, Clinton, and Kerry who have now sequentially offered only that people oppose their initiatives because such people are unable to analyze fact and science, there is perhaps only one fitting response: “Polly want a cracker?”
I tend to agree that those with college degrees tend to be more Marxist then those without, just like those who sunbath tend to be darker then those who do not. Universities are primarily focused on Marxist indoctrination. They have developed the most sophisticated brainwashing system ever conceived. It is not a surprise that they are largely successful.
Many of the most aware, intelligent and sucessful people I know personally and many whom I have read about; (Thomas Edison, being one well known example of someone who refused to be institutionalized and thus was written off as an idiot) have not gone to college. Many budding writers who persure an undergraduate degree are warned not to go to Graduate School because it will destroy their talent. Institutions have long been the great brain adjusters to whatever the Status Quo is at the time. Some highly brilliant people also have a well tuned BS early warning system and thus escape it all and go on to move the World ahead a little notch further along than it was before.
I have yet to see any real facts to support AGW, Ive seen a lot of lies and corrupt data, Ive seem a whole lot of own goals on their side and a lot of nazi tactics, the real big thing is the elites cure for all pollution?? send it and all production to India and especially China, what a corrupt crock of shit. I do not have a degree but I have a good education from the 1960s, before the socialists infected the schools in England and if you ignore the political bullshit it is not hard to see what is going on, the left are elitists as are communists that is why they have seized global warming and made a holy grail out of it. Well done to them, they have ruined the economy of the USA and the EU, corrupted the banking system and enabled horrific pollution in China and India while destroying enviromentaly reasonable manufacture in the west. You do not have to look far to see the plan short term long term I cannot say, perhaps I would need to be as mad as them to understand their long term ideas! One good thing is if we get in to a position to prune the parasites working for government they have come out of the woodwork and made themselves known, the public servants can be sacked for corruption, no pay off and no hope of a job in local or national gov, scientists who have dishonored science should be stripped of all qualifications and banned from professional bodies and dismissed in disgrace, and heavily fined for their dishonesty. Everyone who bought in to the AGE/CO2 scam should be disgraced, any in office should be publicaly disgraced and banned from office again.
That would be a good start.
If the warmists are so smart, why do they think people have to be told how to think?
When I was still in uniform, wearing the Queen’s Crown on my cap-badge I had a bit of a run-in with an officer of a very much higher rank than mine.
He said to me that I should not give his first name as well as his surname when I introduced him to my wife; “Superior Officers should not be introduced in such a fashion.”
My reply was, “With all due respect sir, this organisation has many officers senior to me but none superior.”
I feel exactly the same way about politicians, scientists and anyone else who tries to assume a “superior” position.
I have a Master’s degree, earned in the early 70s when I had to work hard for the qualification. The last seven years of purgatory of living in the UK has formed my political opinions such that I now make Genghis Khan look like a pinko-liberal wimp! I refuse to accept assertions made by those “in authority”, my experience to date leads me to believe that I should discard any such assertions as being manifestly wrong simply because of their source.
I have sought what I consider to be hard evidence about the climate, about the economy and about the judicial system as these matters affect the citizens of this benighted Realm. The government is wrong about climate change/adjustments/disruption or whatever it is called now: it is equally completely out of touch with matters economic and judicial (our solution to prison overcrowding? Close 3000 prison places!) I am now convinced, nay, certain that the government of this country is simply perpetuating the lies of its avowedly Socialist predecessor.
We in the UK are ruled by the EUSSR, our own government is but an expensive frippery, sans power, sans courage, sans meaning.
All that I am certain of now is that it is all going to end in a frightful mess.
I sincerely hope that the USA can avoid the pitfalls of which we in the UK are providing all-too-clear an example.
My observation has been that people who accuse others of stupidity on this blog are overwhelmingly from the AGW camp . If they get it thrown back in their faces , then so be it . BTW , I’ve also noticed that the most strident proponents of their own intellect are the least likely to back their assertions with facts .
” Now conservatives reject climatology because they think – wrongly – that it threatens the free market system”
If it doesn’t threaten a true free market economy, then what’s all this voting and political discussion about?
…
Didn’t think so.
re: Thomas Sowell – I also recommend The Vision of the Annointed. It’s a brilliant book, and there’s a lot of stuff relevent to the present hysteria over global warming. In fact, Sowell’s 4-phase schema regarding liberal initiatives fits the AGW episode very well. The difference between this and the earlier disasterous efforts that he recounts is that in this case the suggested remedies to this (non-existent) problem are so draconian, that the whole process is now stalled in Phase 2. (Nonetheless, it’s perfectly obvious that had the liberal-left been successful in enacting their programs for addressing the ‘menace’ of AGW, Phases 3 and 4 would have followed Sowell’s scheme perfectly.)
Gneiss
October 31, 2010 at 1:14 pm
What’s the evidence, apart from Pielke’s own political prejudices, to support assertions that accusations of ignorance and stupidity come more frequently from “self-described liberal or progressive bloggers?”
We’ve seen many, many such accusations on this blog, for instance.
##
What are you talking about? I think I am the only one that regularly denigrates greenies here. And I don’t call you guys stupid or ignorant. I usually point out that you are cognitively dysfunctional. Which, BTW, your post clearly demonstrates.
Not having a college degree is not a big impediment to voting for elitists.
That’s what unions and ACORN are for.