Josh Live-tooned the talk at the GWPF recently by Roger Pielke Jr.
cartoonsbyjosh.com
Roger Pielke Jr.: Manichean paranoia has poisoned the climate debate
The talk is posted on Twitter, follow this thread:
https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/888327863858069504
Summary:
By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Why have there been such meager results from the three decades-long campaign for public policy action in America to fight climate change? Professor Roger Pielke Jr. explains how activists on both sides brought Manichean paranoia to the debate, poisoning it. The results might have historic painful effects. He shows how we can fix the debate, if we try.
“Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
— Attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson.
The movement for massive US public policy action to fight climate change began (as an arbitrary date) with the testimony of James Hansen on 23 June 1988 in a sweltering (due to careful preparation) Senate conference room. During the following 29 years vast sums were spent to build public support for such measures. Academia, the news media, NGOs, and government agencies provided full spectrum support, laying down a barrage of propaganda — ranging from scholarly and compelling to outlandish or even horrific (see 40 posts with more examples).
Now it has come to a standstill, having accomplished little. The Republicans running Washington want to roll back what little has been done. The majority of the public ranks climate change low on the list of public policy concerns. As a public police concern, the environment was ranked #12 in a 2014 survey. Climate was #14 in a 2014 survey. Climate was rated in a 2016 survey as “below average in importance” by people in both parties.
Why? Climate scientists made major tactical errors. But worse was how activists on both sides poisoned the debate. In this presentation Professor Roger Pielke Jr. describes the result as Manichean Paranoia. He suggests some simple steps America can take to fix and restart the debate. Let’s listen to him. After the presentation are some likely results if we fail to do so.
This presentation posted with his generous permission.
About the Paranoid Style of American Politics
“Paranoia has a long history in the American polity. American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. … I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. … It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.”
— “The Paranoid Style in American Politics“ by Richard Hofstadter in Harper’s Magazine, November 1964.
From the publisher… “Historian Richard Hofstadter’s book offers a valuable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs. He investigates the politics of the irrational, showing how fringe groups can influence — and even derail — the agendas of a political party.”
Conclusions
“We don’t even plan for the past.”
— Steven Mosher (member of Berkeley Earth; bio here), a comment posted at Climate Etc.
The political gridlock on a public policy response to climate change has prevented the most obvious and easy first step — preparing for the almost inevitable repeat of past extreme weather. Events like superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina were warnings, showing our mad lack of preparation for likely weather events. Unless we change soon, we will pay dearly for our folly.
As for climate change — irrespective of the politics, the climate will eventually decide who was correct in the climate policy wars.
About the author
Roger Pielke, Jr. is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the U of CO-Boulder. He was Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. He is now Director of the Sports Governance Center in the Dept of Athletics. Before joining the faculty of the U of CO, from 1993-2001 he was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
His research focuses on science, innovation and politics. He holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science from the University of Colorado. In 2006 he received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America.
His research focuses on science, innovation and politics. He holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science from the University of Colorado. In 2006 he received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America.
His page at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research has his bio, CV, and links to some of his publications. His website has links to his works, and essays about the many subjects on which he works.
He is also author, co-author or co-editor of seven books, including The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics
Some of his recent publications.
- “Catastrophes of the 21st Century” at Aon Benfield Australia.
- “Tracking Climate Progress: A Guide for Policymakers and the Informed Public” in the IEEJ Energy Journal.
- “My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic” in the Wall Street Journal.
- “The Truthiness about Hurricane Catastrophe Models” with J. Weinkle in Science, Technology & Human Values.
- An example of climate activists at work that shows why they lost. His presentation at the University of Florida, 17 March 2017.
For More Information
For more information see The keys to understanding climate change and My posts about climate change, and especially these …
- Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.
- A status report on global warming. Much depends on the next few years.
- Good news for the New Year! Salon explains that the global climate emergency is over.
- A story of the climate change debate. How it ran; why it failed.
To learn more about the state of climate change, see Pielke’s book The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change
Caught this dude on C-SPAN yesterday:
GAR ALPEROVITZ: Well, that’s what’s interesting. Because if you use the common techniques - they call it quantitative easing - if you use those techniques, you could create sufficient funds, essentially, to buy out the oil companies and nationalize them. And to create that kind of a fund, and get them out of the way politically, for doing what has to be done on climate change,urgently.
Because they are the major blocking power that’s stopped us from doing all the solar insulation, and doing all the solar development, wind development, insulation in general. There’s a whole series of things we know ought to be done — and stopping using fossil fuels.
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:18959:Time-to-Buy-Out-Fossil-Fuel-Corporations—Gar-Alperovitz-on-Reality-Asserts-Itself-%2812%29
It looks very clear. Dr. Pielke Jr. has three “yes” answers to the three main questions which divide both sides in the debate.
1. Is there a problem with CO2 and the climate?
2. Can we solve the problem?
3. Is the solution better than having the problem?
His three “yeses” make him a clear and undoubtedly climate alarmist. He may be quite more civilized than the mean climate alarmist. He may be much more politically intelligent. Or he may be more sincere — and is not using the climate alarm for other purposes. It doesn’t matter he is the improbable nice climate alarmist, he is in the climate alarmists side non the less.
Which is not bad per se, but necessarily his problems cannot be the problems of non-alarmists. So, I think he is not talking to most folks here, nor addressing any of their problems. Basically a waste of time.
There is no midway between thinking “evidence” is a consensus (opinion), or some fancy models, and thinking in the old classical way.
If the answer for 2. is YES then the answer to 1. must be NO. I fear the issue is that the actual answer to 3. is NO and it is quite obvious why. It requires the enslavement and impoverishment of vast numbers of people. It is clear that these people (in the third world) , from their actions, do not accept Yes as the answer to 1. They can see the outcome offered to them and (rightly) assume that the outcome betrays the intent and are acting accordingly. The “Paris Accord” clearly shows the soundness of their perception.
If you’re going to call Roger Pielke a climate alarmist then you have to apply the same label to lukewarmers like Judith Curry and that is clearly absurd. If you don’t think adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming, then that puts you out on the “denier” place on the spectrum.
We’re getting carried away with hubris here, and where is the hubris coming from? Is it Trump’s election? We’re declaring people like Roger Pielke the enemy because he’s willing to look at skeptics and declare that their behavior hasn’t been perfect. Do people here really think skeptics have been above reproach and have no moral or scientific weaknesses? If you do you’re creating a fantasy world equivalent to looking down the rabbit hole.
Trump’s election is indeed an encouraging sign for skeptics, but the problem is that Donald Trump, a wild card of the first magnitude, may become an alarmist himself if he concludes that it’s good for his real estate empire. Also Trump probably won’t be around very long. Either he’ll get bored and move to Mar-A-Lago with Ivanka, Jared and the rest of his functionaries who can cowtow to his ego without stirring up the fake news press, or he’ll lose the next election assuming the Democrats can produce a candidate with at least one eye and half a brain. We can hope that he/she will have a skeptical thought in his/her head.
So what are other sources of skeptical hubris? Is it the “manufactured science” of the IPCC? That would be a possibility if you ignore the solid majority of scientists that agree with it – never mind the “97%”. The truth of the matter is that the consensus view is the majority view – albeit with some major flaws and uncertainties that smart skeptics have identified. Time and additional evidence will tell who is right. We’re going nowhere if we think we’re winning the war or think that the other side will just give up.
Skeptics need to act like a strong minority who works hard to pick up allies and hammers away at evidence that buttresses the skeptic view. We don’t do that by belittling allies and true skeptics like Roger Pielke. We need to act like a strong minority with the confidence that we’ll eventually prevail if the truth is pursued.
I watched Pielke’s talk & much of the Q&A . Must comment Josh proves Roger’s example that most people don’t know how a toilet works .