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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A self identified Libertarian who believes in “aggressive” carbon taxes thinks ordinary Republicans can be persuaded to embrace his ideas if the party leadership tell them what to do.
How the science of persuasion could change the politics of climate change
Conservatives have to make the case to conservatives, and a growing number of them are.
by James Temple April 16, 2018
Jerry Taylor believes he can change the minds of conservative climate skeptics. After all, he helped plant the doubts for many in the first place.
Taylor spent years as a professional climate denier at the Cato Institute, arguing against climate science, regulations, and treaties in op-eds, speeches, and media appearances. But his perspective slowly began to change around the turn of the century, driven by the arguments of several economists and legal scholars laying out the long-tail risks of global warming.
Now he’s president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian-leaning Washington, DC, think tank he founded in 2014. He and his colleagues there are trying to build support for the passage of an aggressive federal carbon tax, through discussions with Washington insiders, with a particular focus on Republican legislators and their staff.
…
Lesson 1: Pick the right targets
Political scientists consistently find that mass opinion doesn’t drive the policy debate so much as the other way around. Partisan divides emerge first among “elites,” including influential advocacy groups, high-profile commentators, and politicians, says Megan Mullin, an associate professor of environmental politics at Duke University.
They, in turn, set the terms of debate in the public mind, spreading the parties’ views through tested and refined sound bites in media appearances, editorials, social media, and other forums.
For the most part, people first align themselves with groups, often political parties, that appeal to them on the basis of their own experiences, demographics, and social networks. They then entrust the recognized leaders of their self-selected tribe to sort out the details of dense policy and science for them, while vigorously rejecting arguments that seem to oppose their ideologies—in part because such arguments also effectively attack their identity.
…
I suspect Jerry is over-estimating the influence of “elites” on their followers.
I doubt the Republican establishment was keen on President Trump winning the Republican nomination, but somehow he went and did it anyway.
The article itself cites an example of a green Republican who was successfully challenged in a primary by a Tea Party candidate.
Hillary Clinton was the Democrat establishment favourite by a wide margin. But on election day many registered Democrats did not vote for her, despite an expensive election campaign establishing her credentials as one of the Democrat elite.
In Australia and Britain establishment Conservatives have suffered a haemorrhage of support to minor parties like UKIP and One Nation, because their elites are trying to push voters in a direction many of them are unwilling to travel.
If there are no decent choices on offer, people sometimes hold their noses and vote for the least worst candidate. But history has repeatedly demonstrated how quickly support for “elites” can crumble if someone who faithfully articulates the concerns of ordinary people steps up.
“Climate Skeptics Think What Elites Tell Them to Think” — It is a poor quality statement. If some one believes global warming, come up to convince the educated through science but not from 1.5 to 4.5 with an average of 3 — 50% to 150%. You must show that it is 3 with plus or minus 5% or 10%. Then you are a great achiever on global warming. Otherwise it is better not make poor quality statements like Indian judges.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Dr, Reddy,
You are asking what is not currently possible. That doesn’t mean the science is weak, it means the subject is complex and scientists have enough integrity to avoid making precise projections that they can’t support. There is a large majority who support the idea that climate will be between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees, and that it will most like be in the middle. Some of the predictions have more support than others: Sea level is rising, and oceans are getting warmer and more acidic (lower pH). The Arctic is melting. Precipitation events are more intense (at least in the U.S.). There is a trend toward earlier spring. On it goes, but it makes no difference what the science predicts or finds if there is no trust in the integrity of the scientific community.
The question is, what would it take for conservative Americans to agree to policies that take into account the risk of climate change? What would it take for us to take responsibility as a nation? It seems that it has to be PROVED that the costs are great, and to prove that would mean waiting until it’s too late, since any disaster is met with the claim – no, the certainty – that it’s all part of natural variation, which is just as bad as being certain it’s all caused by humans. No science can “prove” that disaster will happen because science doesn’t seek to “prove.”
The first step “skeptics” can take toward seeking the truth is to recognize that conservatives were targeted by propaganda, and still are. That doesn’t mean that the left wasn’t, too, but it is either dishonest or ignorant to believe that CAGW skepticism is completely rational, free of bias, and unaffected by special interests.
“policies that take into account the risk of climate change” Climate changes, constantly. Humans are not causing it and can not stop it. Period. Full stop. The problem is warministas such as you have a vastly overblown opinion of your own importance in the grand scheme of things. Get over yourselves, get real jobs and do something of actual worth to your fellow man.
“There is a large majority who support the idea that climate will be between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees, and that it will most like be in the middle.”
Climate is measured in degrees? Your statement literally has no meaning.
Majority gives it credence?
“it means the subject is complex and scientists have enough integrity to avoid making precise projections that they can’t support.”
Then the decimal point is quite funny.
Faux complexity. A convenient alibi.
“Some of the predictions have more support than others: Sea level is rising, and oceans are getting warmer and more acidic (lower pH). The Arctic is melting. Precipitation events are more intense (at least in the U.S.). There is a trend toward earlier spring. On it goes, but it makes no difference what the science predicts or finds if there is no trust in the integrity of the scientific community. ”
A gross fabrication. SLR has been static for a hundred years. Oceans are not getting “more acidic.” Jeeeze, they aren’t even acidic. The arctic melts every spring.
“Precipitation events are more intense”
What does that even mean?
“There is a trend toward earlier spring.”
No, there’s not. Tony Heller documents how the U.S. is actually trending cooler.
You are entitled to your opinion, but not your own set of facts.
FIrst you have to demonstrate that there is a risk of climate change.
In the last 10000 years, the earth has been 3 to 5C warmer than it is today on several occasions, and there was no catastrophe. In fact life thrived. Yet today we have alarmists proclaiming that if temperatures go up even 2C, it will be a catastrophe from which we might never recover.
Yes, it does have to be proven that there is a problem before you instigate programs that impoverish billions and seek to restructure the entire world’s economy.
Maybe the key to understanding this dude is his referencing himself as a ‘professional climate change denier’. He was hired to shill for a position he did not personally understand, basically like a PR dude. Now that he’s doing his own thing he can let his own confused beliefs and assumptions about how real climate non-alarmists think continue to cloud his lack of logical thinking. Climate non-alarmists are certainly not deniers of the fact that climate changes. Quite the contrary. Climate alarmists seem to be aware that climate changes and have this delusion that if it was not for man we’d have a non-changing climate. These alarmists are the climate change deniers.
But, political science majors are all about how to sway people’s opinion, not the scientific method so no big surprises here.
PS, libertarian in favor of full control of the energy sector via massive carbon taxes at the federal level?????
yeah – right …..
+1
He sounds more like someone who truly believes whatever the people signing his paychecks tell him to believe. Cato is not sympathetic to the CAGW cause, so when he worked for Cato, he didn’t either.
He now works for a leftists group, so he’s now a full on CAGW warrior, and to prove his loyalty to his new masters, he’s going to attack everyone who once supported him.
His very statement that he was once paid to be a “climate denier” proves that he will say and do anything those who pay him, want.
MarkW,
“His very statement that he was once paid to be a “climate denier” proves that he will say and do anything those who pay him, want.”
If that’s true, then that means there are likely others that are paid “climate deniers” who will say whatever they are told to say, whether they believe it or not. There’s ample evidence that propaganda is not the tool of the left alone.
And yet you embrace it so readily!
How typical of Kristi. It doesn’t matter that the man admits to being a liar, if he says what she wants to hear, he must be right this time.
The very claim that he was paid to be a climate denier is merely the first lie he told.
As WC Fields said”We have already established WHAT you are, now we are merely dickering over price!”.
So. Many. Thoughts.
Libertarians are about as hands-off as you can get without going for anarchy. Only a “libertarian” would support/suggest a carbon tax.
I am pretty sure that the Cato Institute neither denies climate nor hires people to do so. I am not sure how one would “deny” climate at all. Indeed, I do not think that this is an appropriate noun-verb combination.
Interesting that the writer talks about “conservative climate skeptics”. One, I do not know anyone, conservative or otherwise, who is skeptical that climate exists (in the broad sense, interpretations are a different matter). Two, does he realize that he has just acknowledged that skepticism exists outside of conservatism?
TL, DR: These people are morons. The world is a little warmer, we have more plant food and as a result, more plants. Neither carbon nor carbon dioxide is a problem. And I came to those conclusions by looking at data, observations, and claims from different sides, not by listening to snobs with an overinflated sense of self importance.
So. He says he was lying before, but you should trust him now.
Right.
This is a perennial thing on the American political left, as they can’t believe that anyone who disagrees with them can possibly do so honestly.
The poor Libertarians got overrun in 2000 and 2001 anyway, so saying you’re a “Libertarian” doesn’t really mean anything anymore. You might be, or you might be a disaffected anti-war Liberal or a “paleocon” or leftover Ron Paul fan or any number of things, at this point.
Their last two national candidates were basically Democrats with the word Democrat scratched out and the word Republican written on, and then that word scratched out and the word Libertarian written on in crayon.
High taxes and heavy-handed regulation is about as Libertarian as and “anarchist” who does their demos with communists and call themselves “worker’s parties,” but that’s what we have to deal with as well. You’re lucky if words mean anything these days.
I see an acute case of projection.
Yup. Its the alarmists who think what the elites want them to think.
I am so reminded of Nigel Farage being asked from the floor “What he thought about Gay Marriage?”
“I don’t”
“Sorry, you don’t what?”
“Think about gay marriage. I have so many more pressing things on my mind.. I get 60+ letters a day. None are about gay marriage”
I dont think about climate change. I have studied such data as is available. Come to a conclusion. No need to think further until fresh evidence comes along.
Oh, yes. When someone (usually it’s a leftist) makes an accusation it often indicates an attempt at misdirection away from their own deeds and misbehavior. It’s one of their favorite tactics because they can always count on the moronstream media to amplify and endlessly regurgitate their blatherings.
PiperPaul,
You realize, don’t you, that you just made an accusation? You can always count on the people who comment here to endlessly regurgitate such blatherings. What’s the difference? You’re right and the others aren’t? So easy to say!
“You’re right and the others aren’t?”
Sounds like every post Kristi has ever made.
But it’s only wrong when other people do it.
Thanks, saved me a cut and paste.
How strange. He doesn’t believe the “climate scientists”; no Sir.
His beliefs are formulated by ” the arguments of several economists and legal scholars laying out the long-tail risks of global warming.”
…or maybe it should be “long-tail risks of global warming insanity.”
Good point lee, Jerry only thinks what he’s told to think by elites (in his case “several economists and legal scholars”) so he assumes skeptics are as incapable of thinking for themselves as he is.
It’s called projection, and it seems to be the only mental skill your average leftist has been able to master.
You beat me to posting it, lee.
I assume it means the economists and legal scholars showed him how he could make money at it!
The so-called elites wait for a parade to start forming and then rush to get in front of it.
Jerry Taylor thinks all it takes to change the mind of a skeptic is to send a bunch of hot air his way from the mouths of political elites. Maybe that’s because he, himself, changes his views based on which way the wind is blowing. He must think that everyone else is as much a slave to popular opinion as he is. Watch him change his mind again when the wind changes direction and climate-change zealots lose popularity when their end-of-the-world scare forecasts fail to materialize and become viewed as the snake-oil of modern con artists.
“Conservatives have to make the case to conservatives, and a growing number of them are.”
The Man Made Global Warming story was sold to the world by conservative Margaret Thatcher.
As another weapon in her long battle with the UK coal miners’ unions.
Later in life she would realize that it was the equivalent of using the Ring to defeat Sauron.
“driven by the arguments of several economists and legal scholars laying out the long-tail risks of global warming.”
So, he ‘changed sides’ not because of new climate data or new scientific data but because of people who decidedly aren’t climate scientists saying there was a risk. But if the data and science hadn’t changed then why would non-scientists claiming a risk based on science he hadn’t believed before be a valid reason to change now?
All the “climate skeptics” I know are contemptuous of elites, regardless a particular elitist’s political self-identification. Self-appointed elites fully embody the old punchline, “…when their lips are moving.”
Hear hear Shoki.
Their understanding and predictions about Skeptics mirrors their understanding and predictions about Climate.
Could be a description of how the CAGW movement actually got going. The science of persuasion was used to convince Greens that CAGW is a green politics issue. In fact it has little in common with other green issues such as stopping whaling or replanting forests. Issues which I, incidentally, support.
The clever part is, it’s been done in such a way that the Greens have failed to spot that this movement is nothing to do with being green, that it won’t protect nature, and that some of its consequences will cause more damage to the natural world than fossil fuel extraction.
At least Patrick Moore got this one right; pity no-one at Greenpeace would listen to him.
If elites are so keen they can voluntarily contribute to a fund to address their concerns. I doubt many of them will bother.
Been an operational meteorologist since 1982 using the effects of weather to predict demand for natural gas and supply/ production for crops and how that will get dialed into prices in the futures markets.
It would be ludicrous to suggest that I use anything that contradicts my observations and analysis………as a skeptiic of catastrophic climate change and an observer of the best weather, climate and CO2 levels over the past 4 decades for most life……since at least the Medieval,Warm Period, 1,000 years ago.
This is a simple case of mirror imaging. Believers in catastrophic man made climate change do so because they have been told by the elites that the science is settled and they are too stupid to check the science. So they assume that sceptics are just listening to different elites. In fact sceptics have actually looked that the science and the alarmists unbroken record of failed predictions.
If, what he believes to be his betters, told him to shoot himself in the foot then go jump off a bridge, I guess Jerry Taylor would do it!
I’m a sceptic. If I was persuaded by the elites; politicians form all parties; the mass media, particularly the BBC; heads of organisations such as the Royal Society and almost all celebrities; then I would be a warmist.
The word itself, sceptic, means you don’t believe everything you are told by authority.
Pop-psychologists strikes again, and the root cause ever time is the same.
The total inability to accept that others can, fairly and with good reason, hold a different view on the same subject. Hence the need to create a ‘evil authority ‘ that stops these people agreeing without question with them.
The irony is that it is because they are practicing the scientific method that they do so, not because they are ‘anti-science’ as claimed. That idea belongs with those claiming ‘settled science’ whose leaders cannot be questioned in their authority ,which owns far more to religions position based on unquestioning faith, than one based on ‘take no body’s word for it ‘
So really this guy has a weak set of principles. Anyone who can look at the state of climate data and the massive uncertainties in it and think it is useful for any action is someone fooling themselves.
The biggest bait and switch is the use of the CLT on data that cannot be defined as having identically distributed samples. You have to assume it does. Which crosses you into Looking Glass territory.
Sadly academically minded people don’t want to admit this as it means they’ve spent many years and invested much time in a hypothetical fruitless pursuit.
Even Sheldon Cooper worked that out when he gave up String Theory.
Idiotic premise.
Conservatives and Republicans do NOT blindly accept or fall in line with what Washington Elite’s tell them to. That is blind, inside the beltway wishful thinking.
If indeed, the premise were true, Trump would not be President.
Since the premise is blatantly false, the rest of his argument is irrelevant.
Liberals are more likely to follow the herd than conservatives. They rank much higher on the social desirability scale.
Conservatives are less likely to follow ‘elites’ than are liberals.
First, I damn authoritarian credentialists whatever their political stripe, beit black, white, red, blue, pinko, green or yellow. If they will label themselves elite, or scientist, or tyrant, that makes it so much easier to dismiss their senile, anile incontinent dribble.
So they have a new cunning plan to get their way. A cunning plan which will work where all other cunning plans before have failed? I have my doubts.
It is sometimes said that the best plan is usually to go with honesty and the truth. But that is a problem, I guess, if it conflicts with long term goals.
What really matters is, “is significant man made global warming happening or not?”. It is not clear to me what a legal scholar can bring to this debate.