Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Wired, the people who are denying climate change are also denying the threat of Covid-19. But there is an important difference between Climate Change and Covid-19 which the author overlooks.
The Analogy Between Covid-19 and Climate Change Is Eerily Precise
First deny the problem, then say the solution is too expensive? The playbook here is all too familiar.
GILAD EDELMAN 03.25.2020 02:59 PM
FOR A BRIEF moment there, it looked as though the coronavirus pandemic might escape the muck of partisanship.
It’s true that President Donald Trump, wary of a recession during a reelection year, had first tried to talk the virus into submission. His counterfactual insistence that the situation was under control did nothing to slow the viral spread through February and early March. It did, however, seem to influence the party faithful, as polls showed Republican voters were taking the pandemic far less seriously than Democrats. In other words, the facts of Covid-19 were already politicized. As I suggested last week, it looked as though this process were unfolding just as it had for climate change—but at 1,000x speed.
Then Trump began to shift his message. Suddenly he seemed to grasp the need for drastic measures (while claiming that he’d never hinted otherwise). The White House started repeating the advice from public health experts: Social distancing would be necessary, maybe through the end of summer. In my last piece, I wondered if this new acceptance of reality might keep an epistemic crisis from developing. Perhaps Americans would coalesce into a common understanding of this public health disaster.
But coronavirus denialism wasn’t in remission; it was only mutating. After a weekend of reported clashes among economic and health officials in the White House, and a spate of skeptical op-eds musing on whether social distancing was really worth its economic cost, Trump laid out a new approach by presidential tweet: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.”
…
The parallel to climate change, in other words, was even tighter than I realized.
…
“The climate change issue has been transformed into a badge of who people think they are,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist and environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “So if you’re a good card-carrying Republican in the Midwest, then you’d better be against that climate change stuff. And if you’re a West Coast liberal, or you live in Boulder, like me, of course you support fighting climate change.” When scientific questions become political issues, he added, people’s beliefs become statements of identity. “To some extent we see that with the coronavirus.”
…
Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/the-analogy-between-covid-19-and-climate-change-is-eerily-precise/
The important difference between Climate Change and Covid-19 is there is evidence that Covid-19 is a problem.
Since the evidence about Covid-19 is incomplete, there is a lively debate over how serious the Covid-19 problem is. I make no secret that I’m personally alarmed about Chinese Coronavirus, but I understand people taking a more optimistic view, based on available evidence.
There is no evidence climate change in the next few centuries will be a serious problem. Even models don’t provide support for climate action; Calculations using the alarmist’s own models suggest climate action would do more harm than climate change (see the top of the page).
We cannot mount a robust response to every possible threat. Responding to threats is costly. Responding to a threat before we know if it is going to cause problems is a waste of precious resources. If we drain all our spare capacity responding to maybes, without clear evidence there is an actual problem, we won’t have anything left when a real threat manifests.
Responding to Covid-19 is reasonable, because Covid-19 is demonstrably causing serious problems. For example, hospitals in regions hit hard by Covid-19, like Elmhurst Hospital in New York, are running out of ventilators. New York is worried about running out of beds. Hospitals in hard hit regions in Europe are running out of beds and medical staff, as significant numbers of front line staff are forced to retreat and rest after becoming infected. These are major issues for severe Covid-19 victims, and for anyone else in affected regions who needs urgent medical attention.
Responding to climate change, in a complete absence of observational evidence that climate change is a problem, is a waste of resources. Consider the comedic failure by activists over the years to produce a genuine climate refugee. They’ve got nothing.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It’s all over weather worriers and doomsters as you’ve been trumped by Covid19-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/poland-says-virus-fallout-makes-it-tough-to-hit-eu-climate-goal/ar-BB11JHdK
The use of the term ‘denier’ appears to by symptomatic of infantile reasoning.
It really ought to be ignored with the contempt it deserves.
Regarding the MSM and Alarmists; it’s like being an alchemist.
You’re believing in BS and breathing in mercury vapors to prove it’s real.
Why don’t people get onboard and admit there’s serious geothermal denial.
http://phzoe.com/2020/02/13/measuring-geothermal-a-revolutionary-hypothesis/
This is one of the biggest scientific scandals of our time.
From my CRC Handbook numbers, the avg watts per sq meter that the earth can radiate is 0.08. Of course this an be higher in different locales, but that’s the average. IMHO that is not significant.
So what?
The CONDUCTIVE heat flux is irrelevant.
Please read:
http://phzoe.com/2019/12/04/the-case-of-two-different-fluxes/
http://phzoe.com/2020/02/20/two-theories-one-ideological-other-verified/
(videos included conclusively prove my thesis)
How long are you going to push this nonsense?
Nonsense! Says the silly geothermal denier.
Okay…NOW I get it!
Comic relief!
Bravo…well played!
New York’s rate of increase of Wuhan virus infections seems to be dropping.
Trying to conflate the Wuhan virus crisis with Human-caused climate change is just another indication that the alarmists are losing the argument. They are grasping at straws.
There was a big surge in testing as tests became available. Don’t assume that the rate of reported cases has any relationship to the actual rate of cases.
MarkW – Thank you. We started at 0 because that’s where you start when you are counting things. The increase in testing is the only reason for increase in the number of positive results. Besides that, many people (with serious symptoms) online have stated they were denied testing because they weren’t in the ‘at risk’ group. Health officials state it is because they have a limited supply of tests, but the real reason (and you know it is the real reason) is to artificially boost the recovered/death ratio. They cannot institute marshal law if the real numbers are reported.
This entire situation stinks, but it smells like Rem-oil at my house.
DP
Not everyone will get the “Rem-oil” reference. I’m a fan of RIG, if you can find it.
Unfortunately human nature’s Logical brain can’t cope when it is shown inconsistently to be full of assumptions, fallacies, appeal to authority of IPCC political re-writters of science conclusions, argument from Omnisicence & Confirmation Bias, so reverts to the motional brain of Ad Hominens & name calling like the Inquisition – it was the Alarmist movement that started the denier phrase (maybe to protect their jobs & scrutiny).
So if we join in the name calling for a bit of fun, then:
We are only ‘CO2 is the only variable in Climate Models, and outputs tweeked to say Earth is Toasting Deniers’, Alarmist are basically Reality Deniers.
Roger Pielke Jr must be overjoyed to find he is now back in the good graces of the Progressive Left.
(Just don’t tell John Holdren that Roger was let out of the dog house.)
By the way, it would be interesting to see the full context of Prof. Pielke’s quoted remarks.
Sometimes, there’s little to panic about but panic itself.
That’s not to deny that Covid 19 is a real and present danger although, personally, in my rural Australian shire, as of less than twenty hours ago there was not one known case and the same goes for most neighbouring local government areas. As for recent unemployment directly related to Covid 19 precautionary measures, there is already one case amongst my offspring and we have only one of working age. Our local supermarket shelves are also largely empty. Given that we have known for decades or even for a century that such a pandemic was possible, it is surprising how unprepared most Australians seem to be. However, given that we have collectively spent the last two decades panicking about a problem that doesn’t exist (AGW), perhaps I should not be surprised at all that the only real preparedness many Australians have shown is the willingness to panic.
Being skeptical of unicorns and being skeptical of horses is NOT the same there Gilad, sunshine. Your 15 minutes of climate fame are over- for that I’m happy.
I would appreciative thoughts by anyone here about the following video:
https://youtu.be/JnXzGB170GI
Ironic – I would suggest that the more pertinent point is that the same people making the attacks – unerringly, performing the same sort of scapegoating, stereotyping, demographic-targeting that made the Third Reich such a success.
Same people.
I bet it will be next time too.
May I posit an idea and not be eviscerated? I feel that many of the companies and institutions that are shutting down their operations are doing so for the sake of ‘virtue signaling’. I receive emails announcing another shut-down that begin “We *care* about you and our employees…”. Of course, what they really mean is “We care what you think about us…”.
If they cared about me they’d honor my right to make my own decisions about my risks. If they cared about their employees, they would let them continue gainful employment rather than forcing them to rely on Government checks.
In this regard these reactions are similar to what we see regarding climate change. Companies will green wash their reputations with some boilerplate about ‘fighting climate change’ just to signal they’re one of the ‘good guys’.
BTW I’m stuck at home now because my Laboratory only allows ‘essential’ personnel. ‘Essential’ includes the cleaning staff.
re: Mumbles McGuirck
I think your premise is wrong, that companies closed down for the purpose of virtue signaling. I work for a large organization (well over 100,000 employees) where about a third of its employees travel internationally by air or car everyday and/or every week. With the risk of being another artery by which the disease can spread, my employer– and many like it– weighed the risks and found it better to implement extreme social distancing. And, for some parts of the organization, it is a complete shut down.
As we learn more, hindsight may reveal that decisions to shutdown may have been overboard. For example, statistically, the disease is wreaking havoc on the more vulnerable of the population. We didn’t know that for sure three weeks ago. Now it is becoming clearer.
Let’s wait and see what happens before drawing conclusions.
Don’t discount the effect of liability concerns regarding such decisions.
Once public health authorities began issuing travel warnings and such, it became evident it would be impossible for any employer, venue owner, etc, to say they had no idea people might be in danger.
The actual risk matters less than the perception in such cases.
Also influencing such decisions was the overlap between the demographics of who is affected worst by this illness, and the demographics of ownership and upper level management.
The overlap is disproportionate, and hence so is the response.
“… polls showed Republican voters were taking the pandemic far less seriously than Democrats …”
While true, only a Democrat would write this line and try to attribute anything to it.
This is a human-to-human transmitted virus by proximity.
There are more Democrats in high density cities .. more Republicans in rural low density areas.
Anybody with half a brain would know without asking that more Democrats are going to die and they should take the pandemic more seriously.
Neo: Yeah, but it sounded too good to let the truth get in the way.
Remember when the left complained that shutting down China flights was xenophobic? Remember when the left said to worry more about the flu?
http://www.domigood.com/2020/03/comfortably-smug-compiles-dont-worry.html
Remember when those “denialists” at Fox were actually warning about this virus during the ridiculous Couppeachment?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Neo,
You said, “This is a human-to-human transmitted virus by proximity.” And, that is why NYC and northern Italy are experiencing such problems.
Climate Alarmism is like Anorexia Nervosa.
Both lead to starvation.
Impossible to see yourself in the mirror?
Walt…I was referring to alarmists and anorexia patients, not “you”.
Bridging the gap between the 2 gasoline consumption for week ending 3/20 is here no big drop https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/weekly/gasoline.php
Oh there’s a connection between global warming and pandemics alright, just not the one they want to admit. All of their preferred policies from dense urban living to mass transit to plastic bag bans DIRECTLY lead to the severity of this outbreak. Their religion of political correctness absolutely forbade them from admitting the truth of the origins of this plague and even demanded that they deliberately expose themselves during the Chinese New Year celebrations.
Time for all of the “smart” kids to drink a big glass of shut up and accept some reality.
Yes, Policies that also weakened economies to the point that the resultant recession inevitable as a result of co-vid will likely be the worst of the last two centuries.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/
This just in! You’ve been lied to!!! Looks like Michael Mann had a hand in the development of the COVID-19 computer model. Just sayin’.
Whose the ‘smart’ kid now?
*Who’s – I’m the SMRT kid now! Haha…
In case you missed it, the last two paragraphs are the only truth to that article. The computer model was wrong, they updated it, and boom, no more Coronapocalypse.
‘Round these parts, ya’ll know lots about faulty ‘puter models, right?
” If we drain all our spare capacity responding to maybes, without clear evidence there is an actual problem, we won’t have anything left when a real threat manifests.”
A valid warning but to late. Many jurisdictions already have a bare cupboard due to misguided climate action.
Speaking of Dems and denial, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer(D) of MI released a letter Mar24 via her Dept. of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs threatening “administrative action” against physicians, pharmacists, and other licensed health professionals who prescribe hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.
Repeat: MI doctors who prescribe HCQ for ChiCom virus and pharmacists who fill those prescriptions could lose their licenses.
An excellent response by Kathy Hoekstra was posted today in the Detroit News. See
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2020/03/26/opinion-michigans-doctors-fight-coronavirus-and-governors-office/2922272001/
The implications of Whitmer and her administration’s knee-jerk scare tactics should terrify all Michigan residents. Not only is our state’s top leader threatening the selfless health care workers who are on the frontline trying to save lives, but she’s denying possible life-saving medications to actual COVID-19 victims.