Essay by Eric Worrall
The New Yorker claims big oil money started the US partisan climate policy split. But there is a better explanation.
How Did Fighting Climate Change Become a Partisan Issue?
Twenty years ago, Senator John McCain tried to spearhead an effort. What has happened to Republicans since then?
By Elizabeth Kolbert
August 14, 2022…
As a problem, climate change is as bipartisan as it gets: it will have equally devastating effects in red states as in blue. Last week, even as Kentucky’s two Republican senators—Rand Paul and the Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell—were voting against the I.R.A., rescuers in their state were searching for the victims of catastrophic floods caused by climate-change-supercharged rain. Meanwhile, most of Texas, whose two G.O.P. senators—Ted Cruz and John Cornyn—also voted against the bill, was suffering under “extreme” or “exceptional” drought.
How did caring about a drowned or desiccated future come to be a partisan issue? Perhaps the simplest answer is money. A report put out two years ago by the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis noted, “In the 2000s, several bipartisan climate bills were circulating in the Senate.” Then, in 2010, the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United decision, ruled that corporations and wealthy donors could, effectively, pour unlimited amounts of cash into electioneering. Fossil-fuel companies quickly figured out how to funnel money through front groups, which used it to reward the industry’s friends and to punish its enemies. After Citizens United, according to the report, “bipartisan activity on comprehensive climate legislation collapsed.”
Even money, though, seems an insufficient explanation. The G.O.P.’s opposition to action on climate change has transcended crass calculation to become an article of faith. …
…
Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/how-did-fighting-climate-change-become-a-partisan-issue
Money is most definitely an “insufficient explanation”, because for a long time there has been a great deal of money flowing from renewable actors to politicians, at least since President Carter installed solar panels on the White House in 1979. Supporting climate action is not exactly the political route to poverty. Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul, who allegedly has significant interests in Asian Lithium mines, is currently facing accusations of making money by leveraging his mother’s political position.
So what is the real explanation for the split between Democrats and Republicans over climate policy?
My personal favourite explanation is that Lord Monckton caused the split, by convincing Republicans that the climate movement is a Trojan Horse for communists and world government proponents. Monckton impressed the Republicans so much, they asked him to appear before the Congressional Energy and Environment Subcommittee in 2009.
Monckton was special advisor to Margaret Thatcher‘s UK Conservative Government between 1982 – 1986, and had a ringside seat during the period Thatcher raised the climate movement into an international priority, by speaking about the alleged climate threat on the world stage. Some have speculated Thatcher advanced the climate cause because she needed a political weapon to beat militant coal unions into submission, but few remember Thatcher was a qualified scientist. Thatcher’s graduate Chemistry dissertation was on X-Ray crystallography. She may have been genuinely concerned about CO2 emissions and global warming.
According to Monckton, the climate movement Thatcher championed subsequently morphed into a new home for anti-capitalists and the radical left.
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, showed up in the climate movement in 1993, when he founded Green Cross International, following the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
I don’t know what influence Gorbachev had over the apparent transformation of the green movement, but as Soviet leader, Gorbachev was no friend of Capitalism. Gorbachev rejected Capitalism, even after it was obvious Deng Xiaoping’s limited but genuine Capitalist reforms were successfully reviving the Chinese Communist economy.
There are plenty of open anti-capitalists in today’s green movement.
Famous author Terry Pratchett once explained “in the bathtub of history, the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find“. Any explanation of that complex time is riddled with assumptions, gaps and interpretations, including mine.
I’d love to read reader’s theories of how the split happened. I was very young when some of these events occurred, so I didn’t learn about most of these events until long after they happened. Maybe some of you were present in person when Lord Monckton presented his views to US Republicans.
Update (EW): h/t Chris Hanley – Transcript containing Lord Monckton’s presentation to Congress in 2009.
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We’ve had 10 years to save the Earth from Catastrophe for the past 50 years. It’s my understanding that the UN, a la Maurice Strong, brought it up as early as 1972. It’s been a socialist/communist movement for a long time.
And Ms. Kolbert has been mistaking weather for climate and misusing statistics since at least 1999.
I think it’s actually been 10 years to extinction for over 100 years. One cause or another.
The Democrats have been very influenced by the Left since 1972, when the McGovern “reforms” removed most of the pragmatists from any real power.
Environmentalism is somewhat more plausible than Marxism, and had some support from Nixon. Laundering money through a “good cause” is an old scam, and the greens are still at it.
The amount of Federal funding going to “renewables” dwarfs any industry funding of the opposition.
There is no industry funding of the opposition. What little money there is, comes almost entirely from personal donations.
There are several things to consider here. First who wrote the article in the New Yorker? Elizabeth Kolbert. Is Elizabeth a concerned citizen, an innocent bystander evaluating and reporting on Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming in an effort to inform the public on the merits of each side’s arguments, pros and cons? Not on your life, she has a horse in this race and I would say is married to the global catastrophe argument. If you want balanced information presenting both sides Elizabeth should not be your source.
Second Elizabeth doesn’t even consider that there is sound, scientific and reasonable evidence most of the action Elizabeth and her side desire will do nothing to lower CO2 or lower average global temperature.
Third she should leave the money out of it. The side demanding action is outspending the other side by a wide wide margin.
This is purely an attack on those she doesn’t agree with, nothing less and nothing more. The best course of action regarding her article is to ignore it, for the trash that it is. If you choose not to ignore it it should be easy to discredit.
I once learned from an old political strategist, that you win by challenging every wrong claim, otherwise you risk letting that claim stand in the minds of the audience.
Yes Eric I understand exactly what you are saying.
That’s exactly why we’re in cloud cookoo land – no significant warming over the past 20+ years in spite of the coal burning party going on in Asia, and yet the media acting like the world is going to end tomorrow. No one in politics seems to be challenging the basic notion of co2-climate change – they give it at least mild lip service which then the radical greens use that to justify marginalizing anyone who does try to challenge the basics.
Why? Because they are stupid or illetrate?…
or else:
Follow the money!
“No one in politics seems to be challenging the basic notion of co2-climate change – they give it at least mild lip”
That includes almost every Republican, too.
No Republican I’m aware of challenges the basic premise that CO2 is changing Earth’s weather for the worse. This is what enables the Greens. Nobody challenges their basic assumptions about CO2 and the Earth’s atmosphere.
No Republican says we don’t need windmills and solar. Instead, they say we need “a mix” of generating methods. No, we don’t. They are just saying that to try to mollify the Leftwing Media.
You don’t have to pay Republicans to cave to the alarmists. They do that voluntarily.
“… you win by challenging every wrong claim…”
_______________________________________
Climate change as presented is a barrage of daily barely believable to absolutely ridiculous claims. It’s a Gish Gallup and difficult to deal with.
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own a press. And the press is nearly 100% owned by the climate crusaders, and that is also difficult to deal with.
Then we are lost. It’s a Hydra.
Treading water and surviving is enough. The climate insanity can only succeed if all doubts and dissenting voices are silenced.
“…you win by challenging every wrong claim…”
You don’t win, you just minimize the loss. Don’t forget Goebbels’: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” Once a lie has been stated in the media many will take note. But, few will hear the rebuttal. Each time it’s repeated it will gain more believers. I’m afraid it takes critical thinking to sort out the difference, and we’re no longer taught that. Where is Enrico Fermi when we need him?
If I were a climate scientist, I’d go where the real money is – government grants.
That’s what they are doing Fred. That is why they are able to outspend their opponents by so much.
Many of the various science programs produced to “research’ climate change have produced little or no sound evidence that dangerous climate change is occurring.
Many of the various climate “models” have been shown to inadequate and not descriptive of how the climate actually evolves.
The world climate is not a simple problem. Several scientists who analysed the main parts of the models showed that it is likely the models can never make useful predictions because they don’t have the time, say 10-30,000 years, to be useful now. It is a conundrum that apparently almost no scientists want to challenge for fear of losing their reputations.
And that’s the root of the matter.
After WW2 it was clear that huge Government investment in science and technology had been crucial to victory. It wasn’t just the Manhattan Project. There was investment in private companies like Bell as well. State funded science became a key weapon in the Cold war and academia grew hugely because of that.
With the end of the Cold War there was a hoped for Peace Dividend. Less money spent fighting the Reds and more for other things, like tax cuts or infrastructure investment… the use of the Peace Dividend was never bipartisan.
But Academia was not stupid nor was it lacking influence. There was still great respect for science. So they fought back. Reds Under the Bed was no longer scary so they needed a new existential threat.
Margaret Thatcher provided it. She needed a reason why she had wrecked the UK economy (highs inflation, 3 million unemployed, industrial north more devastated by her policies than by the Luftwaffe in the 40s). She needed to say that coal was worse than Chernobyl as she had fought an destroyed coal mining communities who tended to vote against the Tories. She jumped on Global Warming.
So that’s the cause of the split:
Democrats wanted to preserve academia as they had good support from academics – especially idealistic young students and the Arts faculties.
Republicans wanted the Peace Dividend to go in tax cuts and small Government – e.g. private company investment.
When AGW became the shield for Academia against the Peace Dividend it became a partisan issue.
NOTE: This applies in the USA. It is generally not so in the rest of the West where there is no private opposition to academia as a source of progress. There is also bipartisan support outside the USA for any costs spent in fighting AGW.
Thatcher didn’t “wreck” the UK economy: she imposed vital and long-overdue structural adjustments which were extremely painful, as all change is, but have since borne fruit.
30 years later “Levelling Up” is still the mantra to try and recover from the devastation of the North.
The fruit has not yet been borne.
Thank you! Great food for going on thinking about the details of the picture you present!
Thank you for the appreciation.
But beware. If you don’t know me, I am a left-winger myself. Just sceptical about catastrophic AGW and the principle of the Precautionary Principle.
If you are very partisan, you may want to ignore my thoughts, regardless of how well-reasoned they are.
Free spirit here: not partisan. EVERY well-reasoned ideas deserve my attention. I’m a scientist (retired, but still alive), not a believer. No-catastrophism and anti-PrecPrinc is a very nice common ground!
Other than the Manhattan project, what was this huge government investment in technology?
It was private companies competing for contracts that did all the research in aeronautics and the development of various weapons systems.
And who paid for the contracts? Clue, it wasn’t private investors.
A bit late to contribute but, collective defence of the realm is the basic tenet of Libertarianism. So is a well regulated judiciary and police force.
There’s nothing left wing about that. It’s considered the prime and largely only reason for the existence of government.
It’s taxes raised for welfare systems, for example, that merely encourage indolence which are objectionable. The government funding systems to bolster and grow their politicians wealth and power are also abhorrent.
Anti capitalist leftists always claim that the “little guy” is getting screwed at the expense of the capitalists. Their idea of reform is wealth redistribution. That’s been going on for decades now, and in all cases the “little guy” remains little and keeps getting screwed. Meanwhile, the actual capitalists have made far more money than they ever have and live better than anyone else at anytime in history.
But this time, after we pass more anti-capitalist laws, it will be different.
Not a chance. The “little guys” always end up on the bottom, no matter what. Which is appropriate since they(men or women) have produced very little for the world economy.
The problem is a complex growth of scientific knowledge, bad changes in many education systems, too many people asking too much for meagre results, and many other conflicting policies.
Wind and solar are a super expensive TOXIC disaster and have to be buried in landfill every 15 to 20 years.
And co2 emissions have soared since 1990 and since Paris COP in 2015.Thanks to China, India and other developing countries, just look up the data for yourselves.
BTW here’s Mark Mill’s video telling us what a super expensive TOXIC mess S & W would be for our electricity grids and our environments.
When will we WAKE UP?
They may be Monckton’s views that he made known elsewhere but I can’t find any reference to communism or socialism or world government in the transcript of his level-headed presentation (down the page).
Monckton delves into the political dimension in some of his speeches, such as his Heartland speech in 2017.
Instead of evidence for his influence in promoting the skeptical view, that speech is probably better evidence for the proposition that he’s good at rallying those who are already skeptical. Specifically, that speech seems to be the one that introduced what became his they-forgot-the-sun-is-shining theory, which none of the more-serious skeptics has embraced.
Sure, that theory has some adherents among the gullible; for example, WUWT has promoted it with at least a dozen head posts. It’s attractive because its conclusion is congenial. And if it were at all valid it might be remotely as devastating to alarmism as that speech predicted; it might even, as he claimed, “compel [alarmists’] assent.”
Like the proposition that there’s no greenhouse effect, though, it has gained no traction among critical thinkers even in the skeptic community. And there’s little evidence that it has caused any conversions to climate skepticism: it has apparently compelled no one’s assent.
Monckton’s proposition is disarmingly simple. Feedbacks can’t tell the difference between incoming solar energy and back radiation, therefore you have to include the incoming solar energy when calculating feedbacks.
Monckton’s paper has had more influence than you think, it has
been downloaded eleven thousand times.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11434-014-0699-2
Actually, the paper you linked to said just the opposite of what he said in that speech.
In the speech he said all feedback systems have to obey the feedback equation that Hendrik Bode’s text applies to electronics. Of the paper you linked to, on the other hand, Lord Monckton was quoted as saying:
He thereafter did a 180 and said that climate has to use the same equation they use in electronics; he embraced Dr. Bode’s equation–but misinterpreted it–in that video.
I have no doubt that a great many people have read his ravings. Whether any critical thinkers have been taken in by them is a different question. But if you’ve been taken in by them you may want to ask yourself some questions.
If modelers really had made so fundamental an error as failing to take the sun into account, Lord Monckton’s theory would be a scientific kill shot. Wouldn’t heavyweights like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, John Christy, and Roy Spencer therefore have embraced it? Wouldn’t the CO2 Coalition’s Web site have featured Lord Monckton’s theory? Wouldn’t Dr. Spencer have championed it on his blog?
But they haven’t. Indeed, Dr. Spencer has published a rebuttal. And I have it on good authority that skeptics of those scientists’ caliber have quietly attempted to dissuade him from espousing so silly a theory.
You may want to ask yourself why.
Joe, if the feedbacks from CO2 are significant and positive, why did the earth cool by 2-3 degrees since the Holocene Climate optimum as CO2 increased by 50%.
My overall view isn’t that temperature feedback is significantly positive. What I think is that the modelers’ error isn’t what Lord Monckton says it is. And I object to his making us skeptics look silly and unserious.
I can’t recall that exact quote, but from memory Monckton’s argument is the equation had been misapplied.
Soon, Legates and Briggs are no lightweights, and they helped write the paper. Why don’t you ask them directly? Climate science is far from settled, so it is no mystery that leading scientists sometimes have differences of opinion.
If I say 2 + 2 = 4 and you say 2 + 2 = 10, it rather fails to capture the complete reality to say we merely have a difference of opinion.
No, I can’t tell whether Dr. Soon is a lightweight in astrophysics, Dr. Legates is a lightweight in climatology, or Dr. Briggs is a lightweight in statistics; I profess no mastery of those disciplines. But some years ago I did have to make a study of linear-systems theory, so I do know that, if those worthies did indeed join in the response to me they seem to have, they are lightweights in that field.
Their paper was supposed to present a simple way to estimate the output of the Roe model, but I had showed that such estimates could be off my more than a factor of three. Their response to that demonstration was evasive if not downright dishonest.
To anyone who knows much at all about linear-systems theory their paper’s main equation was like saying you can approximate two operands’ product by adding them: it occasionally works, but usually it doesn’t, and you have to do the multiplication anyway to know whether it did.
Look, I understand that we aren’t all born knowing this stuff, so in retrospect I can understand to an extent why that simple-model paper took so many people in. But this forgotten-sunshine thing is just high-school extrapolation. If you can’t see through that theory then some remedial high-school analytic geometry is in order.
Joe Born,
If, like I have, you have had the pleasure of meeting Lord Moncton personally, you might be less inclined to quick draw you dissent. A person blessed with a mind like his is rare. What he produces is rare and easily misunderstood by lesser minds. You have to place some weight on your own ability to comprehend completely.
I have read and re-read his words on feedback and, FWIW, agree with his analysis. Of course you have to apply feedback to all of the incoming, not just to the incremental bit that is a gain or loss. Game, set, match.
Geoff S
You’ve allowed Lord Monckton to distract you to the wrong question.
“An Electronic Analog to Climate Feedback” illustrated how high ECS values can result even if you “apply feedback to all of the incoming, not just to the incremental bit that is a gain or loss.” (The feedback element in that electronic analog responded to the entire voltage difference between virtual ground and an output node whose voltage was proportional to the entire sum of the input and feedback currents.)
The question isn’t whether feedback applies to the entire temperature value. Lord Monckton’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, it’s whether feedback theory requires the linear proportionality that all Lord Monckton’s “corrected” calculations impose.
And it doesn’t. Modelers’ high ECS estimates result from poor parameterization, not a fundamental error in feedback theory–which, again, doesn’t require linear proportionality.
Joe,
as with all feedback systems calculations, you need a clearly defined and understood system boundary. The electrical use of the feedback equation is simple and works in the real world as well as the simulator world (luckily!!). However, the climate use of the feedback equation is mired in poor definitions, shifting inputs, feedback paths and the rest.
You’ll get no argument from my on that score. To deal with Lord Monckton’s theory I’ve had avert my eyes from a boatload of differences between the temperature feedback we’re faced with in the climate and the voltage or current feedback we can design to our liking in electronic circuits.
I remain concerned that anyone is applying linear feedback theory to the non-linear, chaotic climate that, according to the IPCC themselves, can’t be modeled.
You remain concerned, I do, Lord Monckton does. His early words on the topic advised caution because the current preferred analysis possibly had an error. He went to some trouble to support the possibility of an error, then produced an alternative mechanism for all to consider. Traditional science working normally. I felt that the analogies of electronic circuits with weather systems were too much of a stretch but personal feelings have no place in hard science. Geoff S
No kidding, alarmists refuse to see evidence and create more and more models.
How Did Fighting Climate Change Become a Partisan Issue?
Easy. Democrats have increasingly embraced policies that are clearly and demonstrably crazy. Republicans generally don’t. The better question is why are Democrats so quick to accept such foolishness? The same partisan divide over the myth of catastrophic man-made climate change is true in many countries. Why?
in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily
Hitler wrote that in Mein Kampf, ironically accusing Jews of the very tactic he employed. The fact remains that a large percentage of people, especially those with poor impulse control, respond emotionally to claims made in the media. Once they’ve formed that quick and powerful emotional connection, it’s difficult to dislodge it with facts and logic that refute the claim.
….”difficult to dislodge it with facts and logic that refute the claim”….
Their cold houses will help them be mindful.
I think you got it! It is the Dems’ “solutions” to climate change (that’s a whole other issue, the notion that we can do anything at all other than prepare and adapt) are drastic, draconian and devastating.
Imagine you have some warts on your hand and you visit two different doctors. One doctor offers to remove the warts while the other one tries to rush you into emergency surgery to amputate your arm. The second doctor (rightfully so) would be seen by most people as a quack, and also a doctor totally ignoring the Hippocratic Oath to boot!
So the Dems see the warts (mild warming) as advanced gangrene, while the GOP see them for what they are – plain old warts.
In the late eighties the issue was more pollution ie smog polluted water(rivers streams etc) and some talk of holes in the ozone ,talk of banning propellents AC freon etc. It really was genuinely a bipartisan issue. And we made lots of progress in the areas of smog and water pollution clean up. Ozone holes and co 2 as a green house gas problem was a relatively new issue to most people.
John Oliver,
I recall a different history. Greens were making a lot of noise about success and bodies like EPA were claiming credit by making rules. In reality, the major producers looked on at this circus and continued with planned cleanup faster now that more funds were becoming available because of scientic successes. We took a local EPA to Court and won with costs, because they wanted to enforce unrealistic procedures on us. The greens were then at a knickerbocker stage of knowledge, lots of slogans, little substance. They are, still. Their main success has been funding from mega-rich people who we should avoid because the core of their success is their skill in taking money from the pockets of the masses. OTOH, we created wealth by the discovery and use of new resources that civilisation was demanding. Big difference. Geoff S
Yes, that’s about when the environmental movement began to split. I actually considered myself an environmentalist as a teen and young adult. I gave some pocket change out of what little money I had to groups like the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife, Nature Conservancy, etc.
But then the relatively common sense conservation morphed into this crazy single minded fixation on (back then) “global warming” and little else. That is when I abandoned the environmental movement, and probably any other conservatives like myself did likewise.
By the late 80’s, the big problems had already been solved.
There never was an ozone hole.
You really are from lala land aren’t you. So no climate change and no ozone hole. But there are pixies right? Oh and I suppose Donald Trump won the last election?
Many Republicans are skeptics and distrustful of big government. Constitutional originalists, they cherish life, liberty and freedom. Looking at climate through the lens of reality and life experience, they see climate as the poster child for globalized totalitarianism. Skepticism is borne out by decades of pants-on-fire apocalyptic FAILED predictions. No, you can’t see climate change out your window!!!
I work in woke academia, a truly putrid swamp of bad science, failed philosophies, and closed-minded bullies who are helping to lead the charge to a sewer of human misery.
Nice description of the academia science sewer. My thoughts exactly. Ditto FBI/DOJ IMHO
Governments need to “fix” things. Big governments need big problems to fix. What is bigger than the weather? And how will anyone ever know when it is fixed?
A few decades ago the weather was the safe place to be in any casual conservation. It was smart to avoid casual discussions on politics and religion. The great shift in the last two decades has been to tie weather, politics and religion into a neat bundle. Demonising of CO2 was a master stroke. It attacks capitalism at its core. Morphing Global Warming to Climate Change has enabled every adverse weather event to be portrayed as proof of the demon CO2.
So the big government socialists blend very well with church of Climate Change. The small government, independent freedoms individuals look a bit deeper and there is overwhelming evidence, for anyone who wants to see, that none of the dire predictions have been anywhere on the money.
The big lie that “renewables” produce lower cost energy will increase the questioning of the whole belief system because that will cause people to die. Ultimately reality prevails. That could very well be China just claiming the Earth. They have done a good job of taking over global manufacturing.
Superb summary. We gave China our manufacturing base, preferring to “save” energy and reduce emissions. Trump tried to get some of it back. We The People fired him. China gets the jobs, taxbase, and profits. We get under and unemployment, loss of taxbase and gigantic ever increasing National Debt that will eventually wash all of us down the DC Swamp Sewer Ouch. Ain’t no cure for stupid.
“Ain’t no cure for stupid”
And no cure for the “demon” C02 either! Even if it mattered, it hasn’t been reduced anywhere it’s simply been exported to China along with the jobs.
C02 was demonised to market the cure. Wind and solar of course. And their production further feeds the demon. Their end-of-life too. Stupid indeed!
Monckton is unknown to most people, but he expressed what many (even old school Democrats if they were honest) believe has happened to the climate topic. Every day, here at WUWT, we review a growing mountain of cultish, religious fervor, choked with bad pseudoscience and propaganda.
What is pathetic is the large swath of the voting public and even supposedly Republican politicians who are swept up by the regressive views of the lunatic fringe. Climate is but one front in the culture wars, the clash of world views.
I suspect a large part of this is because Google and MSM are partially succeeding at suppressing communication of skeptic viewpoints, so large numbers of people have to rediscover for themselves that there are problems with climate alarmist claims. I only heard of WUWT because a climate advocate work colleague accused me of being a WUWT fan – it sounded so interested I decided to check it out for myself. WUWT never showed up in any of my online searches.
The suppression which I believe is occurring has horrible consequences. In my opinion the main reason Europeans will learn the hard way this winter that renewable energy does not work, is because too many of them never received advance warnings from the likes of WUWT.
When you look at what Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter all did prior to the last election cycle, you would have to believe it was a consipracy to suppress alternate viewpoints and information transfer. Shadow banning, search banning, “community standards” enforcement, algorithm data scouring and revocation of service are just a few examples. They all did it at the same time. Their common carrier status that congress awarded them should be revoked since they want to play arbiter on people’s viewpoints and opinions that don’t align with theirs.
Add YouTube to the list. I am currently engaged in arguing with Alarmist idiots on YT, and strangely enough, many of my comments are deleted within minutes.
Save your sanity Graeme, argue from your own platform or send a story to WUWT. Many of them will still read it, even if they pretend not to.
This is actually an easy question- fundamentally , at its core, the left is always about a culture of victimization. The right is a culture of self reliance. CAGW fits perfectly with victimization- we are all being victimized by evil corporations & their emissions, from their worldview.
This is fundamental to remember- climate realists can’t win based on science when the other side views the whole world through this victimization lens.
It is all class based. Climate Change is weapon in the war of the blue city elite against the Deplorables where all of they elite moves are intended to impoverish, humiliate, and demoralize the the lower orders. The Democrat party which created the elite is their natural home. The climate crusade is bent on shutting down industry and productive economic activity. “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please”
The Republican party is taking up the defense of the Deplorables because that is their easiest route to an electoral majority.
In every election for the past 20 years, the Democrats have been far better funded than the Republicans. My guess is that the fossil fuel industry is a tiny player as a political contributor. But, the New Yorker neither cited nor contextualized any contributions.
Fossil fuel industry is now into unreliables…they know where the money is.
Derg,
Fossil fuel managers will adopt some renewables if their costs are low enough to displace some of their more expensive fuel uses. That lower cost of renewables will generally involve government subsidies and incentives under present administration’s. They are not silly when it comes to turning a quid. Whether this artificial subsidy regime continues much longer remains to be seen. There will now be more economic studies showing how much more expensive renewables are in actual operating environments. A corner will be turned. Geoff S
Correct, subsidy farming can be quite lucrative, but none of them will be foolish enough to disconnect their existing reliable infrastructure. They know that eventually subsidy farming will crash and they will still need the energy to conduct their business.
To the left, the greatest sin is being self reliant.
Close. The greatest sin is thinking that people should be self-reliant. They (the masses that believe what the left is selling) think that means leaving people to die if they ever face hard times or have a disability, that it means you’re uncaring, and that pushing your viewpoint on others will hurt people. The left has recruited people that want to care.
What they don’t want to acknowledge is that people can be helped without government, and that the incentive of free markets has improved the living standard of almost all people in the western world.
People who are excessively afraid look for somebody or something to protect them from their nightmares. These days the frightened left looks to government to save them from the weather, in the old days the high priests would have saved them from weather for the cost of an opulent temple and the occasion child sacrifice. As in the days of yor, the more dramatic the weather sacrifice, the greater your virtue points. Also as in the days of your, none of the sacrices make the weather better and none of the proscribed behaviours make it worse. But perhaps we should cut the hearts out of a few children for the sake of the precautionary principle.
There are many reasons, and its complicated. But ask yourself some questions:
For all the times that you’ve heard skeptics accused of taking money from fossil fuel companies, how many times has even a single fossil fuel company refuted that accusation? Answer zero. Why?
Oil companies – Alarmism is good for them. New regulations are a barrier to entry for new companies and strangling new production drives prices on existing production through the roof, they’ve never made so much money from so little investment. The narrative is good for them.
Coal companies – it takes a ton of coal to make all those solar panels and windmills, they’re all for it, and the same constraints on supply that make oil uber profitable are making coal uber profitable. The narrative is good for them.
Nuclear – they’re all over the alarmism thing, as a zero carbon energy source, alarmism is their ticket back into the game. The narrative is good for them.
Utilities – they LOVE all the renewables which drive their costs up. Why sell electricity for 10 cents per kw/hr when you can justify 30? The narrative is good for them.
Oil companies (again) – they’ve figured out how to store CO2 at an exorbitant cost that the tax payers pick up. Starting to see how all this works?
Researchers – here’s the clincher. There’s an unholy alliance between crony socialists, crony researchers and crony capitalists. They feed upon one another and they all profit at the expense of the peons.
So there is the answer to your question. All of the above factors depend on big government to operate, and big government is the province of the left. Small government which lets the market find the solutions and pick the winners is the province of the right. They are continously outfunded by the left because so many snouts are in the trough and they get right nasty when you tell them to go back to making money the hard way, so they pony up to the supportes of the narrative.
No, they resisted psychiatric treatment.
Its simple: Greens are Watermelons, green on the outside and red on the inside.
In 1987, Ronald Reagan gave a speech to the UN wherein he said: “I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
I have often wondered if the liberal “take over your life for your own good” lefties were inspired by this speech to manufacture a global threat in the naive belief that all nations would lay down their weapons and come together and link arms and sing ‘kum-ba-yah’ in endless world peace to fight this impossible outsider foe. They couldn’t help blaming the conservative right for causing CAGW, and there the split began and has widened ever since.
At least that’s the way I see it.
I’m afraid there’s an alternative explanation that humans have historically stumbled through their allotted time pretending to knowledge they hope may elevate them from their clumsy conduct. We can hardly be bothered to attend to any revealed wisdom that begins with an honest assessment of our lowly intellectual estate, even if a notoriously wise elderly King Solomon so aptly described us no less than 3 millennia ago: “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and all is vanity and a striving after the wind.” [Ecclesiastes 1:14] And mankind’s hard of hearing response has pretty much remained “Huh?” to this day.
Eh, not so much “partisan” as it is the money. Democrats managed to be the “first movers” to take advantage of the new scams, so they have an effective monopoly on the “business.” Only a very few RINOs are necessary to keep that monopoly, the rest can be frozen out.
Utter BS. No demonrat has ever resisted offers of money!
In 1962, Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh, the democrat who invented the power of the Speaker of the Assembly in California, said “Money is the Mothers Milk of Politics”.
He was not wrong. The only thing that has changed is the amount.
In the UK, to end the dominance of coal and thus of the miners’ unions, Thatcher introduced NFFO (Non Fossil Fuel Obligation). This was intended to switch UK power generation to nuclear but it was soon seen that it could be used to fund any alternative ‘renewable’ energy production. About the same time the EU changed definitions to make the incineration of waste ‘renewable’ energy, this was after pressure from EU states which were running out of landfill space. There was then an explosion of projects in the UK to burn any kind of waste including chicken litter and forest waste.
I think, and stand to be corrected, that Thatcher wrote in her autobiography that she regretted having pushed climate change and no longer believed in it.
You are correct, she repudiated the co2 climate change theory after using it to defeat the communist Arthur Scargill who’s union had made coal mining uneconomical and had brought down the government of Ted Heath. The defeat of the national union of mine workers and other militant trade unions stopped the country’s decline into oblivion. Unfortunately the rail unions still need to be sorted!
The latest example of the insanity from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/15/wind-hydrogen-no-demolitions-how-next-pm-can-put-uk-on-net-zero-path
This is what the Tees Valley mayor spends his time thinking about? 30% of his residents are on housing or council tax benefit. 20% of his pupils are eligible for free school meals. And he is thinking hard about the fuels of the future and has come up with hydrogen?
Its fantasy. They don’t have enough wind farms to make the hydrogen, and if they did have them, they’d have no pipeline grid adequate to transport it, and if they had that, there would be no in-home pipework which would get it to the appliances. And there are no vehicles which can run on it, either. But that won’t matter because they will all be electric, running off the wind farms that will also be generating, or failing to generate, the green hydrogen.
To supply all the power that these people are thinking about moving everything to they will have to have hundreds of GW of wind power, and equivalent amounts of backup storage.
And even if all this fantasy were to come true, it would only reduce global emissions by the UK’s 450 million tons in 2050, by which time global emissions will probably amount to around 45 billion tons, with or without these mad plans.
This is the funniest part:
The gas is burned to produce power, emitting only water vapour and warm air, and no greenhouse gases.
Someone should tell them that water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas and that warm air is exactly what the alarmists claim is the problem!
Many an Englishman and woman would love to get some of that ‘climate supercharged rain’.
From “The Age of Global Warming” by Rupert Darwall:
“Global warming’s entrance into politics can be dated with precision – 1988; the year of the Toronto conference on climate change, Margaret Thatcher’s address to the Royal Society, NASA scientist James Hansen’s appearance at a congressional committee and the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). By then, the world was ready”
Maybe what makes global warming so divisive, much more so that other global issues such as the ozone layer, is that it boils down to Emotion versus Reason. Lefties are slaves to their emotions, whereas those on the Right know that the world runs on fossil fuels, and that there is currently no viable alternative for a world with 8 billion people.
Lefties are slaves to their emotions? Perhaps. The majority of everybody are slaves to their emotions.
Right wing views on immigration are economically illiterate and impractical. But they are heartfelt.
There are views on all sides that are not rational.
“Right wing views on immigration are economically illiterate and impractical.”
You are painting with a broad brush, there. I’m right wing, but don’t consider my views on immigration to be either economically illiterate or impractical.
In other words, not everyone on the Right shares the same viewpoint on everything.
Facts are stubborn things:
Especially this one.
Shows no warming for 40 years while atmospheric CO2 levels were rising throughout this period.
This illustrates that CO2 has no influence on natural variation and the warming period after was just coincidence.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadsst2gl/from:1940/to:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1940/to:1980/plot/esrl-co2/to:1980/normalise
Yes, CO2 is increasing and temperatues are cooling.
How do alarmists explain this discrepancy in their CAGW narrative? Alarmists claim it is supposed to get hotter when more CO2 goes into the atmosphere. But more CO2 is going into the air now, yet the temperatures are cooling. Things don’t seem to be going according to the alarmist plan.
Yep, the fact that the last half of the 17th century had more warming than the last 40 years with no change in CO2 levels still exists, stubbornly showing the temperature in that graph is not unnatural.