The Cato Institutes Center for the Study of Science today kicks off its rapid response center thatwill identify and correct inappropriate and generally bizarre claims on behalf of climate alarm. Iwish them luck in this worthy enterprise, but more will surely be needed to deal with this issue.
To be sure, there is an important role for such a center. It is not to convince the believers. Nordo I think that there is any longer a significant body of sincere and intelligent individuals whoare simply trying to assess the evidence. As far as I can tell, the issue has largely polarized thatrelatively small portion of the population that has chosen to care about the issue. The remainderquite reasonably have chosen to remain outside the polarization. Thus the purpose of a rapidresponse Center will be to reassure those who realize that this is a fishy issue, that there remainscientists who are still concerned with the integrity of science. There is also a crucial role ininforming those who wish to avoid the conflict as to what is at stake. While these are importantfunctions, there are other issues that I feel a think tank ought to consider. Moreover, there is adanger that rapid response to trivial claims lends unwarranted seriousness to these claims.
Climate alarm belongs to a class of issues characterized by a claim for which there is noevidence, that nonetheless appeals strongly to one or more interests or prejudices. Once theissue is adopted, evidence becomes irrelevant. Instead, the believer sees what he believes.Anything can serve as a supporting omen. Three very different previous examples come to mind(though there are many more examples that could be cited): Malthus theory of overpopulation,social Darwinism and the Dreyfus Affair. Although each of these issues engendered opposition,only the Dreyfus Affair led to widespread societal polarization. More commonly, only thebelievers are sufficiently driven to form a movement. We will briefly review these examples(though each has been subject to book length analyses), but the issue of climate alarm issomewhat special in that it appeals to a sizeable number of interests, and has strong claims on thescientific community. It also has the potential to cause exceptional harm to an unprecedentednumber of people. This has led to persistent opposition amidst widespread lack of interest.However, all these issues are characterized by profound immorality pretending to virtue.
Malthus peculiar theory wherein the claimed linear growth of food loses out to the exponential growth of population has maintained continuous popularity in the faculty lounge for about twocenturies. It is, therefore, worth noting that Malthus had no evidence that food supply wouldincrease only linearly. Nor did he have evidence for exponential population growth. Malthusinitially went so far as to estimate an e-folding time for population of 25 years, based on thepopulation of North America, and ignoring the role of immigration. Although Malthus, himself,eventually acknowledged these problems, the enthusiasm for his anti-human conclusions remainsstrong. Neither the green revolution nor the diminution of famine amidst increasing populationdissuades them. The fact that Chad is poor and the Netherlands is rich never strikes the believeras odd. Apparently, the growth of cities, the movement of workers from the farm to the city,and, for much of the developed world, immigration, all served to convince people of means thatthere were too many other people around, and Malthusian theory formed a framework forsomething they were (and are) eager to believe.
Social Darwinism and its corollary, eugenics, represents another case of a theory without supportthat was widely accepted with, at times, horrid consequences. Darwins The Origin of theSpecies had immense influence. It presented a theory whereby natural selection and what wereessentially mutations could account for biological evolution. While it offered valuable insightsinto the development of finch beaks, it was hardly meant to describe societal evolution.Nevertheless, the notion of survival of the fittest applied to society had obvious appeal to thosewho perceived themselves to be the fittest and who naturally regarded the application asscientifically justified. It was a small step to eugenics which was the counterpart of modern dayenvironmentalism during the first third of the twentieth century, and was supported by all thebest people (including George Bernard Shaw, Margaret Sanger, Alexander Graham Bell, andTheodore Roosevelt) despite the fact that there actually was a mathematical theorem (the Hardy-Weinberg Theorem) that showed that the impact of eugenics on the gene pool would benegligible. Needless to add, mathematics is of no importance to the best people. Malthusianpopulation fears continue to the present, but eugenics was rendered unfashionable by the obviousimplications presented by the Nazis.
While science is a common vehicle for such misuse, the Dreyfus Affair shows that other vehiclesexist. In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of passing secret French militaryinformation to the Germans. There was, in fact, no evidence to support this accusation.Nevertheless, there was again a strong desire on the part of many people in France to believe theaccusation. To be sure, there was the endemic anti-Semitism in France. However, there wasalso the humiliation of Frances loss in the Franco-Prussian War, and the desire to blame suchloss not on the army, but on the perfidy of a group that some considered to be outside. (TheNazis stab in the back theory for the German loss in WW1 represents a similar instinct).Dreyfus was tried (several times) and sentenced to Devils Island. Prominent Frenchmen (EmileZola in particular) , incensed by the obvious injustice campaigned for Dreyfus, and the issueliterally split France in half (partly because the conflict between Catholics and Secularists alsoentered the Affair). Dreyfus was eventually exonerated after the identification of the actual spybecame undeniable.
The current issue of global warming/climate change is extreme in terms of the number of specialinterests that opportunistically have strong interests in believing in the claims of catastrophedespite the lack of evidence. In no particular order, there are the leftist economists for whomglobal warming represents a market failure, there are the UN apparatchiks for whom globalwarming is the route to global governance, there are third world dictators who see guilt overglobal warming as providing a convenient claim on aid (ie, the transfer of wealth from the poorin rich countries to the wealthy in poor countries), there are the environmental activists who loveany issue that has the capacity to frighten the gullible into making hefty contributions to theirnumerous NGOs, there are the crony capitalists who see the opportunity to cash in on theimmense sums being made available for sustainable energy, there are the governmentregulators for whom the control of a natural product of breathing is a dream come true, there arenewly minted billionaires who find the issue of saving the planet appropriately suitable to theirgrandiose pretensions, etc., etc. Strange as it may seem, even the fossil fuel industry is generallywilling to go along. After all, they realize better than most, that there is no current replacementfor fossil fuels. The closest possibilities, nuclear and hydro, are despised by theenvironmentalists. As long as fossil fuel companies have a level playing field, and can passexpenses to the consumers, they are satisfied. Given the nature of corporate overhead, the lattercan even form a profit center. The situation within science itself is equally grim. Huge sums ofgovernment and private funding have become available to what was initially a small backwaterfield. Science becomes easy when emphasis is on malleable models supported by hugelyuncertain data that can be readily found consistent with the models supplemented by fervidly imagined catastrophic implications. Indeed, uncertainty is often exaggerated for just thispurpose. Opposition within the scientific community is immediately met with ad hominemattacks, loss of funding, and difficulty in publishing.
Of course, science is not the only victim of this situation. Affordable energy has been theprimary vehicle for the greatest advance in human welfare in human history. This issuepromises to deny this to the over 1 billion humans who still lack electricity. For billions moreenergy will be much less affordable leading to increased poverty. Poverty, itself, is a majorfactor in reduced life expectancy. It requires a peculiarly ugly obtuseness to ignore thefundamental immorality of this issue.
Although all these issues have strong political consequences, it is by no means clear that theirorigin is, itself, political. I would suggest that a more likely situation is that politics is alwaysopportunistically seeking some cause that fits its needs. However, once an illusional issuebecomes a passionate belief, it becomes impervious to argument. Given how dangerous someillusional positions are, it is an important problem to know how to avoid them. This is a problemthat is truly worthy of Catos attention. Rapid response can only do so much; belief seems toinevitably trump objective reality when one is free to choose ones narrative.
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