I can’t decide whether this article by hyper-Progressive and Warmist Jonathan Chait highlights the idiocy of the Cult of Climastrology or liberals overall, so, let’s go with both
People Who Were Certain Climate Change Is Fake Are Now Certain That Paris Can’t Stop It
The most unintentionally revealing commentary on the Paris climate agreement came from National Review senior editor David Pryce-Jones. “I know next to nothing about the technicalities of the subject, but caught on television news bulletins great wafts of hot air,†he confessed. “It was highly enjoyable to hear President Obama claiming to be saving the planet that his foreign policy has done much to endanger … You don’t have to be a cynic to think that most countries, China and India in the lead, are never going to do anything that might harm their economic development, nor will rich countries commit economic suicide.†This was a real-time window into the conservative mind processing the Paris climate agreement, beginning from a point of frank incomprehension of (and lack of interest in) any specifics of the issue, and proceeding immediately to the conviction that the deal would fail.
The problem, to start off, particularly the headline, is that this is a falsehood: Skeptics do not say that climate change is fake. Au contraire, we understand that the climate is always going to change. What we are debating is the causation. The world has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age. Heck, there are even some skeptics called luke warmers who think that Mankind is responsible for at least 51% of the warming, but that we are in no way doomed. And, I’ll argue with anyone who says there has been no warming since 1850. And called them pure idiots.
But, let’s not forget that there are many Warmists, such as James Hansen, who say that the Paris agreement won’t stop ‘climate change’.
Then we jump into politics overall, and this is a real hoot
Conservative economic thought is structurally different from liberal thought. Liberal support for expanded government is based entirely in practical expectation that new programs can deliver concrete results — cleaner air, healthier children, higher wages for low-income workers, and so on. Conservative antipathy to expanded government is based ultimately on philosophical opposition. For that reason, data can change liberal economic thinking in a way it can’t change conservative economic thinking. Liberals would abandon, say, new environmental regulations if evidence persuaded them the program was not actually improving the environment, because bigger government is merely the means to an end. No evidence could persuade conservatives to support new environmental regulations, because conservatives consider small government a worthy end for itself. (As Milton Friedman once put it, “Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself.â€)
Obviously, we know what he writes about why liberals support bigger government is a lie, as is the lie about concrete results. The only programs liberals want to do away with are national security ones, which actually show concrete results, unlike the majority of programs liberals want.
Liberals have been given endless facts, particularly, in this case, on ‘climate change’, and they refuse to change their minds. They can’t even prove their own theories on climate change as hard facts, yet still refuse to change their minds. Instead, they just change the data/results.
Of course, ‘climate change’ has nothing to do with the environment. Give us fact based reasons, and we’ll support them. The thing is, we do not trust the motivations of Leftists pushing them. I bet support for universal background checks for gun purchases would poll near 100% amongst Conservatives. We know we’ll pass them. But, we also know that they are just a death by 1000 papercuts step for what Leftists want regarding banning private ownership of guns. The Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, and other similar laws are supported by Conservatives (oh, BTW, let’s not forget which side leaves the grounds around demonstrations cleaner than when they got there and which one leaves it an utter mess). We’re concerned with mission creep. Leftists always want a little bit more government power and control.
