Former Vice President Dick Cheney has to be smiling. With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate “” including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning “” accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming.
The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.
Dick Cheney Republicans — that about sums up the GOP today (see “Has anyone in U.S. history made more Americans less safe than Dick Cheney?” and below).
American conservatives are unique to the extent to which they have been bought and paid for by Big Oil, fossil fuel interests, and corporate polluters, as previously noted (see UK’s conservative Foreign Secretary: “You cannot have food, water, or energy security without climate security” and National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones”).
It’s hard to see how the nation and the world can avert catastrophic warming as long as the GOP lives in an alternative reality somewhere other than planet Eaarth.
You may be wondering who the NYT says is the exception among Republicans running for Senate. Their must-read editorial continues:
Some candidates are emphatic in their denial, like the Nevada Republican Sharron Angle, who flatly rejects “the man-caused climate change mantra of the left.” Others are merely wiggly, like California’s Carly Fiorina, who says, “I’m not sure.” Yet, over all (the exception being Mark Kirk in Illinois), the Republicans are huddled around an amazingly dismissive view of climate change.
Well, Kirk has expressed an understanding of climate science in the past (as has John McCain and Fiorina, for that matter), but now he says as a Senator he would oppose the moderate, business-friendly climate bill he supported in the House (see “Dawn of the brain-dead Senate“).
A few may genuinely believe global warming is a left-wing plot. Others may be singing the tune of corporate benefactors. And many Republicans have seized on the cap-and-trade climate bill as another way to paint Democrats as out-of-control taxers.
In one way or another, though, all are custodians of a strategy whose guiding principle has been to avoid debate about solutions to climate change by denying its existence “” or at least by diminishing its importance. The strategy worked, destroying hopes for Congressional action while further confusing ordinary citizens for whom global warming was already a remote and complex matter. It was also remarkably heavy-handed.
According to Congressional inquiries, White House officials, encouraged by Mr. Cheney’s office, forced the Environmental Protection Agency to remove sections on climate change from separate reports in 2002 and 2003. (Christine Todd Whitman, then the E.P.A. administrator, has since described the process as “brutal.”)
The administration also sought to control or censor Congressional testimony by federal employees and tampered with other reports in order to inject uncertainty into the climate debate and minimize threats to the environment.
Nothing, it seemed, could crack the administration’s denial “” not Tony Blair of Britain and other leaders who took climate change seriously; not Mrs. Whitman (who eventually quit after being undercut by Mr. Cheney, who worked for the energy company Halliburton before he became vice president and received annual checks while in office); and certainly not the scientists.
In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most definitive statement on the human contribution to climate change, Mr. Cheney insisted that there was not enough evidence to just “sort of run out and try to slap together some policy that’s going to try to solve the problem.” To which Mrs. Whitman, by then in private life, said: “I don’t see how he can say that with a straight face anymore.”
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to recall that in 2000, George W. Bush promised to cap carbon dioxide, encouraging some to believe that he would break through the partisan divide on global warming. Until the end of the 1990s, Republicans could be counted on to join bipartisan solutions to environmental problems. Now they’ve disappeared in a fog of disinformation, an entire political party parroting the Cheney line.
Dick Cheney is the person who killed Bush’s proposal to regulate CO2 emissions from electric utilities. Indeed, it is doubtful that Bush had particularly strong opinions on any major energy or environmental issue. Cheney after all is the one who put together Bush’s entire energy plan.
Cheney led the effort to block all EPA action on climate and censor U.S. scientists from even telling the American public about the dangers posed by global warming as the Center for American Progress Action Fund detailed in a report (see “Dick Cheney didn’t get memo on shifting from denial to delay“):
Last October, Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee about the “Human Impacts of Global Warming.” Gerberding told the committee that global warming “is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans,” but she gave few specifics, instead focusing on the CDC’s current preparation plans. Soon after Gerberding delivered her testimony, CDC officials revealed that the White House had “eviscerated” her testimony by editing it down from 14 pages to four”¦. In a letter responding to questions by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) yesterday, former EPA official Jason Burnett revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Council on Environmental Quality pushed to “remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change.”
CHENEY’S MALIGN ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE: In his letter to Boxer, Burnett revealed that Cheney’s office had also objected in January to congressional testimony by EPA administrator Stephen Johnson that “greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment.” According to Burnett, an official in Cheney’s office “called to tell me that his office wanted the language changed.” Such actions are not unusual for Cheney. Since taking office, he has taken “a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business” while undermining any real action to combat climate change. In December, after Johnson “answered the pleas of industry executives” by announcing his decision to deny California the right to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles, it was revealed that executives from the auto industry had appealed directly to Cheney. EPA staffers told the Los Angeles Times that Johnson “made his decision” only after Cheney met with the executives. Since February 2007, Cheney has quietly maneuvered to exert increased control over environmental policy by federal agencies “” particularly the regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
One could write an entire book on Cheney’s single-handed efforts to destroy a livable climate for your children, grandchildren, and the next 50 generations of Americans. I suspect someone will. In 2007, the Washington Post wrote a long story about his role promoting pollution: “The vice president has intervened in many cases to undercut long-standing environmental rules for the benefit of business.”
Cheney is too old to see the worst of what his policies will do. But history will not be kind to Cheney and Bush. Assuming that we don’t avert catastrophic global warming, they will be seen as two of the worst leaders in U.S. history “” a judgment some have already issued: “Bush will go down in history as possibly a person who has doomed the planet.” Make that, “Bush and Cheney.”
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Cheney, or the Bush white house, tried to suppress NASA GISS’s yearly report on the temperature of the earth. Documented in “Censored”.
Thanks for posting this Joe. I read it in the NYT minutes before coming to your site and hoped you would post it. Now, can we expect that NYT will allow some articles on AGW to be published elsewhere in the paper, as in the Friday science section? Or somewhere??
at NYTimes, comments have been closed. However, there are some superb comments about what science is and how the fake skeptics are logically inconsistent in addition to being wrong (and evil, but that’s given!).
Some may find the commentary by Frank Beckmann, The Detroit News, and my response to be of interest:
Bogus global warming data hurts real scientific efforts
The revelations of bogus evidence in the manmade climate change hoax have become so routine as to go almost unnoticed, but continued revelations now pose a danger to the reputation of the real scientific community — that made up of dedicated researchers — which must be addressed before all lines of intellectual inquiry become tainted.
Consider what we have witnessed within the past several years while governments race headlong — using fraudulent conclusions — to set policies that will cost people across the world hundreds of billions of dollars to regulate benign gases like carbon dioxide.
The East Anglia e-mail scandal showed how global warming alarmists plotted to manipulate data to fit their ideology that man’s activity somehow warms the planet to dangerous levels. The same documents revealed an organized effort to stifle any dissent and keep pure scientific data out of the hands of scientists who dared question the alarmist viewpoint.
NASA’s chief global warming exaggerator, James Hansen, was caught doctoring temperature data in several clever maneuvers. He oversaw the elimination of a dramatic reduction of world temperature recording stations.
San Jose computer programmer E.M. Smith uncovered the data and found NASA “systematically eliminated 75 percent of the world’s stations with a clear bias towards removing higher latitude, high altitude and rural locations.”
The number of reporting stations in Canada was reduced from 600 to 35, with the traditionally colder areas no longer part of the equation, therefore leaving the overall world temperatures to skew toward an artificially higher figure.
In 2008, Hansen entered September temperature data for the month of October in compiling numbers to support another scare about warming, once again trying to falsely distort a climate record. He claimed it was a simple error, which would be an acceptable explanation from a layman but not from the person in charge of NASA’s climate projects.
The United Nations’ IPCC reports have been regularly discredited over various exaggerations and unproven claims, most recently that Himalayan glaciers were melting, a claim that even the UN had to admit was false.
And last week, the California Air Resources Board admitted that its “scientific” analysis overestimated diesel truck pollution by 340 percent in 2007, a mistake that has cost the construction and trucking industries $10 billion dollars in compliance costs.
The CARB researcher, Hien Tran, who produced the phony “scientific” data was found to have faked his resume and continually lied to his boss, according to California newspaper reports, but the board adopted his findings anyway even after learning of his deception.
The revelations have destroyed the credibility of the alarmists over man-made global warming.
But their continued deceit is certain to taint legitimate scientists as well.
Dr. Joseph Kolars, senior associate dean for education and global initiatives at the University of Michigan medical school, is overseeing a new joint research project into various disease treatments in association with China’s Peking University Health Science Center.
He acknowledges that all scientists are now under the microscope and encourages a greater effort to educate the public.
“It has to be real science but we have to do a better job with scientific literacy.” Kolars told me.
Kolars encourages efforts to explain “what’s an intriguing idea, what’s a hope, what’s a dream … and part of the platform of science, of course, is that we’re always disproving what we knew before, so we come to something that we think is the truth and then … we replace that with a new truth.”
This “moving edge” of science, as Kolars described it, is naturally accepted by the public if honest research is at the heart of the findings.
But the grant seeking environmental alarmists have so fouled the air with their fraud that the world’s public could very well become skeptical of all academics for some years to come.
Dear Editor,
Based upon his Oct. 15 commentary concerning global warming, it appears that Frank Beckmann has not been keeping abreast of the science or the controversy surrounding it.
In terms of the “Climategate” e-mails, three independent inquiries found no scientific misconduct. The worst aspect of the e-mails is that some scientists said some not-so-flattering things about those who did not agree with them.
It’s unfortunate that Mr. Beckmann attributes nefarious intent to Dr. Hansen for activities he had no responsibility for, such as changing the number of temperature reporting stations or an error made in some raw data of Oct. 2008. In the case of the raw data, once the error was discovered, the data was pulled and corrections made.
In the case of reducing the number of temperature reporting stations, climatologists evaluate temperature deviations relative to a long-term average, which are consistent over large regions.
As an example, the temperature deviations for 2010 through September for Churchill, Manitoba; Iqaluit, Nunnuvut; and Moosonee, Ontario (the Hudson Bay region of Canada) relative to the 1971-2000 averages were +7.20oF, +6.85oF and +6.53oF. Yellowknife, Yukon and Goose Bay, Newfoundland, far to the west and east of Hudson Bay, had comparable values at +6.63oF and +6.16oF. A grid resolution is used to provide an average deviation for a grid box that doesn’t compromise the integrity of the resulting global average.
Those strong positive deviations in northern Canada even carry down into Michigan. In 2010 through September, Sault Ste. Marie had an average temperature of 48.17oF. That compares to 44.66oF for 2000-2009, 43.31oF for 1990-1999, 43.02oF for 1980-1989 and 42.21oF for 1970-1979.
The data for 2010 is only for three-quarters of a year but the trend in northern North America suggests that 2010-2019 will on average be considerably warmer than 2000-2009.
Since the most pronounced temperature deviations are occurring at higher latitudes, if higher latitudes were weighted less, as Mr. Beckmann implies, the result would be to reduce the magnitude of the positive global temperature deviation.
The problem isn’t that global warming science is incorrect; it’s that the results are not what some people care to hear. If you don’t like the message, attack the messenger. There is a reason scientific societies throughout the world that have made statements concerning global warming science are in agreement with the science. The science is solid.
The New York Times, Again
I wonder whether The New York Times understands its own role, and the media’s, related to the public confusions, misunderstandings, and insufficient understanding. Whenever they write a critique of someone or some organization, in an editorial, they seem not to recognize their own dismal coverage of climate change in their news coverage. It’s astonishing and, more than that, deeply harmful.
I submitted a comment to The New York Times late last night, and they have apparently chosen not to run it. (They’ve run numerous comments since then, but not mine.) This is also a pattern of theirs, at least with respect to many comments I’ve left over the years. If a comment is both critical of The New York Times AND credible, on any matter of real effectiveness, my experience is that they don’t run it. In any case, here’s the comment I left last night, which they didn’t run. Because this has happened in the past, I make reference to the time and their most recent (at the time) posted comment in the message itself.
Here it is:
* * * *
Thank you for your submission. Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
Your Submitted Comment
Display Name
Jeff Huggins
Location
Los Gatos, California
Comment
Does The New York Times even begin to understand its own role in the public’s confusion and insufficient understanding of climate change? May I request an answer to that question? Do you know how many important reports, joint statements from numerous scientific bodies, and events you haven’t covered, not to mention those you’ve covered on page 17 when they should have been on the front page? I mean really.
Do you understand the role of the many ExxonMobil advertorials and ads that you’ve carried without so much as lifting a finger, in articles or editorials, to correct the inaccuracies and confusions and incorrect reasonings in those? I mean really.
I am looking forward to seeing this printed. Right now, it’s 9:17 PM California time. The most recent comment shown is Comment 9, by Joe Drury, with a time listed of 11:55 PM, which must be Eastern time. So, we’ll see whether, and when, you put this comment in the comment string.
History will be highly critical of the media, and The New York Times will be near the top of that list. When will the change come?
Jeff
* * *
So, I’d like to ask The New York Times, why didn’t you run this comment? Is it a bit too close to the truth? And, how would you respond to the questions?
I’d also like to repeat (for the nth time) a reminder to Andy Revkin that he indicated that he’d write an open letter to the media and the journalism community conveying his assessment of the media’s coverage of climate change in recent years as well as including his recommendations regarding improvements that ought to be made, if any.
The media complain about our state of affairs, and yet they are (plainly) one of the largest parts of the problem. It’s astonishing to me. Are there any people who can comprehend the “big picture” in the media and who can reflect on, and be honest about, the media’s own role in this? It seems not. Sadly.
Jeff
The Democratic Party and/or independent advocacy groups should be blanketing the airwaves with commercials pointing out the climate consequences of the Republicans’ views and their lock-step discipline on this. Even if they win, the damage they do will be remembered by the electorate as the consequences of climate change worsen.
Better late than never that we get on with doing what’s needed. It’s a little hard to believe that the right is betting it’s entire future influence on this stance. People need to understand that this stance comes from the short term financial ambitions of a few, who think they will be able to buy their way out of trouble.
Here’s a case of strange bedfellows…. the GOP and the Kremlin! According to this comment over at RC, Cuccinelli’s CID against Michael Mann contains material that can be sourced to the Kremlin! Haven’t had time to check it out myself, but the comment does contain links that can be investigated. (Linky http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=5130#comment-188798 )
Check out pages 15-16 in Cuccinelli’s brief (W. Russell again) against the EPA. It’s hysterical.
http://www.oag.state.va.us/PRESS_RELEASES/Cuccinelli/Joint%20Motion%20to%20Remand%20VA%20filed%20with%20clerk%204_15_10.pdf
Cuccinelli is citing the Russian economist Andrei Illarionov’s Russian Institute for Economic Analysis–the IEA. W. Russell is basically telling the EPA to take advice from the Kremlin:
“On December 15, 2009—the very day that EPA announced the Endangerment Finding—the Russian Institute of Economic Analysis (“IEA”) reported that CRU probably tampered with Russian climate data and that the Russian meteorological station data do not support human-caused global warming……” yada yada yada…
The IEA probably acted on the “very day” that the EPA announced the Endangerment Finding because the IEA is really part of the Russian government’s propaganda apparatus and they are smack in the middle of an important operation to protect their gas industry from renewables. It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous and stupid.
Illarionov is an adviser to the Libertarian Cato Institute and a “former adviser” to Putin and to Chernomyrdin, the former head of the Soviet Gas Ministry–now Gazprom. Supposedly, Illarionov had a “falling out” with Putin. Illarionov talks trash about the KGB and praises capitalism, but this may just be eyewash to give himself credibility. Most people who have a “falling out” with Putin don’t make such graceful landings.
Cuccinelli’s brief cites Illarionov in RIA Novosti, which is the official government news service (footnote 12).
You look at RIA Novosti to find out the Kremlin line, not the truth.
Sometimes the line changes. This summer, while NASA was helping the Russians pinpoint their fires, English RIA Novosti cited Medvedev saying there is global warming. This may have been because the total moron Dr. Areshev accused US scientists of causing global warming with secret climate weapons while NASA was helping them. Areshev was just a little off-message and embarrassed the Kremlin.
After that, Medvedev said there was global warming and RIA Novosti quoted NASA for a few weeks. The new line very cool, but the Kremlin may just have been sucking up to NASA during the fires.
The Russians are talking out of both sides of their mouths.
Historically, our political parties tolerated dissent on any issue, even explosive ones like war and peace or civil rights. The lockstep global warming denialism ordered by Republican Party leadership is unprecedented, and goes beyond obvious corruption by the oil companies.
Republicans not only don’t believe in global warming, they don’t believe in democracy, or free and independent expression of ideas. This is now a party that has drifted toward totalitarianism, and the people and the media must stand up to it, and not just mock its sillier candidates.
I agree with Mike Roddy (Comment 8), directionally speaking anyhow. And I’d like to add some explanation.
It’s one thing for people to have different preferences for Coke or Pepsi. And, of course, it’s quite natural, normal, and understandable that people and parties have different understandings and views regarding (for example) the best way to balance government’s involvement in society, the best way to deal with health care, and so forth. There are many different types of subjects and many different sorts and degrees of disagreement.
But when it comes to “the facts of the matter” — whether a plane fell from the sky on a given day, or whether a volcano erupted, or whether a pipeline broke, or whether smoking has a tendency to cause cancer in many people, or whether GHG emissions cause the atmosphere to warm up, these are the sorts of subjects that aren’t really, in the end, subject to opinion. As the saying goes, you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts. Here, I’m not suggesting that we know anything with the sort of “final certainty” that most scientists and most philosophers agree can never be had. Instead, I’m talking about understanding something well enough “for all practical intents and purposes” and/or understanding it to a great degree of practical confidence.
So, on these sorts of matters, if a political party decides to Ignore and Deny the overwhelming view of the vast majority of experts, and indeed (in so doing) ignore the real evidence itself, and what the evidence indicates is happening, that becomes Orwellian. It’s not really much different than telling the public “Our great army defeated the Meanies yesterday at the Battle of Mean Gulch” even when that is not at all what happened in reality. In other words, deceiving people about “facts of the matter” is not just opinion and can’t be assigned merely to opinion. It is, instead, deception and/or ignorance, and it’s dangerous.
The vast majority of Republicans, it seems, are engaging (either knowingly and purposefully, which is undoubtedly true in many of the cases, or at least ignorantly) in this sort of deception and confusion about “facts of the matter”. Indeed, they are holding a stance that is in stark disagreement with the repeatedly stated view of 99 percent of the bona fide scientific community. That’s as near as you can get to saying that you threw a rock away from the window when you actually threw it through the window, except for the fact that the causes of climate change (like the causes of cancer and many other things) can’t be “seen” right in front of the face in the sort of way that even humans with very little comprehension can “get it” according to the notion that seeing is believing.
In other words, when you hold an insistent position that “X is not real” even when 99 percent of the relevant scientists are saying the “X is very real and a big problem”, you are basically either ignorant or lying or deeply irresponsible — unless of course you have both the expertise and the solid evidence to explain why “X is not real” convincingly and in a way that overturns the other view.
This is compounded by the fact that there is such alignment between the party and some major media outlets, e.g., Fox. The net result is downright Orwellian. The Republican “stance” on climate change, also repeated and held by some major media outlets (Fox), basically amounts to nothing less than a large-scale Orwellian fraud — a dangerous deceit — being foisted upon the public. It is downright Orwellian. The only thing — the ONLY thing — that might make it seem slightly less than Orwellian has to do with the fact that the causes of climate change are not possible to see, with the naked eye, as are other daily matters that fall into the category of fact, such as “Sally socked Joe”. You can see the latter, but you can’t see the former.
I think this points to a big, BIG problem. If there is such a huge “Orwellian” effort and/or stubborn tendency in society, on a matter of such importance, and if that is preventing necessary action, there are two questions: What will or can cause the Orwellians (so to speak) to change their understanding and tune? Or, what can, shall, must we do to achieve the necessary societal improvements anyway, despite the Orwellians? The first question is the more relevant one, and hopeful one.
This is all troubling.
Cheers,
Jeff
God bless America!
While I can’t pretend to account for why republican leadership has a such a stunted, skeptical view of AGW (though oil lobbyists probably have a big part of it) as far as the average citizen is concerned I believe the reason for skepticism or just a general apathy is, like it or not, that AGW is lumped in with other media scare stories of the recent past (Y2K, Flu epidemics, etc). Now this isn’t to say that in reality the facts of AGW aren’t more concrete, well argued and convincing than other apocalyptic media stories, it’s just that to the average person who doesn’t spend anytime reading climate blogs, watching climate documentaries or reading climate books the whole AGW story is basically background noise.
If GW was taking up more News-with bizarre climatic events on a weekly basis, the media would have no other choice but to report it- especially if it was becoming increasingly disruptive to travel, internal and international commerce, and loss of life-or we see very dramatic events like vast fires across the west, the great plains and mid west suffer like the Russian republic did this summer.
Perhaps a mega autumn storm, flooding New York or Boston- or the ice cap in the arctic ocean melting totally. The confluence of these events are not far away. The public’s lack of knowledge about GW is somewhat like American apathy of the Nazi’s in Europe in the 1930s- ignored for along time- until events began to change their misplaced isolationism.
The timing of the NYT article is worth assessing to clarify its motivation – it wasn’t written in response to the outcomes in Russia and Pakistan of the blocking of the jet-stream’s path, nor to the great flush of new national temperature records, nor to the US Academy’s statement.
It appears after the nominations of solidly denier republican senate candidates, a fortnight before the elections. And it attacks a very safe target in assembling old charges against the out-of-office boogeyman Cheney, while not mentioning the stasis of two years of Obama’s control of Whitehouse climate policy.
In terms of its focus, it ignores the GOP position’s de facto obstruction of international action by Obama – even the feeble 3.67% Copenhagen pledge will not now be met – according to EPA officials the best they’ll manage is 5% off 2005, which equates to around 0% off the legal 1990 baseline.
Whether Obama is content with that outcome is also not discussed in the article, though the very long trail of his inaction across the board domestically (bar enough to pass the inconsequential Waxman-Markey bill and retain a plausible profile) is surely a matter of central concern to any serious journalist.
Maybe the NYT doesn’t hire serious journalists any more, as they’ve proven unreliable when asked to participate in these Orwellian games ?
Regards,
Lewis
The denier creed is so strong, that even success stories are used to support denialism. It is not uncommon to see commenters cite the ozone hole as a scare tactic – when the problem was recognized and probably mitigated in a global manner.
I have no faith that we will have action on climate change in the next several years – the Republican gains will be too strong, and party unity is valued over true service to the nation and the world.
I will vote in any case, and I encouraged all my students to vote (they get five extra points, which, unfortunately, is a stronger motivation for some of them than participating in democracy.)
Thanks for the post, Joe; it is a good commentary.
Mike Roddy wrote in comment 8:
Republicans would undoubtedly object to the characterization of their party as drifting towards totalitarianism. After all, what they are “drifting” towards — particularly under the influence of the tea party movement is decidedly libertarian — where what they seek to do is diminish the role of government in the lives of its citizens where ever possible — and surely the very opposite of totalitarianism.
However, having been a member of the Objectivist movement and studied various cults (e.g., the Unification Church), I believe part of the confusion lies with the view of totalitarianism as being primarily about politics. It is not. Totalitarianism is fundamentally psychological in nature. It is about control over the mind of the individual and the elimination of all dissent within the group. It is about the elimination of alternate frames of reference that would require a degree of independent judgment on the part of the individual to reach conclusions where frameworks differ.
This is why totalitarianism is so often opposed to religion: an individual’s religion would provide the individual with a different perspective from which to make decisions, one that is independent of the ideology. The Unification Church of Reverend Sun Myung Moon opposes communism and presumably supports the free market. It also seeks to make a descendant of Reverend Moon into a Messianic figure at the head of all-powerful world theocracy. As such it is a form of totalitarianism. And like so many cults it seeks to isolate the individual from alternate frames of reference — including family and friends where they are not already members of the Unification Church.
The Republican Party has been drifting towards a psychological form of totalitarianism for quite some time — with the systematic attempt to quash all dissent. With a view of the world that is fundamentally us vs. them. With the rejection of moderates. And with the rejection of science in favor of ideology, whether it is in terms of evolutionary biology or climatology. And it is a rejection of science that is as profound as any to be found in the political ideologies of the 20th Century.
Moreover, within the Republican Party there are strong currents of religious intolerance — partly the remnants of the Religious Right — which have in part been transformed into something more political in nature by regarding the Constitution as something to be revered presumably along the lines of “original intent” but neither read, studied nor understood. A bit like Young Earth Creationists regard the largely metaphorical book of Genesis, some might add. The market fundamentalism of the Republican Party will — in my view — easily lend itself to what is essentially the historical root of modern totalitarianism: religious fundamentalism that takes control of all aspects of an individual’s life.
Meanwhile, the top movie at the box office in the US right now is “Jackass 3D”, a movie which glorifies stupidity and ignorance.
Hmmm.
Jeff Huggins,
Let us know if NYTimes finally publishes your comments. I put up comments once in the evening as you did that it took over 24 hours for them to post.
If they do not finally post it, then it is interesting that you can attack a columnists view in the comments section, but it appears that if you attack the newspaper’s coverage that is somehow out of bounds, even though the suggested limits to comments are generally profanity and hate speech.
At least the TNYT editorial writers get it.
To Richard Miller (Comment 17),
Thanks for your comment, Richard. Yes, I just checked, and they eventually did post my comment — as Comment 173, shown posted at 3:11 pm. I actually submitted the comment last night, and only nine comments were showing at the time.
Who knows what’s up with them. I’m buying the paper only once or twice a week now, relative to a couple years ago, when I was buying it daily. So, they have considerably less support from me.
Thanks again,
Jeff
Dear Jeff and all,
I recommend the work of the media critic and historian Robert McChesney. Although he has not, to my knowledge, taken up the press’s coverage of climate change, he thinks journalism in this country is dreadful and it is in the process of collapsing. He offers some very good solutions, though these solutions do not appear to be politically possible, especially after the November elections. Anyway, this video of one of his lectures is definitely worth your time.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7972639761921809809#
I feel I have to repost comment #21 from the editorial. This was one of the best bits of verbal “ju jitsu” I’ve read in dealing with the “its a grand left-wing conspiracy” meme from Denialism Inc:
“…I believe that simplest way to explain the modern day scientific method is as competition in an intensely competitive market place of ideas. I know that you climate change deniers are usually free market ideologues. Believe it or not it is totally contradictory to love beyond reason what comes out of the market place for goods and services and yet hate beyond reason what comes out of the market place of ideas that is the realm of practicing scientists.
Each paper published in science, and the entire chain of argument in it, is subject to the scrutiny of all other scientists in a given field. Weak arguments are picked apart and the results are minimized. Results that a large number of scientists think are interesting and strongly argued have high value. Such results are what all working scientists are after.
Certainly, any major theory becomes a huge target since punching a big hole or two in a major theory would make the career of any scientists. Because of the incentive model and the intense, world-wide scrutiny that major results and theories receive, and because of the intense competition to achieve highly valued results, the practice of science is incredibly self-correcting. This is in much the same way that the price of equities in companies is self-correcting. It does not always correct immediately but there has yet to be a theory that did not correct within a generation in the history of science. (These days, results are often corrected with six months.)
Any scientists whose argumentation is consistently weak will develop a poor brand. Conversely, scientists whose results are consistently interesting and whose arguments are consistently strong will develop a strong brand. Yes, this is a perversion of the marketplace just as brands are a perversion of the market place of goods and services. And there are other distortions of the market place of ideas just as there are distortions of the financial market places. But scientists are individual actors looking to maximize their reputation. There can simply be no global conspiracy of thousands of mutually competitive, brilliant people. At this point, the payoffs for truly demonstrating a credible, serious flaw in the general idea of human created global warming are so much greater than for producing one more study supporting it, that you’d have to have a complete misreading of human nature, or an ideologue, or both, not to be impressed by the degree of consensus on this issue.”
What makes more sense, a grand conspiracy of 30,000 college professors, or a rich powerful industry using PR and lobbying to protect its profits?
Rob.C -
That’s quite a peice of writing – well worth the stamp for a paper copy to be sent to the WH marked:- FTAO Pres. B.H.Obama.
One day he’s going to need exactly that simplicity and cogency of argument in putting down the fossil lobby.
Regards,
Lewis
Rod C. wrote in comment 20:
It is beautifully put. One small point, though. Where the author states:
… I think calling a brand a “perversion” of the marketplace is a bit strong. As far as the buyer is concerned the reputation of a business (or scientist) would be a “knowledge-economizing device”.
After all, money isn’t the only currency with which one pays for things. One also pays for things — e.g., knowledge and skills — with one’s time and effort.
If you know that Clorox has a reputation for quality or a consistency of strength. Once you have become familiar with it you are much less likely to burn holes in your clothes. As a result you to can trust it rather than continually test it and use your time and effort for other things. Someone else’s bleach might be of the same quality and strength in a box sitting right next to it in the grocery store. Then again it might not be — and it makes sense to go with what you know — as a matter of individual rationality.
Or let’s say you know that a particular restaurant chain delivers consistency no matter which restaurant in that chain you visit. Then even if you know the chain doesn’t serve the greatest food you are still more likely to go to one of its restaurants when you visit a new city, particularly if don’t have the time to put into studying the alternatives. This is what made McDonald’s such a success — and its why they have what amounts to an encyclopedia — filling a long shelf — on how to make and prepare food, maintain quality of service and otherwise operate a McDonald’s restaurant.
And from the perspective of the seller?
Your brand or reputation is a form of capital — something which you invest in. And once you have acquired a good reputation it is something that you can maintain with much less effort. It isn’t “used up” when used like it would be if it were merely a factor of production. But it can all too easily be squandered or destroyed, making it even more difficult to earn back than it was to earn in the first place.
… or at least this is the view expressed by Thomas Sowell in “Knowledge and Decisions” which is presumably applying insights by Frederick A. Hayek — and as I remember it after perhaps fifteen years.
PS
Anyway, I guess going with the more traditional or conventional reading of economic behavior (e.g., that reputation is a perversity or distortion of the marketplace rather than a knowledge economizing device for the buyer) is itself a knowledge economizing device. Something that permits you to deal with things only at the level required for the sake of your argument so that you can get on to your next major point. ;-)
Lewis C –
A few days ago, in a comment thread similar to this one dealing with GOP deniers, I posted an appreciation of your contributions to this blog, noting the unique perspective you typically provide. It’s of great worth to us here in the US to have that perspective. As you may not have seen it, my post is at
http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/10/national-journal-gop-rejection-of-climate-science-ron-brownstei/#comment-300679
I’m currently looking further into your suggestions regarding Colin Powell, and in future may be able to direct you to some additional information on that topic. Recently at least one other ClimateProgress blogger has echoed your ideas on the subject. The US military command structure seems to be cognizant of the national and global security threats posed by global warming, and some are now hoping that it will step in to provide strong leadership in dealing with the problem in case the country’s political leadership proves ineffectual. Whether Powell could be induced to come out of retirement to assist this process remains to be seen; I suppose it would come down to a question of how well he understands what the science with increasing urgency is now saying. Powell has recently been active in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons, whose long-term threat is probably an order of magnitude smaller than the warming threat. For a look at how forceful and persuasive Powell can be in a face-to-face with a viewing audience, you might want to watch the following video:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/27/colin-powell-nuclear-weapons-are-useless/
Cheers – David
To Richard Miller (Comment 20)
Thanks for your comment, Richard, and thanks for the link and mentioning Robert McChesney. His name rang a bell, and I went to my books to look. As it turns out, I had seen (and bought) a used copy of his book, “Rich Media, Poor Democracy” at a used-book store in Shasta, CA. Only $6.95. After reading the introduction over lunch that day, I decided that I already agreed with him so much, at least in essence, that I didn’t need to read the rest (although I would like to, but time is always limited). In any case, it seems like a great book. But, what struck me is this: Why do such books, and such comments made by growing numbers of people, just “bounce off” and have little impact? The train just keeps a-rollin. In any case, I’ll look forward to watching the link.
Thanks again,
Jeff