The center-right tends to be united on issues of taxes. We’re against them. But there’s a push from some among this coalition – like the R Street Institute, and the newly formed Niskanen Center – to put a tax on carbon. Do they think Americans need to be taxed more? Have they been bought out? Have they suddenly gone insane? The answer to all three is absolutely not. Their arguments are based on the presumption that burdens can be shifted from economically destructive taxes like those on income and capital and put on far less destructive, and perhaps even beneficial, taxes like those on carbon. In theory I agree, but political reality must be taken into consideration.
The economics are sound. The politics are not. The problem is that any gains would only last until the next Democratic majority, which would raise the income/capital taxes right back to their previous level or higher. Then we’ll have our current taxes plus a carbon tax. And that’s a step back, not forward, for advocates of limited government.
I explain more in depth in my recent column for EveryJoe:
To understand where they go wrong, we must first consider the case for a carbon tax. Obviously, supporters start from the assumption that carbon is bad and that we want less of it; if they thought otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion. In economic parlance, they identify carbon production as a negative externality, meaning it places costs on those not involved in the economic transaction from which it was produced…
The most market-friendly solution … is the Pigovian tax. Simply put, by taxing activities responsible for negative externalities, market participants are forced to price in its full costs, thereby reducing supply and correcting a market inefficiency.
…After carbon taxes are collected, conservative supporters argue they can be used to reduce other, more destructive taxes. As mentioned, when you tax something, you get less of it. This means that taxes on things that are good – like work, savings or investment – are particularly harmful to the economy. Replacing taxes on good things with taxes on bad things thus makes a lot of economic sense. Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Friedrich von Hayek
Friedrich von Hayek offered many great insights to the field of economics. An important one came in his 1974 lecture titled, “The Pretense of Knowledge,” in which he criticized the profession of economics for adopting a “scientistic” attitude. That is, economists pretended they could achieve the same sort of precision measuring human affairs as could the physical sciences. Specifically, for economics, “the aspects of the events to be accounted for about which we can get quantitative data are necessarily limited and may not include the important ones.”
Hayek contrasts economics with the physical sciences, where “it is generally assumed, probably with good reason, that any important factor which determines the observed events will itself be directly observable and measurable.” The pretense of definitive scientific knowledge regarding cause and effect of complicated human endeavors led to decades of bad policy and, were he alive today, Hayek would no doubt point to the same issue as plaguing contemporary policymaking (just consider all the hoopla in recent years over spending “multipliers”).
The physical sciences to which Hayek contrasts economics are not without their own pretenses. The natural world, it turns out, is every bit as complicated as human affairs. While we can quantify, observe and test in the physical sciences in ways we cannot quite match for in economics (which by no means suggests there is no value in quantitative analysis), total – or even sufficient – understanding of the complex interactions of just our climate continues to elude us, and the “scientistic” pretensions that we can so adequately command the natural world as to call for a drastic reorder of human society to alter it threatens the same sort of “mess of things” as Hayek sought to clean up in his own profession.
Consider the record of climate models that have, thus far, driven the hysteria over global warming. As it turns out, they have been failing to predict the observed climate record for several decades. So why the blind faith in them? Partly it is the pretense that we can isolate a singular, overwhelming cause to changes in a system so complicated as the Earth’s climate. Partly too, I think, is a public belief in the power of the computer that approaches mysticism. In the minds of many it seems to function like this: Data is collected and inputted into a computer -> something magic happens -> definitive answers arrive. But computer models are only as useful as the understanding of those who create them, and their understanding remains limited by the complexity of the system. Is it theoretically possible to perfectly model the Earth’s climate? I don’t see why not. But it’s not a simple matter of taking measurements and seeing how they interact. Sometimes we don’t even know what variables to measure.
When it comes to climate modeling, the computer is basically just a powerful calculator. What it produces should be taken with the same proper skepticism as any scientific assertion, but that has not happened to date. Despite persistently failing to accurately reflect the known climate, the IPCC and other groups continue to trumpet these climate models as definitive. They are not, but their perception as such explains why every year seems to bring a story like the current 35-year record high in Antarctic sea ice, which has “baffled” scientists.
None of this is to say that we know nothing about the climate, or that science can’t provide meaningful answers or predictions. Rather, it means that we lack even the flimsiest of certainty regarding what we know about the totality of the system to justify the massive reordering of society, and the subsequent dip in human prosperity it requires, that our President and so many others are clamoring for.
It’s that time of year again – when a major natural disaster is dominating the news cycle, and every economic, scientific and political snake oil salesman or huckster comes out of the woodwork to peddle their magical wares. Here are three myths with which the disaster opportunists are trying to swindle you:
1) There’s an economic silver lining to all this destruction because it will spur economic activity. This one isn’t so much trying to sell you anything as it is cheer you up, but its widespread acceptance nevertheless can have devastating policy consequences – like passage of foolish economic “stimulus” bills. This myth is basically just Bastiat’s broken window fallacy:
Paul Krugman is rather infamous for his love of destruction as economic catalyst, crediting as he does the destruction of WWII for ending the Great Depression and having noted the economic good that could come from the 9/11 attacks. And then there’s his belief that what the economy really needs to get turned around is an alien invasion. Krugman is utterly fixated on what is seen – such as the making of bombs or the rebuilding of homes – while he ignores what is unseen – like everything not built so that resources can be used instead to fight little green men.
Krugman is not the only one to fall for this myth. Commentators are quick to highlight the expected economic gains from Hurricane Sandy, with some only concerned that Sandy won’t cause enough destruction, and that hurricanes like it don’t happen regularly enough, to really get the economy rolling.
2) Hurricane Sandy (or whatever the disaster de jour may be) proves that Global Warming is real! In the minds of some, anything that happens today must be more severe than anything that came before, if for no other reason than that it affects them. That sort of narcissism is almost certainly behind the blathering of Meghan McCain, who thinks the wandering of a mere Category 1 hurricane into her northern enclave is proof positive that Republicans are Neanderthal deniers.
The images of Sandy’s flooding brought back memories of a similar–albeit smaller scale– event in Nashville just two years ago. There, unprecedented rainfall caused widespread flooding, wreaking havoc and submerging sections of my hometown. For me, the Nashville flood was a milestone. For many, Hurricane Sandy may prove to be a similar event: a time when the climate crisis—which is often sequestered to the far reaches of our everyday awareness became a reality.
While the storm that drenched Nashville was not a tropical cyclone like Hurricane Sandy, both storms were strengthened by the climate crisis.
…Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come. We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis.
Every major weather event these days is proffered as anecdotal proof of global warming (or “climate change”). But anecdotes are not evidence, and major storms are nothing new. In fact, global hurricane frequency is trending down, and as Patrick Michaels points out, we’re setting records for the longest drought of Cat 3+ hurricanes hitting shore:
It’s been 2,535 days since the last Category 3 storm, Wilma in 2005, hit the beach. That’s the longest period—by far—in the record that goes back to 1900.
But don’t expect any of these facts to stop the reflexive blaming of global warming for all natural disasters.
3) Only Big Government can save us from chaos and natural destruction. Any time destruction lurks, statists can be counted on to furiously construct strawmen for public whipping to placate the frightened masses. The most ridiculous example comes, naturally, from the ever dependable shills of big government at the New York Times, which editorializes that “A Big Storm Requires Big Government,” before going on to outline a list of government functions that comprise probably less than a percent of the federal budget. Good job, New York Times, I’m now convinced that we need a massive welfare state, pointless “green energy” loans, wasteful stimulus bills and a cumbersome and counter productive regulatory structure, all because of a Category 1 hurricane. Well done.
Reason appropriately takes them to task, noting that not only has big government failed, and miserably so, at disaster response in the past, but it actually stood in the way of private action. That’s right, big government – being the angry and jealous God that it is – actively prevented help from other sources during Katrina:
Even as they fumbled their own responses to the disaster, government officials found time to block private relief efforts. The Salvation Army was initially forbidden to send boats to rescue refugees sheltered in one of its facilities, one of the group’s officials told the press. It seems the private relief organization’s efforts didn’t fit the government’s schedule. Likewise, the American Red Cross said. Days after the storm hit, “The state Homeland Security Department had requested — and continues to request — that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane.”
Aaron Broussard, Jefferson Parish president, put it best when he told interviewers, “Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today.”
But in the eyes of some, any failure of government is just proof that it needs more money (success, meanwhile, is proof that it needs more money), and so we get hand wringing over potential, hypothetical or imagined FEMA cuts from the same people who blamed FEMA for everything wrong that happened during Katrina.
The Reason post also notes, as I have here in the past, that there are in fact alternative and better sources of disaster response. This is not to say that government has no role or purpose, as the statist strawman would imply, but that it might be better to only leave government in charge of monitoring, analyzing and disseminating information, while bringing in those who know what they are doing and have actual experience to handle the logistics of rapidly moving goods and services into devastated communities.
Whatever their miracle cure of choice, consumers should cast a wary eye on those who see disaster coming and can only think to lick their chops at the opportunity to advance their agenda.
The Warmmongers like to pretend that all the data supports their non-stop hysteria, and that anyone who disagrees is either ignorant, hates science, or is a dirty liar paid off by the oil industry. Lately, they’ve taken to pointing to current “extreme weather” anecdotes as further proof of AGW. But what does the data say? Dr. John Christy offered testimony to the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee exploring that question. From GlobalWarming.org:
Increasingly, we hear experts blame global warming for bad weather. Most acknowledge that no single weather event can be attributed to global climate change. However, they contend, the pattern of recent events – the sheer number and severity of heat waves, wild fires, droughts, freak storms — is exactly what climate scientists have predicted and must be due to mankind’s fuelish ways. Such assertions, Christy shows, are not based on real data.
One way to measure trends in extreme weather is to compare the number of state record high and low temperatures by decade. Many more state high temperature records were set in the 1930s than in recent decades. Even more surprising, “since 1960, there have been more all-time cold records set than hot records in each decade.”
…One might object that state temperature records are not informative, because the number of data points — 50 — is so small. So Christy also investigated “the year-by-year numbers of daily all-time record high temperatures from a set of 970 weather stations with at least 80 years of record.” He explains: “There are 365 opportunities in each year (366 in leap years) for each of the 970 stations to set a record high (TMax).” Adding the TMax days by year, Christy found that there were several years with more than 6,000 record-setting highs before 1940 but none with record highs above 5,000 after 1954. “The clear evidence is that extreme high temperatures are not increasing in frequency, but actually appear to be decreasing.”
So keep that in mind the next time some media commentator breathlessly attributes “unusual and extreme weather” to global warming.
In the wake of the catastrophic Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado, the usual suspects are gleefullyrubbing their hands at the prospect of using the tragedy to advance the cult of Global Warming. But while the doom-mongers are quick to blame global warming, while only begrudgingly acknowledging that anecdotes are not scientific data, the real man-made problem goes largely ignored: litigious environmentalists.
Fires are part of our natural environment, and have been long before there were any humans to burn fossil fuels. Fires clear out old, dead plants and make way for new life. But humans quite understandably don’t like uncontrolled natural fires, because they also kill us. But we simply fight to reduce the regular natural fires in order to protect ourselves, we actually make major, catastrophic fires more likely. Without the clearing of dead plants, fuel for major fires builds up over time to dangerous levels. Man’s solution to this unintended consequence of our domestication of nature is to engage in our own efforts to prevent the accumulation of such kindling. At least, some of us do. Unfortunately, environmentalists fight to thwart these efforts at every turn, with disastrous consequences.
Scientists with the U.S. Forest Service found in a recent study that unnatural overgrowth in trees is responsible for most wildfires in the U.S:
Thinning overgrown forests to a more natural rate of between 50 and 100 trees per acre would be the most effective way of reducing the number and severity of intense wildfires, the study concludes.
The Forest Service study is the largest ever conducted on fuel treatment effectiveness. The study provides a scientific basis for establishing quantitative guidelines for reducing stand densities and surface fuels. The total number of optimal trees per acre in any given forest will depend on species, terrain, and other factors, according to Forest Service researchers.
David L. Peterson, a researcher with the U.S. Forest Service‘s Pacific Northwest Research Station and one of the coauthors of the study, reports there are two reasons to engage in forest thinning. Removing smaller trees from a forest stand promotes the growth and vigor of the remaining larger trees. Forest thinning also reduces the continuity of live and dead plant material (fuels) from the soil surface into the forest canopy. The latter practice reduces the likelihood a wildfire will propagate into a crown fire.
Yet efforts to engage in this life-saving practices face significant opposition from environmentalist and anti-logging groups. A GAO study in 2003 found that, of the thinning projects open to appeal, 59% were challenged by environmentalists. Even more appalling, “Forest Service officials estimate they spend nearly half their time, and $250 million each year, preparing for the appeals and procedural challenges launched by activists.”
In all likelihood these challenges have only increased since 2003. Just scanning recent news reveals a number of such frivolous suits being filed across the country. Just last month the Forest Service was calling for more natural fires. AP described the current state of U.S. forests thusly: “A combination of decades of vigorous fire suppression and the waning of the timber industry over environmental concerns has left many forests a tangled, overgrown mess, subject to the kind of superfires that are now regularly consuming hundreds of homes and millions of acres.”
So the next time an environmentalist tries to blame man for causing a fire by burning fossil fuels, tell him that he’s right, people are indeed to blame. Namely, it’s the environmentalists who routinely oppose and obstruct anything – whether it be logging, controlled fires or other thinning initiatives – that could reduce the risk of superfires.
So much for an ice-free Arctic. Henry Hudson’s long-ago dream of a Northwest Passage that would link England to the Orient by sea will have to wait another century as Mother Earth gives him the cold shoulder. Again.
From Real Science: “1979 was the peak year for Arctic ice, yet 2012 has more ice around Greenland and Alaska than 1979 did.”
Same date satellite data seems to show that Iceland and everywhere else is iced over this year when they were feeling a little green 33 years ago.
Okay, this one is a cheat; unlike all the other posts in the We’re All Gonna Die! series which feature actual hysterical claims of doom, this is not an end times prediction. This is actually an anti-doom story. But this did seem like a good time to make that nice, round number 40th post in the series, highlighting yet more evidence that ought to shame the doom-mongers.
Of course, if history is any guide, it’s only a matter of time before the excessive ice of global cooling becomes the new melting ice of global warming (which is itself the new global cooling, which I guess will then make global cooling the new global cooling – oh what a tangled web of hysteria we weave!).
Speaking Aug. 4 at the Aspen Institute, Gore claimed global warming critics have used the same tactics allegedly used by the tobacco industry to prevent needed anti-smoking regulations for four decades, according to The Colorado Independent, a liberal website.
“The model of media manipulation used then, Gore said, ‘was transported whole cloth into the climate debate. And some of the exact same people — I can go down a list of their names — are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes. Bullshit! It may be sun spots. Bullshit! It’s not getting warmer. Bullshit!’ Gore exclaimed,” the Independent reported.
“’When you go and talk to any audience about climate, you hear them washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again,’ he continued. ‘There’s no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened. People have no idea! … It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the g—–n word climate. It is not acceptable. They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an agreement on it.'”
Al Gore’s sub-prime science has been downgraded, and he’s not taking it well.
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.
“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”
When I debate people on this issue I typically make the point that the computer models are inaccurate. The surest test of any model is to give it data from the recent past and then see if it can accurately predict the current, observable conditions. The climate models cannot.
Now, perhaps, we know why. Skepticism scores another point over alarmism.
Sunday’s tornado in Joplin, Missouri was historic:
The National Weather Service says the tornado that swept through the southwest Missouri town of Joplin was a highest-rated EF5 storm, with winds greater than 200 mph.
The twister that struck Sunday was the deadliest single tornado to touchdown since the National Weather Service began keeping official records in 1950. It’s the 8th-deadliest single twister in U.S. history.
Needless to say, this has the Warmists in a tizzy. In a snark-filled op-ed for the Washington Post (Hat-tip: Reason), environmentalist Bill McKibben sarcastically observes:
Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.
It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. … But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.
If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest — resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi — could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.
Diane Sawyer also suggestively mused, “Is this it, this is the evidence of a kind of preview of life under global warming?”
A top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rejected claims by environmental activists that the outbreak of tornadoes ravaging the American South is related to climate change brought on by global warming.
Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said warming trends do create more of the fuel that tornadoes require, such as moisture, but that they also deprive tornadoes of another essential ingredient: wind shear.
“We know we have a warming going on,” Carbin told Fox News in an interview Thursday, but added: “There really is no scientific consensus or connection [between global warming and tornadic activity]….Jumping from a large-scale event like global warming to relatively small-scale events like tornadoes is a huge leap across a variety of scales.”
With this latest tragic disaster, Carbin has now been forced to shoot the nonsense down once again, this time by pointing out that there has not even been an increase in tornadoes in 2011, rather they have just hit more populated areas:
Carbin: “There is no indication of an upward trend in either intensity or numbers. We’ve had a lot more reports of tornadoes, but most of those tornadoes are actually the weak tornadoes, the F-0. When you take out the F-0 tornadoes from the long-term record, there is very little increase in the total number of tornadoes, and we don’t see any increase in the number of violent tornadoes. It’s just that these things are coming, and they’re very rare and extreme, and they happen to be hitting populated areas. So right now, no indication of an upward trend in the strong to violent tornadoes that we’re seeing.”
But don’t expect the facts to stop Warmists like Bill McKibben from drawing connections where none exist.
Extreme tornadoes have killed 300+ in the South, which to the typical environmentalist wacko is the perfect time to remind us that Global Warming climate change is going to kill us all. Or at least it means doom for those of us who commit thought crimes against Gaia, according to Think Progress (Hat-tip: Yid With Lid):
The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.
Another doom-monger writing at the Huffington Post is even more direct. The cost of “denying climate change,” we are told in the headline, is “accelerating climate disruptions, death and destruction.” Cats and dogs… living together… mass hysteria!
I serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.
I serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.