Real Climate Denialists Deny Cost of Remedy

Politicians who exaggerate the effects of climate change are as much in “denial” of science as those who reject the phenomenon come what may–more so, in fact, since they exhort the public to “believe” in something they themselves can rarely explain.

Case in point: President Barack Obama, taking Texas governor Rick Perry to task for “denying” climate change even though his “state is on fire.”

Let’s put aside, for a moment, the president’s appalling use of an ongoing disaster for political purposes, and focus on the scientific claim he is making: that Texas wildfires are the result of climate change (which in turn is the result of human use of fossil fuels–which, when burned, release gases into the atmosphere that trap heat and warm the earth’s surface).

What is the scientific basis for that claim? None, according to the government’s own leading climate change scientist. Scientists cannot yet link specific weather phenomena–such as the severe Texas droughts–to global climate trends over the long run. We simply don’t have computer models of weather or climate that are powerful enough to explain fully, much less predict accurately, how worldwide changes affect specific regions. Some scientists claim that we are seeing weather become more “extreme,” but even assuming that’s true, it’s still difficult to establish a direct link to the Texas wildfires beyond recurring events like La Niña.

Here’s a summary of what we know about global climate, after we’ve studied it for decades. First: that the average surface temperature of the earth has been rising somewhat over the past century or so, and is likely to rise further–though estimates vary as to how much it will rise. Second, that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have been rising since the industrial revolution–and there are other by-products of fossil fuel use that may tend to cause cooling rather than warming. We don’t yet fully understand the degree to which greenhouse gases are a causal factor in rising temperatures. And third, there are additional factors affecting global surface temperature, other than greenhouse gases, that we are just beginning to understand.

In other words, our planet’s climate is an extremely and wonderfully complex system that we cannot pretend to have mastered. It is shrouded in uncertainty. Even if we assume the alleged scientific “consensus” on climate change really is a consensus, and a correct one at that, it is unclear anything we could do–or refrain from doing–would maintain global surface temperatures at familiar levels. And yet the president wants us to take measures that have certain, and heavy, costs to counteract climate change.

Ultimately, the issue of climate change does not simply depend on the scientific questions of whether it is happening, or whether it is being affected by human activity, but also on the policy question of what we can do about it and at what cost. Given our current (lack of) knowledge about climate, if weather is indeed becoming more “extreme,” it is almost certainly cheaper and fairer to plan for extreme weather than to shut down entire industries (assuming we could convince developing nations to do the same).

The real climate “denialists” are those who refuse to face the most basic cost-benefit analysis about their policy prescriptions–asserting instead that the world is coming to an end and therefore we have to be willing to bear the infinite costs of saving it.

Rick Perry’s position on climate change is actually closer to the scientific view than Obama’s propagandist version. Perry is skeptical of a phenomenon that scientists cannot yet fully explain or predict. He is skeptical about imposing heavy costs on workers, consumers, and investors in the absence of any clear idea of the benefits, and when the most immediate effect is to redistribute wealth from one politically-favored industry to another, or from the United States to our international competitors.

There may also be more immediate causes of the Texas wildfires than climate change–such as federal environmental policies and judgments that restrict the use of water for irrigation purposes–but these rarely come up as part of the political discussion.

Instead, we are subjected to one-sided hysterics. Case in point: last week, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs took me to task on Twitter for what he deemed was an insufficient correction of a post earlier this month on Big Government.

One of our contributors wrote about a recent study, reported in a letter to Nature, describing the possible effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation. Many conservatives were excited by the study, because it seems to provide an alternative explanation for variations in the earth’s climate other than human emissions of “greenhouse gases” through the burning of fossil fuels.

The mistake in the post was that a researcher who was not, in fact, involved in the study was listed as an author. The error only came to our attention several days after requests for correction were made, because most of our editors had been traveling at the time. After a day in which several media outlets–egged on by Media Matters–tried to make an issue out of the post, we checked it, contacted the author, corrected it, and added an introductory note that corrected what amounted to a minor citation error.

But that wasn’t enough for Johnson, who wanted us to remove the post altogether, alleging that it misrepresented the scientific study itself, because the post stated that the Nature letter is “the definitive study on Global Warming that proves the dominant controller of temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere is due to galactic cosmic rays and the sun, rather than by man.”

I had taken that as Street’s opinion about the study. Johnson interpreted it as a deliberate misstatement of fact by Street, which it was not: in my view, Street was not purporting to represent the study’s conclusions, but its implications. I didn’t agree with Street that the study proves that the climate change theory is false–rarely will a single scientific study prove or disprove an entire theory–but I understood that his argument was that the study could be one more element of (dis)proof in an debate that is as much about politics as it is about science. We don’t police opinion on our sites, and I let the piece stand–for which Johnson called me a “liar.”

When I reminded Johnson of his own “denialist” past, he responded that he had once been as “ignorant” as me, but had seen the light. I don’t pretend to be a climate expert, but I do have a degree in environmental science, so my views on the subject do have some basis in knowledge. It would be nice to see those who patrol conservative opinion on climate apply the same standard to the president and the left when they make blatantly false claims about science for the sole purpose of scaring up campaign cash.