ClimateGate and Credibility

The Washington Post reported in mid-December that Obama and scientists had taken a hit in a recent poll:

There's also rising public doubt and growing political polarization about what scientists have to say on the environment, and a widespread perception that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether global warming is happening.

In early January, Eric S. Raymond identified this phenomenon as the collapse of elite authority:

In yesterday's New York Times, David Brooks wrote perceptively about the burgeoning populist revolt against the “educated classes”. Brooks was promptly slapped around by various blogosphere essayists such as Will Collier, who noted that Brooks’s column reads like a weaselly apologia for the dismal failures of the “educated classes” in the last couple of decades.

Our “educated classes” cannot bring themselves to come to grips with the fact that fundamentalist Islam has proclaimed war on us. They have run the economy onto recessionary rocks with overly-clever financial speculation and ham-handed political interventions, and run up a government deficit of a magnitude that has never historically resulted in consequences less disastrous than hyperinflation. And I’m not taking conventional political sides when I say these things; Republicans have been scarcely less guilty than Democrats.

In the first month of a new decade, unemployment among young Americans has cracked 52% and we’re being officially urged to believe that an Islamic suicide bomber trained by Al-Qaeda in Yemen was an “isolated extremist”.

One shakes one’s head in disbelief. Is there anything our “educated classes” can’t f*ck up, any reality they won’t deny? Will Collier fails, however to ask the next question: why did they fail?

The short answer is that they fail because they commit what Friedrich von Hayek called the fatal conceit:

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Green Issues

Green issues like cap and trade and "green jobs" will be featured in conservative attacks of liberals in this year's Congressional races. This is because climategate, glaciergate, and other seeming frauds of environmental science have undermined the public's faith in global warming. Candidates that have tied their careers to green issues will pay a price at the ballot box. One such candidate is Russ Carnahan (D-MO).

Eric S. Raymond identifies three groups that inadvertently enable each others groupthink. He places politicians like Carnahan in the "green-shirts" group. Here's his post about naming and shaming the AGW fraudsters:

First, the scientists. Most are caught up in, or struggling against, an error cascade of humongous proportions.... This is not conspiracy, it’s a result of a tendency to use seniority or authority as a shortcut when it’s technically difficult to evaluate evidence and socially difficult to be skeptical. All humans do this, even scientists.

Next, the Gaianists – term I made up for people in whom “Save the Earth!” has psychologically substituted for traditional religion (in more or less chiliastic forms). They mean well, they really do; they recycle as an act of virtue, they worry about composting and buying local produce — and they’re totally subject to being manipulated by the other players, which is important since most of the action is going on in democracies....

Next, the green-shirts. These are political hacks of all varieties who just love the ideas of more carbon taxes, more regulation, and the general expansion of state power, especially if they can posture as virtuous eco-saviors while they’re arranging this. They’re not a conspiracy either, just a bunch of careerists who compete for the Gaianists as a voting bloc.

Russ Carnahan supported cash for clunkers and cap and trade while directing $90 million of your stimulus dollars into his brother's windfarm business. Then there's Carnahan's 2007 climate change trip. His whirlwind tour hit several vacation hot spots: Italy, New Zealand, the South Pole, Australia, and Hawaii—all to save the environment.

Head of Greenpeace in UK calls for Rajendra Pachauri to Resign

Walter Russell Mead's blog reported UK Greenpeace Chief Calls on Pachauri to Resign: Al Gore Still Silent:

As the director of Greenpeace UK puts it: “The IPCC needs to regain credibility. Is that going to happen with Pachauri [as chairman]? I don’t think so. We need someone held in high regard who has extremely good judgment and is seen by the global public as someone on their side.”

That's interesting because there are about ten different addresses in the East Anglia CRU ClimateGate emails that end with "greenpeace.org", so Greenpeace is (relatively) tight with the ClimateGate crowd. The fact that the UK's Greenpeace is moving to distance itself from the IPCC's Pachauri indicates a level of scientific integrity within Greenpeace that I had not expected. One wonders if this whiff of sanity will enlighten Greenpeace in the US or lead to a schism.

Unreal...

I just saw this over at the Young Democrats of St Louis website:

But first let's have some fun with Congressman Russ Carnahan.

WTH!?! Stealing the mission statement of the St Louis Tea Party Coalition like that... Shameless. Don't you lefties have any original thoughts?

ClimateGate Fallout

Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center, says you should be steamed:

Climategate reveals how predetermined political agendas shaped science rather than the other way around. It is high time to question the true agenda of the scientists now on the hot seat and to bring skeptics back into the public debate.

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

There appears to be no increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the last 150 years:

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

State's Rights

Margaret Carlson writes that the Tea Party may be too hot to handle:

The National Tea Party Convention at Opryland in Nashville, Tenn., this week is unraveling. And no wonder. Herding cats is never easy, and a convention, as opposed to demonstrations, is antithetical to the anti-establishment Tea Party philosophy.

Who could hope to corral the disparate passions of Birchers and birthers, gold bugs, strict constructionists, secessionists, militiamen, vaccine deniers, anti-papists and flat-earthers? They collectively obscure the more silent majority of those legitimately concerned that America has lost its way.

It's true that there are a slew of strongly held beliefs that add distinct flavors to each of the many tea party organizations; however, as a movement, it is very narrowly defined. It's about restoring the 10th Amendment and state's rights, and, to a lesser extent, ending entrenched power and restoring fiscal responsibility. Tea Partiers don't always realize this. Sometimes they let their policy preferences out of the bag and contention ensues.

The State's Rights message should appeal across the political spectrum. If the Federal Government is checked and states gain power and standing, we will see conservative policies implemented in Texas and liberal policies in New York. What we cannot yet say is which state will implement the best policies; however, after ten or twenty years of conservative rule in Texas and liberal rule in New York, we'll be able to draw some conclusions based on crime rates, unemployment, taxes, life expectancy, GDP, income, etc.

This is why the Tea Parties must stay on message: state's rights. It's about restoring the Laboratory of Democracy.

Americans Worry about More Government Regulation

Gallup reports that Americans are leery of too much government regulation:

At a time when the debate over the optimal role of government involvement in regulating business is a prominent policy debate, new Gallup polling shows that 57% of Americans are worried that there will be too much government regulation of business...

Healthcare and State Sovereignty

On Tuesday, February 2nd, the Missouri Senate will consider SCR 34. This resolution is being sponsored by State Senator Jim Lembke. The legislation "reaffirms Missouri's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment and demands that the federal government stop all activities outside the scope of their constitutionally-delegated powers."

Missouri is not alone in asserting its sovereignty. As the Washington Post reports, most states are trying to find ways to ban mandatory health insurance:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Although President Barack Obama's push for a health care overhaul has stalled, conservative lawmakers in more than two-thirds of the states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates.
. . .
"We need to move ahead no matter what kind of maneuvering continues in Washington, D.C.," said Missouri Sen. Jane Cunningham, a Republican from suburban St. Louis.
. . .
"They are merely symbolic gestures," said Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University. "If this Congress were to pass an individual mandate, and if it is constitutional - which I believe it is - the express rule under the supremacy clause (of the U.S. Constitution) is that the federal law prevails."

Michael Dorf's point about whether or not the healthcare legislation is constitutional is exactly why these efforts are not "symbolic gestures." When the constitutionality of a law is brought before the Supreme Court, the actions of the states often inform the opinions of the Justices. The point of state sovereignty movement is to bolster the tenth amendment in the eyes of the court so that state's rights are given greater weight in their opinions. Healthcare is merely the vehicle for this broader constitutional battle.

Runaway Train

Wendell Cox writes in the WSJ about the runaway subsidy train [emphasis added]:

In the other corridors where the administration plans to spend money—such as Charlotte to Raleigh and Chicago to St. Louis—projected train speeds won't be much faster than what the fastest trains in the 1930s were able to do. Some trains then topped 80 mph. As a result, car trips will normally be as fast door to door, and they will be far less costly than taking the train and then renting a car.

There is no need to subsidize intercity travel. Flyers pay for virtually all of the costs of running the airline system, including airports and air traffic control. Gasoline taxes and highway tolls built and maintain intercity roadways, and they also support mass transit with $10 billion in subsidies annually. Intercity buses require no taxpayer funds.

Only rail requires heavy subsidies. At the end of the day, the great danger is that true high-speed rail could cost taxpayers even more than the tens of billions in subsidies that have been paid to Amtrak since the 1970s.

Mr. Obama said in Tampa last week that we are "falling behind" other countries in high-speed rail. With a record budget deficit, it makes sense to fall behind in spending on high-speed rail that we don't need with money we don't have.