Few of us who comment on the climate debate know the science involved, but there is more to it than just the science. Claiming to be “beyond left and right” I lean towards a lot of economic thought, but one certainly would expect science to be beyond the constraints of left and right thinking. Scientists are almost by definition skeptics.

My skepticism is based on the language of the radical proponents who treat skeptics like religious heretics. They immediately claim that skeptics are all in the pockets of the carbon fuel industries, when in fact the carbon fuel interests often support the climate change crowd.  When large established industries support such causes and the regulations they spawn, they too often use them to suppress competitions or otherwise seek a market advantage.  Nor should we ignore the influence that government funds have on scientists who are paid to reach preordained conclusions.

History has plenty of dire predictions from the well credentialed that did not come true.   And while we laymen are told to listent to the experts, this usually means listening to just the experts one side wants us to hear.  Furthermore, the ‘experts’ are most often wrong in a field where the variables are infinite and the environment is unstable.  This may be more true of climatology than most other hard scientific fields.

I count myself among the skeptics.  I just do not know enough about the science to state with any certainty that man caused climate change is either true or not, or what the causes and effects of changes in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are.

S. Fred Singer writes in The American Thinker, Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name, 2/129/12.

Excerpts:

In my view, warmistas and deniers are very similar in some respects — at least their extremists are.  They have fixed ideas about climate, its change, and its cause.  They both ignore “inconvenient truths” and select data and facts that support their preconceived views.  Many of them are also quite intolerant and unwilling to discuss or debate these views — and quite willing to think the worst of their opponents.

I have concluded that we can accomplish very little with convinced warmistas and probably even less with true deniers.  So we just make our measurements, perfect our theories, publish our work, and hope that in time the truth will out.

• “The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” -Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
• “The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” -Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
• “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” -Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace
• “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, First chairman of the IPCC
• “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” -Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

Arnold King writes in The American, Economics: A Million Mutinies Now, 2/27/12.

Excerpt:

The conspiracy theorists and behavioral economists appeal to those who dislike economics. As economists, we remind people of some unpleasant truths. Such unpleasant truths are deserving of respect, even if not all economists are.

One unpleasant truth is that resources are finite. As individuals, we would each like unlimited access to medical services without having to pay for them. But economists will point out that this is not possible, and instead hard choices must be made. It would be easier to make health policy if resources were not finite, and people are understandably resentful when the consequences of finite resources are spelled out.

Another unpleasant truth is that the “intention heuristic” does not work on a large scale. The “intention heuristic” is to judge the morality of a policy by its intentions, without regard to its consequences. Instead, an economist will point out that a higher minimum wage might harm low-skilled workers, even though the intention is the opposite. It would be a lot easier to assess policy if the “intention heuristic” were reliable, and people are understandably resentful when the problems with that heuristic are exposed.

Arnold’s article concisely describes the economics factions in a brief chart.  He makes a point the people seemed disappointed in the profession because they do not accurately predict the future and they do not make magic. Predictions are most wrong during the most extreme periods when the need for accuracy is most valued.  Efforts to contrive a unified theory of human behavior are dashed upon the rocks of human evolution, technological progress, and delusional certainty.

Good economics deals with a reality that often contradicts political promises.  A good  economist  accepts reality. Political ideologues do not.

From the Weekly Standard, Why the Climate Skeptics Are Winning Too many of their opponents are intellectual thugs.

Excerpts:

Turns out the greens take in much more money from fossil fuel interests than the skeptics do.

The Gleick episode exposes again a movement that disdains arguing with its critics, choosing demonization over persuasion and debate. A confident movement would face and crush its critics if its case were unassailable, as it claims.

From Defining Ideas, A Hoover Institution Journal, Charles Blahous writes The Dark Side of the Payroll Tax Cut

Excerpt:

The recent shift to income-tax-financing embodied in President Obama’s payroll tax cut policy cannot be said to represent a bipartisan agreement with this new policy view. Instead, the payroll tax cut was first proposed on the basis that it was necessary for economic stimulus, and later extended with the argument that doing otherwise would impose a painful tax increase on working Americans. The fact that the law also contained a provision to begin significant subsidization of Social Security with income taxes only belatedly gained the notice of the press, and not yet of the general public.

A critical milestone has nevertheless been passed. Beginning in December 2010, and continuing through to the present time, the federal government has embraced the policy of committing income taxes to subsidize benefits beyond those that Social Security itself can finance. Unless this policy is rapidly reversed, readers of this article who pay income taxes should brace themselves for the substantial new taxes they will soon be paying to bail out Social Security.

From Carpe Diem Mark Perry Posts Don Boudreaux Responds to O’Reilly’s Nitwitery-

Excerpt:

So I ask: are you guilty of an offense against those many Americans who – as a result of your responding to market signals regarding the value of your services – must now pay higher prices for the privilege of hearing your commentary?

A Follow up on the Gibson Guitar raid under the Lacey Act:

The GM bailout is touted as a huge success for progressive government bailout of failed capitalist ideology.  None of the GOP candidates seem capable of challenging this view.  Everything comes at a cost and the cost of this bailout is very high, both in real current dollars and in the future cost of the moral hazard that will infect those large enterprises that will continue to make decisions based on the backstop of their government mother.

Perhaps this bailout was a bailout of the unions more than the company.  One wonders if this would have happened if GM was a non union shop such as steel producer Nucor.  The usurping of the bankruptcy law to save union jobs has to leave future investors a little wary, and could increase the cost of capital for large union shops.  While we think of just those evil Wall Street bankers who were stiffed, one of the investors burned by the Bush/ Obama bailout was the Indiana teacher’s retirement fund.

Fortunately The Wall Street Journal was up to the task of challenging the prevailing wisdom of the bailouts in Halftime in Detroit, 2/25/12.

Excerpts:

The bailouts worked, the story goes, because General Motors and Chrysler still exist and their stocks are trading above $0. Yet existence is a lousy measure of success, given that the car makers were able to shed billions of dollars of debt and labor obligations in their government-managed and -financed bankruptcies.

Ordinary bankruptcy would have been a trauma, no question. It would have meant pain for laid-off workers and exacerbated the recession, even if the auto makers posed no systemic risk. The taxpayer tab for guaranteed pensions would have been expensive.

But the key point is that Chapter 11 would have provided an orderly workout, giving the auto makers the legal protection to clean up balance sheets, modify contracts and restructure under due process. The steel industry reorganized itself through bankruptcy a little over a decade ago, rationalizing its capacity and labor agreements. American Airlines is the latest legacy carrier to enter bankruptcy, and the planes are still in the air.

Even Steve Rattner, who led the auto task force and is its most ardent defender, conceded to the Detroit News in December that “We didn’t ask any active worker to cut his or her pay, we didn’t ask them to sacrifice any of their pension and we maybe could have asked them to do a little bit more.”

Thus the bailout become a tool for less discipline, not more, when Chrysler entered bankruptcy with $8.1 billion in government financing and GM with $30.1 billion. The government became the majority shareholder in the latter and the UAW in the former. Taxpayers still own 26% of GM, and shares will need to rise to $53 from their current $26 to recoup the Bush-Obama investment.

However things shake out, it will be only a fraction of the true costs in precedent and politicized investment. The bailouts signaled that major companies with union labor are too politically big to fail and undermined confidence in the rule of law. More troubling, the conversion of Detroit from an indirect to transparent Washington client continues to distort the auto market.