The GOP Vs. Global Warming

(The New Republic)  This column was written by Jonathan Chait.

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Last year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: "Do you think it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?" Of the respondents, 23 percent said yes, 77 percent said no. In the year since that poll, of course, global warming has seized a massive amount of public attention. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a study, with input from 2,000 scientists worldwide, finding that the certainty on man-made global warming had risen to 90 percent.

So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results? Only 13 percent of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved. As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are actually getting more skeptical. Al Gore's recent congressional testimony on the subject, and the chilly reception he received from GOP members, suggest the discouraging conclusion that skepticism on global warming is hardening into party dogma. Like the notion that tax cuts are always good or that President Bush is a brave war leader, it's something you almost have to believe if you're an elected Republican.

How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It's certainly true that many of them are. Leading global warming skeptic Representative Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), for instance, was the subject of a fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago. The bottom line is that his relationship to the energy industry is as puppet relates to hand.

But the financial relationship doesn't quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.

The truth is more complicated — and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement.

Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

National Review magazine, with its popular Web site, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is "Planet Gore." The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue.

Meanwhile, Republicans who do believe in global warming get shunted aside. Nicole Gaudiano of Gannett News Service recently reported that Representative Wayne Gilchrest asked to be on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio refused to allow it unless Gilchrest would say that humans have not contributed to global warming. The Maryland Republican refused and was denied a seat.

Representatives Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md. and Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., both research scientists, also were denied seats on the committee. Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification; if the GOP allowed Republican researchers who accept the scientific consensus to sit on a global warming panel, it would kill the party's strategy of making global warming seem to be the pet obsession of Democrats and Hollywood lefties.

The phenomenon here is that a tiny number of influential conservative figures set the party line; dissenters are marginalized, and the rank and file go along with it. No doubt something like this happens on the Democratic side pretty often too. It's just rare to find the phenomenon occurring in such a blatant way.

You can tell that some conservatives who want to fight global warming understand how the psychology works and are trying to turn it in their favor. Their response is to emphasize nuclear power as an integral element of the solution. Senator John McCain, who supports action on global warming, did this in a recent National Review interview. The technique seems to be surprisingly effective. When framed as a case for more nuclear plants, conservatives seem to let down their guard.

In reality, nuclear plants may be a small part of the answer, but you couldn't build enough to make a major dent. But the psychology is perfect. Conservatives know that lefties hate nuclear power. So, yeah, Rush Limbaugh listeners, let's fight global warming and stick it to those hippies!

By Jonathan Chait
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[Father_of_Catclaw]

In the news today:

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer ? Thu Aug 20, 6:02 pm ET

WASHINGTON ? Steve Kramer spent an hour and a half swimming in the ocean Sunday ? in Maine. The water temperature was 72 degrees ? more like Ocean City, Md., this time of year. And Ocean City's water temp hit 88 degrees this week, toasty even by Miami Beach standards.

Kramer, 26, who lives in the seaside town of Scarborough, said it was the first time he's ever swam so long in Maine's coastal waters. "Usually, you're in five minutes and you're out," he said.

It's not just the ocean off the Northeast coast that is super-warm this summer. July was the hottest the world's oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping.

The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records. That was 1.1 degree higher than the 20th century average, and beat the previous high set in 1998 by a couple hundredths of a degree. The coolest recorded ocean temperature was 59.3 degrees in December 1909.

Meteorologists said there's a combination of forces at work this year: A natural El Nino system just getting started on top of worsening man-made global warming, and a dash of random weather variations. The resulting ocean heat is already harming threatened coral reefs. It could also hasten the melting of Arctic sea ice and help hurricanes strengthen.

How can this be true?

[rchigginsjr]

Global warming is not bad. It is simply change from the status quo. Our last period of global warming (900 ad to 1350 ad) resulted in greater nutrition in northern Europe and the average size of an adult male to grow from 5' to 6' tall. The alternative is global cooling. The last mini-iceage (1400 ad to 1850 ad) led to black death, the destruction of the norse farmers and their ice free farms on Greenland, and poor nutrition in Northern Europe - a return to 5' heights. The sea levels will not increase by 20' but rather 2' world wide.

Change is constant. And don't forget the influence of sunspots on our global temperature!

[co2max]

To all of you who tirelessly link the anti-AGW "Republican Right" with the anti-Evolution movement, please KNOCK IT OFF!!

By doing this, you're just dodging the issue at hand. Creation science is even more phoney, stupid, misguided, laughable, idiotic (need I go on?), irritating and evil that the Global Warming panic-mongering going on. Lets stick to the topic, please.

Now, many of you who deride the "Right" position of human causality accuse us/them of having concern only for the bottom line with regard to the potential damage it poses for accepting the theory and implementing a solution. You should be aware by now that Republican, master-free-enterprise opportunists that we are, will make money on the deal whether we continue with present course, or get forced into adopting sweeping legistlated social/lifestyle/business changes. In view of that, you must realize that the global warming campaign has little relevance to economics. It comes down to quality of life and maintaining a functioning society. Consider the implications relative to refrigeration as a single example, if draconian measures in put into place to reduce the carbon signature of our society . . . that has huge impact on medical care, food storeage and transport and architecture, to name just a few.

[drinuk]

Taking the concept of Peak Oil into consideration, we should of course cut down our use as much as is possible. A 1.5 or 2.00 litre engine is quite sufficient for the average person and diesel is far more economical. Furthermore we could stop the destruction of the Rain Forest quite easily if there was the will to do so. However ! this whole hyped up subject is a scam, it follows Bird Flu and all the other panics we have been subjected too over the past few years. Make no mistake someone, somewhere is earning big bucks with this nonsense. Please remember, the first people on the American continent fifteen thousand years ago travelled across the Atlantic going from one ice pack to another, all the way from southern France in canoe's. We and the world have always evolved and will continue to do so. Ingore this money making C R A P !

[jimfinster]

OlGreyGhost:

Why is it a faulty hypothesis?

[fizzal-2009]

If you think global warmming is caused by a lot of automobiles cut the parking lots in half plant trees too produce oxygen and foce car pooling. Stop condemning property too widen roads and eliminateing tax paying properties.

[olgreyghost]

"And like the dark ages, we have our Copernicus to tell us what science can prove." bigsk8fan

And those who know the truth of Global Warming are like Copernicus rallying against the establishment science myth which is held as a proven fact and not the faulty (and politically motivated) hypothesis that it is.

[dan9111]

The global warming boondoogle is not so much a problem with conservative-disbelief, but with neither side explaining their techniques for determining priority.

If the Democrats are so concerned about human suffering caused by global warming, why are they advocating suffering originating from other sources? Why theft(taxation)? Why violence against free-speech(political correctness)? Why the war against fathers(more women w/custody & free-passes on child abuse)?

If the Republicans are so concerned about certainty of facts, and impacts on the economy, why no consistency? Why murders in funny costumes(warfare)? Why blatant promotion of rape(prison system)? Why the violence against free-markets(drug wars)?

It's a waste of time to deal with these people in any rational exchange of ideas. You will only have them stare into space and talk about how we "need" to do this or that, as if we are obligated to kill for others. Global Warming (valid or not) becomes nothing but yet another political weapon.

[tommancuso]

This is less about Global Warming than about the reluctance to admit not knowing something or not thinking of it first. The Republican/Religious Right who collectively calls itself conservative, is skeptical, even cynical, about so many issues including any that may be argued by what it sees as Democrat/Liberal/Progressive/Atheist groups. "Global Warming is a crock", I heard a Dallas radio talk show host say last week. So is Evolution. So is the theory of relativity. Next, it will be gravity...

Yet the RRR accepts the story of Genesis without question. It accepts words allegedly spoken by strange foreigners two millennia ago, but not the words of learned scholars today. And of course, in large part to blame is the current administration, who has made so many blunders, admitted none and promoted anti-intellectualism in America. They have done this, not by accident, but by plan, and are proud of it. We have a long way to go to get back to 1960.

[zoroastor]

People on both sides of the issue have trouble understanding the difference between corelation and cause.