The Concession Question

When people say that there’s a hoax about global warming, what do they mean? Do they mean that there is no evidence that temperatures are increasing? Probably not — no one I know disputes that fact, although there are serious question marks over the reliability of the surface temperature measurements. Yet the satellite record is clear that the world is warming.

No, what is objected to is the idea that global warming will be catastrophic unless we do something about it now that involves a complete abandonment of affordable energy and a return to central planning. As Margaret Thatcher, who was the first world leader to express concern about global warming, said, global warming is proving to be “a marvelous excuse for international socialism.” It’s that excuse angle that is the crux of the matter. Things are being exaggerated, as the British High Court found with Al Gore’s film, in the name of this realignment. That’s where conservatives see the penny disappearing in this particular game of three-card monty, and they need to call foul when they see it.

Moreover, as Jim concedes, the American public’s worries about global warming are skin deep. In point of fact, when you get a bunch of Americans together and the facts are explained to them, they tend to become more skeptical, as happened with even with the Manhattan elite at the IQ2 debate last year, where an audience that was going to vote against the motion “Global warming is not a crisis” voted for the motion after hearing the arguments. The swing was 30 points. So the evidence is against Jim’s contention that, “If you put the finest skeptical scientists and researchers from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and American Enterprise Institute into a room with a couple hundred Americans, and let them talk until they’re blue in the face, I’m not sure how much you would move the dials.” They quite clearly do move the dials, significantly, if the dials are measuring government action, which is all a Presidential candidate should be talking about. If National Review would like to sponsor such an event to test Jim’s contention I know Chris Horner for one is biting at the bit.

So if a generic candidate (Republican or Democrat) who is opposed to significant government action on global warming allows his or her opponent (Democrat or Republican) to say, “The world is heating up, we must cut emissions now,” then they must call them on it. They must call attention to the exaggerations and the hyperbole that surrounds the issue, cut through the PR fog and concentrate on the issue and what fast and deep emissions reductions really mean to Americans and the world: less growth, lower living standards, higher unemployment, more poverty, more death. Conceding that argument is, to my mind, not just bad politics but positively immoral.