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On the essential Missing Link, Ken Parish links to my post of yesterday:
Tim Lambert ably defends himself on scientific grounds against a concerted attack by anti-science RWDB “heavyweights”.
And explains the scare quotes:
I wrote that extract. Blair and Bolt might be heavyweights in audience size terms, but in intellectual terms neither of them could power a flashlight globe. Or perhaps it’s more wilful stupidity than lack of capacity. Certainly that’s how Harry Clarke explains it on climate change:
The science on climate change is overwhelmingly accepted. Why are the right so vehemently opposed to this science? One reason seems to be simple anti-intellectualism and to desire to appear to be against ‘mainstream thinking’. Another reason is the implication that global action needs to be taken to deal with global warming – this hardly advances the cause of laissez faire.
But this latter reason is illogical. Belief in laissez faire needs to be based on the facts not on blind religious faith and public good/externality reasons for intervening in market economies have been accepted for over 200 years. The climate change issue is an extension of these arguments.
Moreover, accepting these arguments and moving to adopt carbon taxes or transferable carbon quotas does not make you ‘anti-market’ – accounting for climate change costs can be understood as attempting to get markets to work more effectively.
But this wilful RWDB stupidity applies equally to other scientific issues like DDT, passive smoking and the hole in the ozone layer. Any scientific issue whose consequences don’t suit their ideological orientation will inevitably be met with a mix of ridicule and scorn combined with a complete disinterest in engaging with the evidence or the actual scientific issues themselves. Whatever else it might be, it certainly isn’t the behaviour of intellectual heavyweights, hence the scare quotes.
As we know from past experience, whacking Blair with a clue stick produces tasty nuggets of stupid:
Ken’s recent low opinion of me is a direct result of Club Troppo not being linked at my new site. What a sad fellow.
You really have to have a ticket on yourself to think that anyone would care that much about being on your blogroll. In any case, Ken’s low opinion of Blair predates Blair’s deblogrolling of Club Troppo, so if there is a cause and effect relationship here, it goes the other way.
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