The Immeasurable Idiocy of James Inhofe

Bailey is a libertarian and he has always taken a sober and rational view of the issue. He ignores the alarmists on one end and the dismissers on the other end and only asks that the scientific evidence really shows. And though he was a skeptic for a long time, he has now concluded that global warming is real, though not as catastrophic as the worst case scenarios would predict. That is a position that even many in the oil business are now coming to, a solid, evidence-based, scientifically-valid conclusion.

Or, maybe they're manning the ramparts for the final assault.

Bailey was wrong before, he's probably wrong again, pre-disposed as he is to reject "alarmists."

Sadly, if the alarmists are correct there's precious little time for Bailey to come to grips with his ideological blinders.

Acutally, global warming is quite an interesting phenomenon and I think it says a lot about us as a species.

Firstly, we keep going on about 'saving the planet', when the planet really doesn't need our help. Life is remarkably robust, and it is barely conceivable that we will turn the planet into a barren lifeless wasteland with our parasitic ways. Global warming won't destroy life on Earth, but it is not unlikely to decimate humankind and render the planet uninhabitable to us. Which, as far as I can tell, is trivial to 'the planet', especially when compared to the long history of life.

Secondly, it is a lesson for all the religious and otherwise slightly spiritual (or vain, whichever you prefer) people who think that humans are in any way superior to animals (like, say, locusts) because of our 'reason' and our 'souls' and our 'culture' and other such rubbish. We can see exactly what we are doing to the planet and to our own ability to inhabit it. We can even prove it with charts and graphs, and yet for all this we are utterly incapable of stopping ourselves from doing it. Our greed, voracity and single-minded drive to out-compete one another completely nullifies our much-vaunted rational skills and looks like it may lead us to cause a massive human population crash.

Just like any other biological population.

It's good to see that many Libertarians are starting to acknowledge that there's a problem. Will The Cato Institute ever do so? http://www.cato.org/current/global-warming/index.html

Ed, thanks for the Bailey article. Very interesting and I've passed it on to many of my skeptic friends.

And Lettuce, you're right...it is really unfortunate that the ideologies were not abandoned previously by skeptics but you have to recognize that this as a very hopeful development. Statements like these from prominent former skeptics can create a domino-effect and potentially convert a lot of people. Maybe then we can finally have effective and rational discussions in our halls of government.

I'm working on the complete transcript now...

One thought - this transcripts might be perfect for doing an "annotated version", one with corrections on the factual inaccuracies.

That sort of project could be a lot of fun, especially with prime material such as Inhofe's speech.

Horton? What a dolt. Now we have a Dr. Seuss elephant character involved in a global warming alarm conspiracy.

Also - Ed, if you want to use any of those graphics, feel free.

That poster I used has many possible applications as an illustration for "abuse of science" posts.

The UN, per se, is not the originator of Global Warming (run away! run away!), and hoax is probably too strong a word, but the organization has certainly been used by those who would love to "put it to the man", the "man" in this case being the good old US of A.

And, you have to admit, the bullshit quotient of GW is well above the norm, even for government-sponsored (read: "gravy trough") research.

(email is human readable -aloud)

the organization has certainly been used by those who would love to "put it to the man", the "man" in this case being the good old US of A.

Given that the UN is there to represent international opinion, then of course they are going to clash with the US, given they try and represent the opinions and policies of a good couple of hundred nations, compared to one single one.

Their policies and actions will be just as contrary to any other nation's individual views just as often, but given the fact that the US is currently Top Nation it is more high profile and more shocking to Americans when it actually happens.

This is not a dig at the US, it's inevitable. I'm sure the Chinese will find them just as irritating in twenty years' time. The US wants to act in the interests of the US, unsurprisingly. The UN tends to act in the interests of 'other people' so the clashes are inevitable.

The UN has its flaws, but they are a bloody important organisation. The only other global institutions are free market evangelical ideologues such as the IMF and to a lesser extent the World Bank. I'd take the UN over those idiots any day.

Nothing inhofe says is contradicted by the facts.
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Ed, I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with your assessment of Bailey. When the final chapter is written on global warming denialists and their misdirection, he will have much to answer for.

These lines particulrly irked me:

Among much lengthy discussion of the science and politics of climate change, I noted that the satellite record temperature showed warming of 0.06 degrees Celsius per decade, which was one-fifth the 0.3 degrees per decade rate projected by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's First Assessment Report in 1990. The satellite data comes from climatologists John Christy and Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama at Huntsville who would become my go-to guys on the subject. As will become evident below, I tend to trust empirical data over computer models.

And then again...

The chapter relied heavily on the satellite data which found that the atmosphere had cooled by a statistically significant -0.13 degrees Celsius since 1979. Adjusting for the cooling that resulted from the explosion of Mount Pinatubo that had propelled tons of sulfur particles to stratosphere, Christy calculated a slight warming trend of +0.09 degrees Celsius per decade. This was much less than the models were projecting.

The evidence for warming comes from surface temperature readings, NOT from climate models. Models are intended for future projections and have nothing at all to do with current observed warming. The satellite record had a number of well-known problems and was too short, which is why the surface temperature record was preferred by competent researchers. Since then, the problems have been corrected and the satellite data shows warming in line with that of the surface readings. Bailey now admits this, but it's something he should have known years ago. The IPCC was noting these things back when Bailey was still pimping Spencer and Christy.

You don't have to be a genius to know the difference between a current reading and a future projection, and certainly Bailey knew that it was the surface data, not climate models, against which the satellite record had to be reconciled. What's worse, he still seems to be under the bizarre misaprehension that any warming trend we experience must necessarily be linear. This is how he makes the nonsensical claim that the warming we've experienced in the last few decades means that future warming will not be "catastrophic", however that's measured. Again, it should be obvious that as greenhouse gas concentrations accelerate, warming won't stay constant.

The rest of the article is a lame apologia for his acceptance of corporate money. It's the same thing you always hear: I held these views independently and their money didn't change any of that. Gee, would they have kept you gainfully employed if you had different views? Exxon-Mobil's game isn't to pay people to think a certain way, it's to find people and organizations who already think a certain way and then to shower them with money. Thereby they increase the influence and reach of these think-thanks. It still creates a serious conflict of interest for those who accept the funds.

Steve-

And yet Bailey changed his position after he became convinced by the evidence (whether you think he should done so earlier or not is not relevant here; people can be wrong without having an ulterior motive), and he is still employed by the same think tank that gets funds from the oil companies (though not much funding, really). If they were to cut off money because of his current position, there might be a stronger case here. But they didn't. And I doubt they will.

I've noticed that a lot of libertarians are begrudged to talk about global warming. They don't want to deny it, but they don't want to admit that it's a problem either. I read many libertarian bloggers who criticize global warming activism (which is one thing) while ignoring global warming science (which is another). But yet treat them as though they were one and the same.

I think it has something to do with one particular strand of libertarianism which has an extreme admiration for human ingenuity and market economics and those within it don't want to admit that their libertarian fantasy land can lead to some negative side effects.

I've never written or said much about global warming simply because I don't know enough about it. I've never taken the time to do the research necessary to really come to solid conclusions about it. My natural inclination is to doubt both the denialists and the gloom and doom merchants because their arguments tend to be couched in more emotional terms rather than based on sober analysis of the data. But that's just a general approach that I understand could be wrong.

I've noticed that a lot of libertarians are begrudged to talk about global warming. They don't want to deny it, but they don't want to admit that it's a problem either.

It comes down to a critical pronoun. Acknowledging global warming as a problem requires people to talk about "we" and "us" and "our" rather than "I" and "me" and "mine". Some folks are good at one set of pronouns, but not so good at the other.

Btw, back when Inhofe was Mayor of Tulsa, he was known as "Jim Bob" by City Hall employees who had seldom seen a dimmer bulb. I was astonished to see how far he'd risen. Yup, it sure does float.

Could be "Horton" is a mistake in the transcript from an excessively "hw" pronunciation of "Wharton." Also, "international plant panel" could simply be recording a slip of the tongue when he was trying to say "international panel."

Not my favorite senator, but you can't blame him for transcription errors.

Inhofe was elected to the House about the same time I arrived in DC (1987) and was instantly labeled as an idiot. Roll Call (the insider Capital Hill newspaper) ran an article about that time titled, "The Ten Dumbest Members of Congress" and he made the list (I recall a Kennedy was #1, not based on stupidity, but for the arrogance of trying to run Justice Powell out of a reserved parking spot at National Airport).

In any case, Inhofe's signature looked so much like my boss's that we used to get a lot of his returned mail. His letters were full of it then, too, although he hadn't discovered global warming; fortunately for him, there were still communists around at the time.

Ed writes:

And yet Bailey changed his position after he became convinced by the evidence (whether you think he should done so earlier or not is not relevant here;

I think it's relevant that he has made obviously bad arguments in the past and in some ways continues to do so today. That to me suggests that his ideology has interferred with his objective assessment of the evidence. He is to be commended for finally coming around (lord knows there are dead-enders out there who will never admit defeat on this), but his record does not bespeak a "sober and rational view". It is indicative of someone with an agenda.

...people can be wrong without having an ulterior motive), and he is still employed by the same think tank that gets funds from the oil companies (though not much funding, really). If they were to cut off money because of his current position, there might be a stronger case here. But they didn't. And I doubt they will.

His current position is something like, "there is global warming, but it's no big deal". This is the first time I've seen him admit that it might even be a problem at all. That still has him doing Exxon-Mobil's bidding, whether he's doing it conscientiously or not. (For what it's worth, I don't think he's trying to do their bidding; as I said before, things work a bit differently than that.) I believe that the corporations funding the anti-global warming voices knew all along, or at least for awhile now, that the science was against them. What they were hoping to do was to delay action by putting doubt into the public's mind, and people like Bailey have helped them to accomplish this goal.

I don't think it's reasonable to portray his position as being that global warming is real but no big deal. There's a lot of room in between the worst case scenarios and the best.