Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World

I've invited "stand-up economist" Yoram Bauman to contribute a piece on his views about why libertarians (though I think the discussion could easily apply to people of any political view) are incorrect in their approach to the global warming issue. Following is Yoram's article. Tomorrow I'll post my rebuttal. For the record, I believe Yoram is almost 100% wrong, and I'll explain why. Even so, someone as smart as Yoram deserves a serious listen, and it should make for a good debate. I look forward to comments from readers with any interesting position on the issue, and would be willing to post very good longer responses as their own full postings if requested. The first response, the day after this note, is from Cato's Jerry Taylor.

The entire series should be able to be found by searching my blog for "Bauman", with this link:
http://www.rossputin.com/blog/index.php/a?s=bauman&sentence=AND&submit=Search

Rossputin kindly agreed to let me say a few words to libertarians who are amused by my stand-up economics routines but surprised by my concern about climate change. He asked me to respond in particular to an article in The Australian, but my comments apply more broadly.

I’ve just finished traveling through Israel with my father, so the famous Three No’s (no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel) have been on my mind. With some poetic license I think they are analogous to libertarian views on climate change, and I think the results are likely to be just as disastrous.

The three libertarians No’s are: (1) No recognition that climate change is a theoretical possibility; (2) No peace with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change); and (3) No negotiation about climate change science, i.e., no serious scientific engagement. Looking at the three libertarian No’s in more detail will help explain why libertarians find themselves in an ever more remote political wilderness in which their views are ignored and their positions are mocked.

(1) No recognition that climate change is a theoretical possibility.

Forget about the science and just think about the economics and how free markets work: Do you agree that it’s theoretically possible for something like carbon emissions to be a problem? The article in The Australian answers No, or at least it suggests as much with statements like “The delusion that by… catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.”

No Recognition deserves to be mocked because the economic theory of externalities is rock-solid and is disputed only by morons. I often tell environmentalists that they should take a course in economics, and I’m tempted to tell libertarians who take climate change as a personal affront to their beliefs that they should take a second course in economics.

(2) No peace with the IPCC.

The article in The Australian predicts the “impending collapse of the global warming paradigm”, a view that runs totally counter to the main thrust of the IPCC’s most recent report in 2007. (The 2007 report said that human-caused climate change was “very likely”, up from “likely” in IPCC 2001, “the balance of evidence suggests” in IPCC 1995, and maybe-yes-maybe-no in IPCC 1990.) Libertarians need to realize that the same invisible hand that makes collusion difficult in business also makes collusion difficult in academia or in journalism, and therefore that their core beliefs run counter to the idea of a vast left-wing conspiracy in the media and academia.

No Peace deserves to be mocked because only the economically illiterate would choose to advise policymakers to reject the consensus statement of almost all of the world’s best scientists in favor of conspiracy-theory statements about how “global warming stopped a decade ago, [but this fact] is virtually never reported.”

(3) No negotiation about climate change science, i.e., no serious scientific engagement. As a policymaker you’d be irresponsible to reject the IPCC, but as a scientist you’d be totally within your rights… as long as you play the game by the rules. And the rules of the scientific method say that you need to come up with theories and hypotheses that can be tested against the real world, not just engage in elementary-school tactics like cherry-picking the scientific data. (Saying that “there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your reference point” is like saying that Israel has been relatively peaceful since 1948.)

No Negotiation deserves to be mocked because you should either put up or shut up. My suggestion---indeed, my hope---is that you create a Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) and actually get in the game. Can you can come up with theories that explain the warming seen in the 20th century? Can you make predictions that beat out the IPCC predictions for the 21st century (e.g., roughly half a degree F warming per decade)? Until you make predictions that can be tested against actual data, I will not be the only person in the free world mocking you for putting your faith in folks who have PhDs in biology or folks who believe in intelligent design or folks with a background in classics, journalism, and the design of geometric “Eternity” puzzles.

Heck, I think it would have been great if the NPCC had been around back in 1996, when Julian Simon wrote that “my guess is that global warming is likely to be simply another transient concern, barely worthy of consideration ten years from now.”

Or back in 1998 when Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute wrote a speech that has not aged well, full of hullabaloo about satellite data---remember that one? Ah, the good old days!---plus a totally wrong claim that 4000+ scientists signed an anti-global-warming statement.

Or back in 2001 when University of Houston economists Roy Ruffin and Paul Gregory wrote a principles textbook claiming that “the debate over global warming shows that no matter how much contrary evidence is presented, it just doesn’t matter.” (Read my hilarious email exchange with Ruffin and Gregory.)

Or back in 2007 when the Wall Street Journal editorialized (incorrectly) that the IPCC was “backpedaling on some key issues” such as sea level rise and the hockey stick.

Listen up, my libertarian friends. You have a lot to contribute to the climate change discussion, in particular by emphasizing the superiority of markets and market mechanisms over the inefficient and often ineffective command-and-control policies that are beloved by lefties. But first you need to take a seat at the table instead of taking pot-shots at something that economists know is theoretically possible and that the scientific consensus says is “very likely”.

Of course, “very likely” is not the same thing as “absolutely certain”---but do you really want to bet the farm on a lousy hand? Just because environmentalists are wrong about many things does not mean they’re wrong about all things, and in the case of climate change there’s good reason to think that they’re right.

PS. Rossputin pointed me towards the March 2008 report by the NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change). But this document is a sad joke: it makes no predictions about future climate, instead offering up false or misleading statements (e.g., that the IPCC “no longer makes use of the hockey-stick paper”---not true) plus the usual conspiracy theories, e.g., that “the Executive Summary of [a U.S. government] report inexplicably claims… the opposite of what the report itself documents.” In order to avoid this possible problem in the future, I recommend following the NIPCC’s clever strategy, which was to produce a document called “Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the NIPCC” without actually producing the Report itself!

Ivan Eland from the Independent Institute has written a short essay discussing the excesses of claimed power by the Executive Branch during the Bush Administration.

You can read it here:
"Executive or Imperial Branch?", Oakland Tribune column by Ivan Eland, 4/13/08
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2170

This is an area in which I frequently differ with some of my more conservative readers. It's also an area that some other readers (notably Bob P.) think I haven't written enough about, especially in comparison to how strongly I scold McCain about his lack of respect for the Constitution.

For the record, I agree with Eland's position and believe Bush has exceeded his authority and has overstepped what is good for the nation in the long run by essentially claiming the right to do anything that he claims to be in pursuing the War on Terror.

Grabbing power during war is one of the favorite reasons of leaders through history to go to war. I don't believe that Bush had anything like that in mind, even as a minuscule factor, in the decisions to go into Iraq and Afghanistan. And, unlike Eland, I am not convinced that the idea of taking out Saddam Hussein was a bad idea even with the hindsight of the poor prosecution of the war after its first few days. My issue is therefore not that we're at war...especially because it's clear to me that war was declared on us by Al Qaeda. It's that we should not allow the Constitution to be consistently weakened in the name of the war. A vigorous prosecution of the war, even with a Democratic congress, should not require wrecking our civil liberties, or our system of checks and balances without which our government would be even more of a mess than it is.