Clap Louder

What's the percentage in being a contrarian? Well, if you are pretty sure that the herd is stampeding off the cliff, it makes Darwinian sense to try to get out of the flow. Skepticism about the perceived wisdom is the intellectual equivalent of a biological mutation - the odds are very heavily against it, but when it pays off, it can win big.

Contrarians don't necessarily lack the herd instinct, of course. They like to think that they are part of their own crowd. Thus the high school goths all congregate under the same tree, just as the jocks, nerds, and beautiful people each have their own territory. Thus it is also with climate skeptics.

Via Brad DeLong, Ryan Avent wonders about the link with political conservatism.

My question is why conservatives think it advances their purpose to continue this demonstrably wrong adherence to climate change denialism. This isn’t like, say, evolution. Scientific evidence of evolution is quite strong and will only continue to get stronger, but that growing evidence won’t be ever more obvious to the layperson. Birds, for instance, won’t start evolving faster and faster until it’s frighteningly clear that evolution is real and all those deniers were, in fact, cranks.

But the planet is getting warmer, and people are going to notice. Will can talk about global cooling all he wants, but arctic ice is actually disappearing. Snowpacks are shrinking. Droughts are intensifying. Sea-levels are rising. And this isn’t going to stop.

Climate change denialism is like arguing at three that in two hours it won’t be five. However convincing you think you are, you will ultimately be revealed as a fool and a charlatan.

In particular, his musings are inspired by George Will's recent anti-AGW column in the Washington Post, which cites or quotes "facts" from various scientists so out of context and distorted in interpretation that those quoted/cited have angrily demanded retractions.

In George Will's case, this is just standard operating procedure. His audience demands it. If he were to publish a column that objectively presented the facts, he would suffer the same fate as the KKK leader who told his followers that he had seen the light and had decided to marry his black male hair stylist.

Like George Will and Exxon-Mobile, many are unscrupulous opportunists, but they are the exception. The great mass are true believers with no obvious pocketbook agenda.

The best answer for the association between conservatives and AGW denial was suggested by commenter Roger Albin to Brad DeLong's site. The problem is the challenge AGW poses to free market fundamentalism. A classic problem of markets is the problem of externalities, or side effects of a transaction that affect those who aren't parties to that particular transaction. AGW and other environmental effects are the ultimate externalities - they affect everybody in every country. This is a beam in the eye of the free market fundamentalist religion, so they choose to wish it away.

And being exposed as a fool and charlatan is hardly as severe a fate as might be imagined. The air waves are crowded with those who make an excellent living being just that. All you have to do is shut your eyes tight and clap louder.

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