# Climate Change. Crazies on both ends of the spectrum. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 11, 2013, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-crazies-on-both-ends-of-the-spectrum/658077 "2013-05-11T14:24:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-crazies-on-both-ends-of-the-spectrum/658077/1 "2013-05-11T14:24:40Z")
I hope this doesn’t turn in to a GD, as I am trying to keep the debate aspect out of it. But I have pet peeves with people on both sides of the issue. Just my two cents: On the one end you have the climate change deniers, most of whom come from the Rush Limbaugh end of the political spectrum. What’s disturbing about these folks is that they don’t even want to _ **see** _ the data, let alone discuss it on a rational level, and they go running back to their radio to receive their daily talking points from the Ditto Master when you bring up the topic. They stick their fingers in their ears and sing Mary Had a Little Lamb when you show them undisputable evidence that burning billions of tons of fossil fuels for umpteen years has – imagine this – _ **changed** _ things. They have it in their minds that it’s nothing more than a big conspiracy against God, guns, and freedom. Save your breath, because it is _ **impossible** _ to reason with these people. On the other end of the spectrum you have the tree-hugging hippies who want to ban all conventional fuels (oil, natural gas, coal, nuke, etc.) because they’re “bad for the environment,” and replace them with “environmentally-friendly alternative fuels.” Or at least they claim that is their reason, because I suspect the real reason is that they’re simply anticapitalists, and their true aim is to punish the evil energy producers for having the \*nerve \*to make a profit. When you discuss conventional solutions on how to \*help \*curb human-induced climate change – which is a real thing – they are not interested in solutions that do not radically raise taxes or hurt the energy producers. In a nutshell, they are simply using the climate change issue as a vehicle to advance a radical agenda. Furthermore, when asked which alternative fuels could be used to replace conventional fuel sources currently used for large scale energy distribution, they can’t come up with any, and say the evil energy producers are in a world-wide conspiracy to bury R&D in alternative fuels. With crazies on both ends, it is no wonder the issue has become so politicized. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-crazies-on-both-ends-of-the-spectrum/658077/2 "2013-05-11T15:56:49Z")
The subject is not corporate profits or taxes. The subject is greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to reduce them. How do you suggest they be reduced? Can you propose an approach that will keep everybody happy? Will it work? If your approach is based on self-regulation, is it possible to correlate it with greed (so that people will have a selfish reason to reduce emissions)? I, personally, don’t have answers. Carbon trading is probably the least-bad answer to these questions, but it’s a difficult concept to grasp for the general public, and right-wingers have been trying very hard to prevent it from taking hold. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-crazies-on-both-ends-of-the-spectrum/658077/3 "2013-05-11T16:32:16Z")
The OP is ignoring a lot of history, Reagan and Bush the first listened to the scientists and joined efforts to deal with global warming gas emissions, It is the current crop of Republicans that are even willing to dump politicians that can have excellent conservative ratings only because they agree with the science. The point here is that this issue did not need to be politicized, but it was thanks to very powerful interests, it is very important that conservatives be aware of that. You need to see the Frontline documentary [“Climate of Doubt”](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/) what the current crop of Republicans did to Republican Bob Inglis, he is a former South Carolina congressman, not a congressman now, in large part thanks to agreeing with the science. > **[Bob Inglis: Climate Change and the Republican Party | FRONTLINE](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/bob-inglis-climate-change-and-the-republican-party/)** > > In 2010, Republican Bob Inglis lost his bid for reelection after telling a radio host that he believed humans were contributing to climate change. "The most enduring heresy that I committed was saying the climate change is real, and let's do... > [@](#): > > _ **What do you think was the main factor and the reason that you lost in 2010?** _ > > I committed various heresies against the Republican orthodoxy. I voted against [the Iraq] troop surge. … \* voted to disapprove [Rep.] Joe Wilson’s [R-S.C.] outburst against President Obama, for example. I was for an immigration proposal that might include a path to citizenship. > > And still all those were heresies, but the most enduring heresy that I committed was saying the climate change is real, and let’s do something about it. > > I voted against cap and trade, because I think it’s a big tax increase. It grows government; it decimates American manufacturing; it’s hopelessly complicated. … But I proposed an alternative, and the alternative got me in some trouble. It’s basically a revenue-neutral tax swap where we would reduce taxes on payroll, shift the tax to carbon dioxide and revenue-neutral rates that the government wouldn’t grow, but we would just change what we tax as a way of trying to get the true cost comparisons on the fuels. … > > Why was it such a heresy for you to say what you said about climate change? … What happened that made that suddenly an untenable position? > > Part of it is that the economy was bad, so when people are dealing with this month’s mortgage and this month’s paycheck and their boat is just inches above the waterline, they don’t want anybody standing up, rocking the boat. > > So when you’re talking about things of the future and challenger fuels and the fuels of the future, that’s pretty much standing up in the boat and rocking it. Voters were more inclined to say: “Listen, just sit down in the boat. Don’t anybody rock this thing unless you see if we can get through this patch.” … > > But it also had an interesting sort of religious heresy element to it as well. In this district, we call ourselves the “shiny buckle of the Bible Belt.” So I think for some it is a religious heresy … for us to presume that any action that we would take would affect the longevity of his creation [and] is an affront to sovereignty of God. … > [@](#): > > \*\*\*… What was known on Capitol Hill? … What do you think is really behind [the rejection] of the science? > > * * * > > … So when you’re dealing with an existential threat like death or like climate change, if you see it as we are all toast anyway, then denial is a pretty good way of coping. So a convenient way to dismiss the anxiety [that] comes from the awareness of climate changes, you say: “Must not be a real. Scientists must be off.” > > “When you’re dealing with an existential threat like death or like climate change, if you see it as we are all toast anyway, then denial is a pretty good way of coping.” > Another part of that is that if I accept the science, then perhaps it means I need to change my behavior. Perhaps we really do need to figure out how to innovate on the energy front. And if I don’t want to innovate or feel it would be too expensive, I don’t want to admit that I’m selfish, so the better way to dispose of it is to say, “Well, science must not be right.” Dismissing the science becomes a way of getting around changing my life. … > > Another one is there’s an assumption of technological progress, that somebody is going to fix it, whoever that somebody is. I remember speaking with a grandpa who I knew very well, and I know him to be a very caring fellow. … He was upset with me about voting [against] cap and trade. He agreed with that, that I should have voted against cap and trade, but he very much disagreed with any focus on energy and climate. > > So I was talking to him about, “What about your grandkids?” And he said, “I think they can get [by on] their own.” … I don’t think that that caring fellow really meant it quite that bluntly. I think what he meant was, somebody will figure something out. > > And of course my response to him is, well, technological innovation will sure work better if we set the economics right, because what we believe as conservatives, and people who believe in free enterprise, is if you set the economics right, somebody chasing the dollar will deliver to me a better product. They will make money, and they will serve my needs. That’s what makes our system go around. > > But he can’t get to that next step of getting the price on carbon, because if you attach that price, that external hidden cost to the product, it changes economics and all kinds of exciting things happening for the enterprise system. > > But he wants to stick at the point of saying it’s not a cost. The CO2 is not a cost; it’s not a negative. If it’s a negative externality, it’s of zero value. If you attach a zero to it, there’s no change in the pricing structure. So for him, it’s very important to continue to deny the science because he wants to assign a zero to the cost of carbon. > > Like [the ad about] carbon: “Some people call it pollution. We call it life.” > > Right. They’re breathing it, so therefore how could it possibly be bad? And of course I tried to explain that. I’m not a scientist. I was on [the Committee on Science and Technology]. I just played one when the lights came on. > > … I used to pooh-pooh climate change. In my first term in the Congress, six years, I said: “A bunch of nonsense. Al Gore’s imagination.” We had a very successful press conference where we absolutely panned Vice President Gore’s proposals on a Btu [British thermal unit] tax. So that was Inglis 1.0. … > > My kids had an impact on me. I got in trouble for saying this, but my oldest was voting for the first time when I ran again in ’04, and he said, “Dad, I will vote for you, but you are going to clean up your act on the environment.” And so I had this new constituency: my son, my four daughters, my wife, all feeling the same way. > > But then the other thing that really happened was as I get to Congress [for the] second time, I was on the science committee and got to see the evidence. And the main evidence really was in Antarctica, is the ice core drillings that show that in a mile of ice on top of the South Pole, … we’ve got what the scientists believe is 800,000 years or so of records of the earth’s atmosphere, because the South Pole is a desert. It only gets a quarter of an inch of precipitation a year. So in those ice core drillings, you can find a record of the amount of CO2 over time in the atmosphere. … > > And so for me it became pretty clear in that evidence that, gee, that makes sense; that we just started burning all this fossil fuel, we affected the chemistry of the air. Physics are physics, and light comes in, heat doesn’t go out, you are warming. > > [Journalist] David Frum once said something very interesting to me. He said, “We learn what we need to learn in order to protect ourselves.” And I think that’s a lot of what’s going on in the rejection of climate sciences, is I want to protect who I am; I want to protect my lifestyle; I want to protect what I built. > > And the way to do that is to not receive information about how this fossil fuel thing really is creating a problem, because my life is sort of built on those fossil fuels. If I’m challenged to change that, and I want to protect what I’ve got, I reject that information. And so we learn what we need to learn in order to protect ourselves. … > > You are talking about you only know what you want to know. Who were some of the people? … > > It’s really, really disappointing that there are people out there that are selling themselves as experts who aren’t. … Lord [Christopher] Monckton, who is actually a journalist who holds forth on climate science, … people sadly on my side of the aisle have listened to him and presented him as an expert. … > > Why do you think that is? > > Because I think he’s saying something that people want to hear. … > > The thing so unusual about that, though, is that we conservatives are usually the people who use the example of the buggy whip manufacturers. In our passionate advocacy of free trade, we say you can’t hold back the market. > > If the market is saying we don’t need buggy whips anymore because we are going to ride in Henry Ford’s automobiles, then we conservatives, people who believe in free enterprise and believe in free markets, have typically been the ones who have argued against, for example, labor unions, who invariably are the ones trying to hold onto the buggy whips and protect their jobs. > > We invariably are the ones saying you’ve got to roll with this thing. You’ve got to innovate; you’ve got to go forward; you can’t stand still. And we are right in saying that. We are surely right. > > But oddly, on fossil fuels, we are now in the position of saying no, we cannot go forward. We can’t see any future besides fossil fuels, and we insist on “Drill, baby, drill” as the answer. In essence, the TLDNR: The OP clearly has not paid attention of what is going on with the current crop of Republicans, many republicans are still not aware that the crazies from the right are almost all the current crop of Republicans in congress, and their votes are the ones affecting us and the future generations by their denial. On the left side of the spectrum, there are even several democratic leaders in favor of nuclear power, the point here is that in the left side most of the ones in congress do listen to the science, so one important thing to realize is that the OP is going for a false equivalency, the big difference is that virtually all crazies are in positions of power in the right.