Epistemology With James Inhofe
Pew reports that the right is having a great deal of success in trying to mislead people about climate change. The header Pew put on the graphic notes that the decline is “across party lines.” But you should look at the magnitudes—the Republican line has fallen way further, and from a lower base, than the Democratic line. This is probably a rationalizing voter example where increased salience of the issue is bringing more Republicans into line with the beliefs espoused by their party’s leaders.
Meanwhile, James Inhofe says:
Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll aside from the precipitous drop in the number of Independents who believe global warming is a problem, is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade. And this explains quite clearly why Democrats don’t want the public to know about it.
These are curious uses of the terms “know” and “learn” which are generally reserved for instances in which people form true beliefs. On the specific issue of cap and trade, the evidence has always been that the term “cap and trade” is barely in circulation outside the Beltway. Public support for clean energy legislation under different descriptions tends to be high. You can get poll results as good at 72 percent in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act under one favorable description.
25 Responses to “Epistemology With James Inhofe”
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October 22nd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
This is what they used to say about the public option. Before they had to stop.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Do you know where the WMDs are?
Yes. They’re around Baghdad and Tikrit, and east, south, west, and north somewhat.
The British have learned that Iraq tried to import significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:32 pm
For Republicans, a possible explanation is that the non-fundamentalist wing of the GOP has sharply dropped and become either Democrats or independents. Also that many progressive causes, like organized labor and the environment, become less popular during a recession.
So, no, now is not the most fortuitous time to push climate change. Maybe in a few months, when recovery is strong?
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I have long maintained that Senator Inhofe does not exist, despite the fact that science overwhelmingly suggests his existence, and the fact that I can see the observable effects of his existence.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
When you explain how Cap and Trade won’t lead to normal people paying more for energy (and goods, since energy is involved in shipping them), let the rest of the class know.
In the meantime, as I’ve said before, go heckle your friends on the enviro left about nuke power. It’s certainly not the right that’s standing in the way of building more of that.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Indeed, I understand that Inhofes may have existed previously under different circumstances than those that have allegedly produced this Inhofe, therefore, even if I were to assume the unlikely existence of Inhofe, I can only assume that there is absolutely nothing I can do to mitigate this existence.
Summary: Inhofe is not real, and if he were, he would clearly be immortal.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
They still say it about the public option. The people who say they support it generally don’t know what it means.
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Ooooh, how CLEVER. You sure showed up that Senator Inhofe. Your devastatingly witty and incisive critique is sure to change the minds of those silly global warming deniers.
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I believe the epistemological criteria is true, verifiable belief.
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Oh Matty tell us how cap and tax will actually save money over the next ten years just like cutting millions from Medicare aren’t really cuts and the Obama Stimulus would keep unemployment under 8% and how even though we now think there will be a 20 to 30 year cooling period the sky is still falling and Oh Lordy! we are all going to die if we don’t pass a public option that nobody can say what it is but hell you know it will save a bazillion dollars!
Did you catch that Romer says that the stimulus has done its thing, shot its wad for the economy?
Care to revise your ongoing lie that the stimulus hasn’t even begun to kick in?
Gee who to believe, in any sense of the word?
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:46 pm
And as to the decline in attendance at your Church of the Holy Climate Disaster the fault dear Bluto is not in the Republicans but in reality.
The endless Sky Is Falling lies are being repeatedly disproven by of all things our climate.
Go figure!
Where are those hurricanes?
Why is winter so early this year?
Why does the ocean only rise where atoll residents dynomite their protective reefs?
Why does the historical record put the lie to tales of unprecedented droughts?
It goes on and on.
And produces idiocies like Bill Maher saying vaccines aren’t “real science, not like climate change is real science”.
HaHaHaHa!
That’s like Wacky Whoopie claiming that Polanski drugging and sodomizing a 13 year old isn’t “rape rape”.
Her rants about climate change killing off polar bears (whose population is increasing) are even better.
Mother Nature just ain’t cooperating with your climate scam and so of course it is all the fault of those EEEVIL Republicans.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Just let it be noted that Matthew openly supports misleading the public, when it is done to advance polices Matthew is in favor of:
…..”But this is the part where making it an excise tax on insurance companies rather than a tax on beneficiaries makes a different. Even though the incidence of the two taxes is the same, the administration is totally different. When a new person is hit by the AMT it’s the most obvious tax change in the world—you literally need to go fill out a set of different forms that screams “YOU’RE PAYING A NEW TAX.” Members of congress naturally fear a backlash. But the excise tax structure will help avoid this by making the tax largely invisible to everyone outside insurance companies and corporate HR departments.
All things considered, this is good policy done in an impressive artful way. Any final bill would do well to mimic it…….”
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I’m with Hoo Rah! (big surprise, eh?) The whole AGW thing is just a scam for pols to steal the public’s money and get more power.
But, if you are a true believer, eat the dogs! Seems, according to the Dominion Post out of NZ, a large dog has a greater climate change pawprint than a large SUV.
Bon Appetit
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/national/2987821/Save-the-planet-eat-a-dog
Mike K
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:30 pm
When you explain how Cap and Trade won’t lead to normal people paying more for energy (and goods, since energy is involved in shipping them), let the rest of the class know.
James Robertson, of course cap and trade will lead to “normal people” paying more for carbon-producing energy. That’s the point. It wouldn’t have any impact if this were not the case. CO2 pollution has been free up to this point. With cap and trade it will start to cost something. People’s behavior will change accordingly. Usually you right wingers trust the power of the market, but when it comes to environmental issues, you think the market is some kind of crazy communist conspiracy.
we now think there will be a 20 to 30 year cooling period
You and some of your friends might now think this, but climate scientists don’t agree with you.
The endless Sky Is Falling lies are being repeatedly disproven by of all things our climate.
HooRah, you seem to misunderstand the concept of proof. A series of isolated data points in an enormous system are not of themselves proof of anything. You can’t just step outside and say, “It’s cold today, therefore global warming is not occurring.” You have to look at worldwide data over an extended period of time to draw any conclusions about longterm trends.
Speaking of hurricanes, I was in California last weekend and got hit by a hurricane–an extremely rare occurrence on the west coast of the US. Can I conclude form that one incident that global warming is a reality? Of course not, but if I followed your line of thinking, I would.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:55 pm
James Inhofe is an ass who appeals to the lowest common denominator. His brand of politics is an insult to intelligent people.
Still, on cap & trade, he’s one hundred percent correct. Cap & trade is dead on arrival, the global warming ‘debate’ is poisoned and this issue is stalled. The fault belongs entirely to liberals and their unrealistic expectations. During one of the worst economic meltdowns in US history, cap & trade proponents have only condescending and insulting rhetoric to defend this highly controversial idea with. And I’m saying that as someone who DOES believe in global warming and wants very much for something to be done about it.
Sometimes, your enemies are your best friends because they force you to challenge your own rigid thinking. Cap & trade needs to be shelved in favor of less ambitious, less disruptive and more possible forms of action.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:24 pm
I’ve said this about Yglesias’ blogs before, and I’ll say it again:
Worst. Threads. Ever.
Yet why do I keep reading them? It’s a sickness, I know.
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:28 am
What do Republicans have against markets, as cap and trade is? Clean energy, by the way, is the best way to create a long-term economic shift, so I’m not sure why the recession is an argument against cap and trade. Factories are already shuttered, and you never let a good crisis go to waste.
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:52 am
Sorry Rob Mac but it has been Matty and the Climate Liars who blamed Global Warming for Katrina and predicted more and more powerful hurricanes.
I am simply throwing his argument in his face.
That is also my reason for tossing in his lies about rising sea levels drowning atolls.
You are absolutely right about a few data points in the sea of reality not proving a thing.
Unfortunately that is exactly what the Church of Climate Disaster is built upon:
an ideological driven selection of data points.
And when reality intrudes what do the Chicken Littles do?
Why they simply select new data points and declare their previous rants irrelevant.
Lastly you really need to keep up with the latest Climate catechism.
In order to explain the last ten years of global cooling (a verifiable fact now recognized by climate science) they have popped new numbers (read data points) into their model and tweaked until, SURPRISE!, their model now predicts
(indeed predicted but they hadn’t cheated correctly) not only the past decade of cooling but further anticipates another 20 years of cooling.
But in 2040 it will start to get hot again. They promise!
Really! Seriously!
And if you doubt this just go to the BBC site and search
“What ever happened to Global Warming”.
You may wish to dismiss the past decade of cooling as too few “data points” and the predicted two decades of cooling to come as “data points” but any reasonable person would see those “data points” (which, remember now, are accepted by the climate hysterics) as poking pretty big holes in their boat.
It is in fact that climate hysteria and the fact that it so neatly fits a predetermined political agenda which makes me a climate change “denier”.
To any reasonable person Global Warming is a rather weak theory constantly being rejiggered by the clergy to account for the facts that their predictions do not come true.
Finally I want to remind you that the Climate Clergy have been telling us that unless the world accepted draconian reductions in greenhouse gasses in the next very few years then we are doomed. DOOMED!
Well those reductions are neither politically nor economically feasible. Ain’t gonna happen. Period.
Wanna bet how many nanoseconds it takes for the Climate Clergy to suddenly announce new changes to their “models” and reveal that well, we have not a few years but maybe five or seven or ten?
A scientific theory must not only aim to offer an explanation of reality it must be verifiable and predictive in some important ways in order to attain credibility.
The Church of Climate WooWoo is neither.
Their “science” is like unto the Medieval debate over how many angels can dance upon the head of a pin.
We await the photographs.
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:12 am
HooRah, you seem to misunderstand the concept of proof
. . . Not to mention the concept of “paragraph.’ It’s usually taught in 7th grade English classes.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:55 am
Climate change is one thing, but cap and trade is quite another. I don’t care what terms you put it in. Cap and trade will wreak havoc on our economy and do little to help the environment. Change the terminology all you want, it’s not going to make a difference. Write your Senators and tell them we need further discussion about policies that will actually help the environment and not cause huge economic pain to all Americans at http://tiny.cc/pxIgi.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:11 am
Ad hominem. The last bastion of the witless. Admit it, my clever comment made you angry precisely because it is clever.
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:14 pm
“I believe the epistemological criteria is true, verifiable belief.”
Not quite. Verificationism imploded a long time ago. The classic definiton is justified true belief.
BTW: people mainly haven’t heard about cap & trade and the vast majority of those who have heard about it do not understand it and cannot be made to understand ir no matter how carefully you explain it.
The other reason cap & trade is so unpopular is because the Repubs flipped on it. Less than a year ago, McCain and Palin were campaigning on it. With the help of the cables and talk radio now all the Republicans hate it, which is kind of funny since one of the primary motivations Dems had for proposing cap&trade policies in the first place was to appease the Republicans’ alleged devotion to market “principles”. of course, Republicans don’t actually have any principles so the sop was bound to fail.
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Not to mention, if we ban leaded gasoline, there will be no automobile manufacturing industry in the United States…by 1975.
Lee Ioccoca made that statement in his testimony to Congress in the late 1960s. The over-estimation of the costs of addressing environmental problems is a long standing argument from those with a vested interest in the status quo. Remember when capping NOx and SO2 reductions from smokestacks was going to be so expensive that they set up a cap-and-trade program, and expected a large, viable market in emissions permits to spring up? Not so much, as it turned out.
Anti-environmentalists are such Chicken Littles. Every effort to address an environmental problem is going to be the end of civilization.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:29 pm
[...] Yglesias at Think Progress feels that Pew erred in saying the decline is “across party lines.” “But you should look at the magnitudes,” he explains, “the Republican line has [...]
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:29 pm
[...] Yglesias at Think Progress feels that Pew erred in saying the decline is “across party lines.” “But you should look at the magnitudes,” he explains, “the Republican line has [...]