A Plague On Both Your Houses

For John, BLUF:  More extreme demands may not result in more action, regarding climate change.  And aren't we glad we didn't embark on a massive effort to reverse global cooling, back in the 1970s.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Pseudo scientific hysteria is the wrong answer to climate change

From The New York Post, by Bjorn Lomborg, 2 August 2019.

Here is the lede plus four:

A year ahead of the US presidential election, exaggeration about global warming is greater than ever.  While some politicians continue (incorrectly) to insist it’s made up, far more insist (also incorrectly) that we face an imminent climate crisis threatening civilization.

During this week’s Democratic debates, Pete Buttigieg called 2030 a “point of no return,” Beto O’Rourke warned we don’t have “more than 10 years to get this right” and Andrew Yang claimed climate change has already moved beyond a tipping point:  “We are 10 years too late,” he said.

Using climate to energize the base may make short-term political sense, but adding to polarization on the topic just makes it impossible to engage in sensible policy discussion.

Until well into the early 1990s, US opinion about environmental issues, including climate change, remained remarkably unified.  Then a partisan gap in attitudes emerged, and has been exploited from both sides of the political aisle.  Today Democrats and Republicans are farther apart on how much priority should be accorded climate change and the environment than on any other issue.

This gulf is exacerbated by those who wrongly deny the existence of climate change, but today they are largely ignored and derided, while liberals are given a free pass to make far-fetched exaggerations.

Mr Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

As Brookings Institution points out, there isn't the money for all the good ideas the Democratic Presidential Candidates are bringing to the table.  Mr Lomborg makes the same point, but from a different direction.  It seems to me it is time to put some engineers in charge.

Regards  —  Cliff