Lynne Kiesling
While we’re in an earthy vein here, I recommend Alex’s recent post at Marginal Revolution on the purported dissent from the Copenhagen Consensus. So the mild dissent comes from concern that the person who did the study overestimated the costs of climate change. Interesting.
Lynne – as I’ve noted already at CT, anyone who doesn’t think that this could be a problem, should go back and read Riker’s Art of Political Manipulation, or do a little background research on how pushpolling works. And there does seem to be some evidence that this is indeed what happened (two of the participants, neither of whom can be accused of pro-environmentalist bias, are suggesting that the choice process was flawed; one is saying that he suspects it was rigged). Regardless of your views on the merits, this was a deeply fishy exercise.
It’s about time someone dissented from the Copenhagen Consensus. How dare the participants look at more than one issue at a time and actually dare to prioritize the issues?
It’s critical that each of these issues be viewed in isolation, so that each can be described as “the most important issue facing humanity” by its advocates. Otherwise, it is impossible to attract sufficient public attention to each of the issues, or sufficient funding.
It is fascinating to look at the history of “global climate change”. In the mid-70s, the mantra was “global cooling”. In the 90s, it morphed into “global warming”. In this “brave new century”, it is “global climate change”. Global climate change at least has the advantage of being right, no matter what happens, since change is inevitable. Our future is either “all ice”, or “no ice”, or somewhere in between. We’ve gotta do something, or we’re all gunna die!