Once upon a time, MSM reporters, columnists, and editors mediated our information environment. Authoritative newspapers, such as the New York Times, and newsreaders, like Walter Cronkite, not only determined what the news of the day was but also established the acceptable parameters for discussing the news. The advent of the blogosphere introduced a complication to this structure. Suddenly, true experts in their fields could discuss what they considered to be the news in an unmediated fashion with their readers. One of the more interesting outcomes of such "contamination" of the once pristine MSM narrative was the spreading awareness that reporters, much of the time, are out of their depth talking about most technical subjects and that their biases blind them all too frequently to a full understanding of their subjects. This would be embarrassing and deflating to our MSM sages if they but noticed. Unfortunately, to a large extent, the MSM still determines what qualifies as "news" and continue to exercise their role as information gatekeepers in ways which damage our society.
Yesterday I remarked on the "sublime ignorance" of Tom Friedman's comments about the urgent necessity of passing Cap-and-Trade. I also linked to John F. Opie's Tuesday post discussing the first half of the bill.
John, obviously a masochistic glutton for punishment, has done us all a favor and read through the second half of the bill. It is not pretty. (While John was kind enough to thank me for the impetus to finishing the job, I suspect he really blames me for all the pain he has put himself through.) A few lowlights:
The real hoot starts on page 890: the government wants detailed swap information on:
the number of positions and total notional value of index funds and other passive, long-only and short-only positions (as defined by the Commission) in all markets to the extent such information is available; and data on speculative positions relative to bona fide physical hedgers in those markets to the extent such information is available.
Okay, there are the weasel words "to the extent such information is available" that let most folks off the hook: otherwise, it's a real funny. And it's supposed to happen within 60 days of this Commission setting up the rules.
This would be, in a perfect world, fabulous. And yes, I want a pony. No, a unicorn!
Oh, and the regulator for this? The Fed.
A brief recap can't do John's post justice so please read the whole thing and pay special attention to his concluding section:
Subtitle E: Adapting to Climate Change
This is basically the "Environmental Wacko Employment Act", aka "There Shall Be No Dissent Act", since it requires cooperation and subservience to the Settled Science of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Oh, and there'll be workshops galore. And advisory committees! Lots and lots of advisory committees!
And lots of subsidies for "education", aka The Truth.
But Indian Tribes shall be exempt. Except they get money.
There's a huge section on land use and the like...and from page 1180 onwards it talks about how everyone, worldwide, needs to be indoctrinated.
Ye Gods.
I wish that some lawmakers had actually read this before the House had passed it.
Aside from the protectionism and higher energy prices, with all kinds of exceptions that are designed to elicit votes from wayward Representatives, there is an entire section devoted to further attempts to silence Global Warming "Skeptics", attempts that have been underway for quite some time.
The MSM has been thoroughly indoctrinated into the religion of AGW. Those who are most vigorously pressing the agenda and demanding thought control are, of course, doing it for the most noble of reasons, to save the planet. I suppose if the fate of the planet is at stake and we face imminent existential danger, any means are acceptable, even necessary.
Today, Tom Friedman's colleague attempts to enhance the argument with a superficial appeal to Neuroscience:
Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.
...
The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.
“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary history,” notes Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.
...
This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists. We’re just lucky we don’t have a cabinet-level Department of Snake Extermination.
Let's see: How do we assess the cost/benefit of maintaining a military large enough to essentially make war against us nearly impossible versus the cost/benefit of adding to a bureaucracy that does an adequate job protecting our food supply but for an exponential cost could improve our safety by perhaps 0.000001%?* Maybe we aren't as irrational as Kristof imagines; that, however, is a very complex determination.
Still, all is not lost, particularly if we understand and acknowledge our neurological shortcomings — and try to compensate with rational analysis. When we work at it, we are indeed capable of foresight: If we can floss today to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we can also drive less to save the planet.
The beauty of this article is that it has a superficial appeal. Our ability to assess risk is extremely skewed and limited, as noted by the work cited by Nicholas Kristof, yet completely out of his awareness, Kristof commits one of the cardinal sins of risk assessment. He accepts assumptions as facts, even as he doesn't have much knowledge of the underlying science (of Climate or Neuroscience.) Worse, he is unaware that he is unaware.
Science is designed to test our assumptions, aka hypotheses. Scientists go to extraordinary lengths to avoid their conscious, and more problematically, their unconscious, biases from impacting their work. When scientists attempt to foreclose scientific debate prematurely, they are no longer practicing science but venturing into politics and religion. If Nicholas Kristof had not already closed his mind he would understand that the data on Climate change remains inconclusive, contradicts every computer model extant, and is being challenged by a growing multitude of Climate Scientists. The Science is not yet definitive. Further, even if there were no question about AGW, the bill would in no way address the issues in any adequate way. Not to mention that even if the Earth is warming, a warmer Earth historically has been an earth with a much higher biologic carrying capacity than a cooler Earth.
Unfortunately, the New York Times still determines the parameters of the conventional wisdom. Those who confuse CW with reality are ignorant at best; when they are in charge of establishing the CW, they are actively dangerous.
* My back of the envelope calculation is that there are about 300,000,000 Americans eating ~1000 meals a year. I have seen reports that as many as 3000 people die every year from food poisoning (much of which is caused by the end-preparers of the food not those involved in the chain from farm to supermarket, but I am willing to ignore this for ease of computation.) That 3000, while a terrible tragedy each, represents ~0.000001% of the population/meal/year. To decrease that number in any appreciable way would require an immense expenditure of money and would have unintended consequences as well. My numbers may be off but I doubt they are off by more than one order of magnitude. Besides, our lawyers can do a better job of policing the food supply than any collection of bureaucrats, even the most well meaning of bureaucrats.
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