Via Treehugger, I just stumbled on this column from Reason magazine's science writer Ronald Bailey from back in September. To summarize, he says: I was wrong about global warming, but I wasn't paid to be wrong.
It would be easy to lampoon the column, or jump down Bailey's throat. The commenters over at TH seem to be doing just that. But let's not.
First, I think Bailey was obviously wrong to rely so heavily on satellite and other direct temperature measurements. More broadly, he was obviously wrong to substitute his own judgment (as a non-scientist) for the collective judgment of the IPCC. I disagree with him about that stuff, and still disagree with him on probably 90% of the policy questions we face.
But from what I can tell, Bailey's column is a fairly admirable -- and rare -- mea culpa. He's careful to detail all his occupational arrangements with various foundations and think tanks. He even discloses the amount of Exxon stock he owns.
More admirably, he owns up to his ideological biases:
And then there is also the matter of my intellectual commitments. We all have them. Since I work for a self-described libertarian magazine that should indicate to even the dimmest reader that I tend to have a healthy skepticism of government "solutions" to problems, including government solutions to environmental problems. I have long argued that the evidence shows that most environmental problems occur in open access commons-that is, people pollute air, rivers, overfish, cut rainforests, and so forth because no one owns them and therefore no one has an interest in protecting them. One can solve environmental problems caused by open access situations by either privatizing the commons or regulating it. It will not surprise anyone that I generally favor privatization. That's because I believe that the overwhelming balance of the evidence shows that centralized top-down regulation tends to be costly, slow, often ineffective, and highly politicized. As a skeptic of government action, I had hoped that the scientific evidence would lead to the conclusion that global warming would not be much of a problem, so that humanity could avoid the messy and highly politicized process of deciding what to do about it. Unhappily, I now believe that balance of evidence shows that global warming could well be a significant problem. [my emphasis]
Bailey's conversion, especially with the highlighted dynamic made explicit, could get through to others on the right who have locked themselves into this increasingly blinkered position. Perhaps through his example, his ideological fellow travelers can come to understand that it's OK to believe something dirty hippies believe if it turns out the dirty hippies are correct.
People can be self-critical. Reasoning can be open and transparent. Minds can change. Let's all hope ours have not frozen in place, and that each of us, when we inevitably find ourselves in error, is a mensch about it, as Bailey has been.
Comments
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Tom Philpott Posted 5:32 am
19 Jan 2007
I have long argued that the evidence shows that most environmental problems occur in open access commons -- that is, people pollute air, rivers, overfish, cut rainforests, and so forth because no one owns them and therefore no one has an interest in protecting them. One can solve environmental problems caused by open access situations by either privatizing the commons or regulating it. It will not surprise anyone that I generally favor privatization.
Just the pure hubris and inanity involved with the image of privatizing things like the sea, lakes, and even the air...
Victual Reality
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John McGrath Posted 5:44 am
19 Jan 2007
Plus, there never was any tragedy of the commons. It's a theoretical construct bereft of any historical evidence. Actually-existing commons were heavily regulated and mediated by the community.
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Bart Anderson Posted 5:59 am
19 Jan 2007
And yet...
How could a journalist with Bailey's experience get it so wrong? There's something seriously wrong, if a smart guy like Bailey could make such a long-standing error in judgment.
I think the answer is ideology. Like other ideologies, libertarianism is a blindness and echo chamber, lowering one's IQ by about 30 points.
Unfortunately, Bailey does not see how his ideology warped his judgment and I suspect that he will continue to make similar mistakes. I've been monitoring his writings on peak oil, and I see the same pattern of wishful thinking and selectively applied skepticism.
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Benny Big Eye Posted 6:14 am
19 Jan 2007
Well, a quick peek into the Legacy Tobacco Documents and you find Fred Smith of CEI sending a letter to Tom Borelli asking for more tobacco money.
See here: http://tinyurl.com/rm2d6
In the letter, Smith dang...
Fumento, Malkin, Berlau, etc....
Benny Big Eye
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Benny Big Eye Posted 6:26 am
19 Jan 2007
To reiterate, the Warren T. Brookes Fellowship was funded essentially by the tobacco companies.
And it has continued to be a launching pad for a whole group of right-wing pundits such as Fumento, Malkin and Berlau.
Take a look: http://www.cei.org/pages/brookes.cfm
Benny Big Eye
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jjwfmme Posted 6:38 am
19 Jan 2007
There was an interesting column in the Financial Times a few days ago about the run-up to the Iraq War:
An editor of The Economist in the 1950s once advised his journalists to "simplify, then exaggerate". This formula is almost second nature for newspaper columnists and can make for excellent reading. But it is a lousy guide to the making of foreign policy.
...
journalists are a vital part of a neo-con network that formulated and sold the ideas that took the US to war in Iraq and that is now pressing for confrontation with Iran. The links between journalists, think-tanks and decision-makers in the neo-con world are tight and there is plenty of movement from one area to the other.
...
Neo-conservative columnists have tended to follow the trial lawyers' approach to expertise. First, decide what you want to argue then find an expert who agrees with you. ... The current debacle in Iraq is what you get when you turn op-ed columns into foreign policy.
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d41295 Posted 6:54 am
19 Jan 2007
Yes, this means that David Roberts (or any other blog author here) is not a real journalist, because his income depends on painting an extremist position so that people will give money to Grist. Roberts' conflict of interest is not smaller than was/is Bailey's. That makes it all the more ironic that people like the Weather Channel look to him for content. Roberts is not neutral and never will be. It's sad that the Weather Channel can't be bothered to find journalists who have no conflicts of interest and feel they must rely on conficted writers who benefit by advancing an extremist position.
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Bart Anderson Posted 7:56 am
19 Jan 2007
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sunflower Posted 8:20 am
19 Jan 2007
The paid skeptics recently lost their corporate funding and do not want to appear to be working for ideas.
Bull on mea culpa. Looks more like payback for getting cut off from mother Exxon.
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Kit Stolz Posted 8:30 am
19 Jan 2007
According to the titles of Bailey's books, people who warned of the risks of global warming were "false prophets." Global warming (or global heating, as James Lovelock calls it) was "a myth." To speak of more powerful hurricanes, rising sea levels, or climate chaos, was "alarmism."
Now that Bailey has admitted that we face serious risks due to a changing climate, will he discuss in his columns how we can reduce those risks? Or will he continue to support the nihilist do-nothing policies of ExxonMobil? He got the past wrong; now that he's admitted it, will he make amends? That's the next test for a responsible man in his position.
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