In the two weeks since the WSJ started running ads that call out its systemic bias on climate change, the opinion pages have yet to address them. But now, columnist Holman Jenkins Jr has responded with a piece that perfectly demonstrates how the Journal misleads readers in a way that is hard to believe is anything but intentional. If this same sort of advice were applied to, say the stock market, readers would laugh it off as satire. Sadly, that is not the case.
Jenkins wastes no time in tricking his readers. In the second paragraph, he does his best Dumb and Dumber impression when he tells readers that since the IPCC was less than 100% certain that humans are causing climate change, it agrees with his denial. What he didn’t tell readers is that the IPCC is 95% certain, which, according to scientists, is about the same level of certainty of the age of the universe or that smoking causes cancer.
This sort of impossibly high standard is not only a common element of denial, but also not a smart way to approach policy, or anything in life really. For example, as military leaders are wont to point out, “If you wait for 100% certainty on the battlefield, something bad is going to happen.” Imagine if financial professionals waited for 100% certainty that a stock was going to drop before selling. Or if you decided to wait to buy homeowners insurance until you’re 100% certain your house is going to catch fire. Obviously, the only time you can have total certainty an event will happen is after that event has happened. When dealing with the fate of the planet, it might be prudent to lower that bar just a smidge. (To, say, 95% perhaps?)
[Continued after the jump!]
In the very next paragraph, Jenkins again stakes his argument on the gambit that his readers will believe him without fact-checking his opinions. He brings up the climate sensitivity issue, claiming that, since the IPCC increased the bottom end of the possible range, he’s right to question climate science. But this ignores the fact that the IPCC’s newer low-end of 1.5°C will be bad enough that the Paris Agreement aims to prevent even that much warming. Not to mention that, when put to the test, the argument for 1.5°C sensitivity doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. So, even if 1.5°C were the true sensitivity, it would still warrant emission reductions.
Next up, he makes a claim that hasn’t been scientifically defensible in at least two decades: “science has been unable to discern signal from noise in the hunt for man-made warming.” This can easily be debunked by a single line in the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report from 1995, which stated that there is “a discernible human influence on global climate.” Since then we’ve found even more fingerprints, but if, like Jenkins, you refuse to acknowledge the signal, then you’re the one that’s just making noise.
Not content to solely spin the science, he moves to policy and claims, “it’s difficult to justify action on cost-benefit grounds.” But the Clean Power Plan he alludes to will not only save thousands of lives, leading to $93 million in annual returns by 2030, but on health benefits alone the plan will return $7 for every $1 spent. So the claim that the reduction of coal use is “difficult to justify” is itself pretty difficult to justify.
At this point, Jenkins pivots from science to name-calling, saying many advocates for climate action are “ignoramuses on the subject of climate science” and that “Only a nincompoop would treat a complex set of issues like human impact on climate as a binary “yes/no” question.” But science, though complex, can also be simple. Either something is true, or it is false. An opinion is either based on a fact, or on fiction. Odd to see a conservative pundit in a conservative paper embrace such a liberal, post-modernist view that, apparently, facts are relative and there’s no such thing as an objective truth.
From there his writing wanders aimlessly, asserting that the oft-confirmed scientific consensus on climate change is “undocumented,” suggesting that models that ignore natural feedbacks are more accurate, and of course attacking #ExxonKnew as “worse than foolish” because it is apparently a substitute for climate action.
At this point, we would likely be forgiven for throwing those playground taunts back at Jenkins, whose attempt at defending his “worse than foolish” columns suggests that he’s the “nincompoop,” and the audience who laps up his snake oil are a bunch of “ignoramuses.”
But really, we only need one word to describe his twenty faithful years of defending fossil fuels and denying climate change: Wrong.
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