In Scientific Consensus or Religious War? Arnold Kling posts again about the degraded nature of public discourse, in this case about climate change. He first argues for the wisdom of listening to dissenting views since in the past they have sometimes turned out to be right even though they were lonely voices in the wilderness only a short while before. Then he notes the increasing use of "Type M" arguments, those that evade substance and focus on the presumed motives of opponents, painted as luridly as possible.

In economics in the 1960's, there was a "scientific consensus," embedded in sophisticated macro-econometric models, that inflation reflected a competition over income shares, and that government policies to interfere with wage- and price-setting were the solution. Milton Friedman's contrary views were outside the "scientific consensus."

By 1985 or so, the "scientific consensus" had shifted, in part because policies based on that consensus were tried in the 1970's, leading to the worst macroeconomic performance of the post-war period.

By the 1990's, large macro-econometric models had pretty much disappeared from the economics literature. The problem with macro-econometrics is that the models continually broke down out of sample. That is, a model estimated through 1969 would work terribly in predicting the early 1970's. A model estimated through 1975 would work terribly in predicting the late 1970's, and so on.

Milton Friedman's dissenting views of 1967 are close to the consensus views today.

I wish that climate-change models did not remind me so much of macro-econometric models. I wish that the contempt that the Left expresses for dissenting views in climate science did not remind me of the contempt that the Left expressed for Milton Friedman. And I wish that the debate over climate change were being waged over substance, rather than with type M arguments and on film. Movies are a propaganda medium, not an information medium.

I worry that the environmentalists are motivating themselves to stage a religious war over global warming. My guess is that mankind will not be well served by such a religious war.

Kling was prompted to comment by the burlesque of Krugman and Gore. Garry Peterson points out another example, apparently with approval.

The environmental journalist Mark Hertsgaard has an article about climate change politics and journalism in Vanity Fair (May 2006) that shows how climate denial was involved many of the same people who worked to deny the health impacts of smoking.

Al Gore and others have said, but generally without offering evidence, that the people who deny the dangers of climate change are like the tobacco executives who denied the dangers of smoking. The example of Frederick Seitz, described here in full for the first time, shows that the two camps overlap in ways that are quite literal—and lucrative. Seitz earned approximately $585,000 for his consulting work for R. J. Reynolds, according to company documents unearthed by researchers for the Greenpeace Web site ExxonSecrets.org and confirmed by Seitz. . .

The effect on media coverage was striking, according to Bill McKibben, who in 1989 published the first major popular book on global warming, The End of Nature. Introducing the 10th-anniversary edition, in 1999, McKibben noted that virtually every week over the past decade studies had appeared in scientific publications painting an ever more alarming picture of the global-warming threat. Most news reports, on the other hand, “seem to be coming from some other planet.”

The deniers’ arguments were frequently cited in Washington policy debates. Their most important legislative victory was the Senate’s 95-to-0 vote in 1997 to oppose U.S. participation in any international agreement—i.e., the Kyoto Protocol—that imposed mandatory greenhouse-gas reductions on the U.S.

Type M all the way. If you dissent from the herd mentality then you are a "denier" - you know, like a holocaust denier - and probably sleep with Joe Camel, or at least take bribes. Peterson, like Krugman and Gore, seems to have some trouble with substance, and simply can't abide dissent.

Richard Hamming: on how to do great research. [via Structure+Strangeness]

Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance. But most great scientists are well aware of why their theories are true and they are also well aware of some slight misfits which don't quite fit and they don't forget it.

There are very few great scientists, or great anything it seems. And once an issue is politicized greatness leaves the building. I make no claims to greatness of any sort, but tolerance for ambiguity is a central virtue for my work and it is second if not first nature. It's a useful virtue since you can apply whatever limited talent you may have in more effective ways.

The story of Uncle Milty and the timeline Kling notes for the collapse of faith in macro-econometric models might provide some insight if climate change politics is mapped to that timeline. Faith in climate models and command and control government interventions tanked in the same period that faith in macro-econometric models faded due to belated realization that they were inherently flawed. Correlation isn't causation, but I see more merit in this view than that quoted by Peterson, and find it exceedingly far fetched that a few tobacco defenders turned oil defenders engineered the rout of Kyoto.

There are a lot of threads tangled up here, and it is done purposefully. Dissenting from the climate doom consensus is not the same thing as dissenting from the Kyoto prescription. Many are climate change believers but see Kyoto as an ineffective bureaucratic boondoggle, the sort of thing politicians do instead of tackling hard problems. It's merely a gesture, red meat for the faithful, a betrayal as some see it. Others find fault with the focus on GHG management when there are many diverse but related issues in climate change. Still others laugh at the idea of controlling climate by fiddling at the margins with a single variable. There are even those who think that blaming climate change on GHGs is preposterous given that the climate has changed and changed again over time, and humans are responsible for only a small, single digit percentage of the carbon cycle.

In Hardwired Tribalism David Friedman, who might have some insights about these things, makes a meta-argument of sorts to explain some of the bizarre behaviors we see.

The only sense I could make out of it was that I was encountering a tribalistic view of the world. There are two sides, everyone who isn't on my side is on the other side, hence anyone who says something negative about the Democrats must be a partisan of the Republicans and any evidence to the contrary is to be ignored as experimental error.

Not long after, I heard a radio report about the French government caving in to the demands of demonstrators that they rescind legislation making it possible for employers to fire young workers. Oddly enough, part of my reaction was a feeling of satisfaction. The news implied a further decline of the wealth, power, and status of France, France is part of Europe, Europe is at the moment the obvious status rival to America, and I am an American. Speaking as an economist, my best guess is that the decline of the French economy makes me worse off, not better off. But to some part of my mind hardwired by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in hunter/gatherer bands, there is only us and them, and anything that is bad for them is good for us.

Kling worries about religious war and Friedman suspects tribal behavior. They are much alike, perhaps two perspectives on the same irrational behavior. Maybe my lack of fervor on these problems stems not only from the scientist's, or farmer's, tolerance for ambiguity. Maybe my lack of religious conviction and tribal affiliation - Democrats and Republicans both seem dim and a bit disgusting to me - are a factor as well. In any event, I listen carefully to dissenters and find that they often have useful views that help me understand things better, and feel no remorse that a crushingly stupid prescription like Kyoto is floundering even though I'd very much like to see a reduction in GHGs for a variety of reasons. Hack the Spew.

Update:

See this post at debitage where Stentor Danielson considers tribal/religious aspects of the Precautionary Principle conflict.

What PP proponents expect in this situation is that no potentially risky technologies will actually be proven safe. Thus this stream of profit will be denied to all companies, not just to the small ones with limited research budgets. What's more, while the big companies are bogged down in spending money trying to prove the safety of old-fashioned high tech innovations (say, genetically modified crops), smaller companies will turn to new low-tech ways of doing business (such as organic farming). The innovations found by the smaller companies will, it is thought, not be prima facie potential risks**, and hence will not be stopped by the PP. . .

This shifted burden of proof raises a couple of interesting issues. First is the apparent claim by PP proponents that they want to base their decisions on science conducted by risk-producing companies, as well as the implicit promise that they would be willing to accept positive results from that science as proof that the activity in question is harmless. I don't think I need to do anything more than mention tobacco industry scientists to show why this is a strange position*.

This is an openly, proudly type M argument that seeks to demonize an opponent to shift the debate away from substantive issues. Worse perhaps, it is an instrumental argument rather than a principled argument. The purpose is to advance an otherwise unconnected socio-cultural agenda. The tribal and/or religious aspects are plain.

Real risk analysis would take a clear eyed look at traditional, current and emerging practices, and note the risks and benefits of each. Traditional practices have a documented history of environmental and social harm spanning eons and it is those harms that current practices evolved to address. Emerging practices target the harms of traditional practices, the new harms of current practice, and anticipated harms of the future as population pressure and development increase the scope and scale of extractive activities, but may introduce new harms themselves. Which is least risky? Are the benefits so great that the risks are worth it? What are the feasible alternatives given that doing nothing is not on?

The cost of this analysis is not sensibly the burden of only those who propose change. All of society shares both the risks and the benefits. There is no useful tribal issue here. This brings to mind Friedman's musings about his own conflicted view of French decline. He gets an emotional kick out of their trouble but also sees that this would likely cause him economic harm. The sensible stance is to enjoy the pain of your rivals while also hoping that they solve their problems for the practical benefits you will receive, and if you take any overt action it is more rational to help than hinder.