The notion that political activism deadens the mind has been mooted in several earlier posts. (BTW, that idea didn't originate with me, but I forget where I first encountered it.) An aspect of that was part of the discussion of Dyson's essay in Necessary Heresy. It bears repeating:

[T]he experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question.

Here's a recent example.

Matt Nisbet has a good paper out now about polling results on global warming. . .

The polling supports what we've been saying for a while: the public is there. They believe (even if they think the scientific consensus isn't as strong as it really is). . .

So why are we (through our electeds) still not doing anything about it then? Because even the public realizes that the solutions are very, very difficult and will probably mean considerable pain. (And no politician wants to inflict pain on his/her constituents.) . . .

We've heard this mantra a lot in recent months. "The debate is over." Unfortunately (fortunately?), the author of the paper left a comment debunking the post.

On global warming, to paraphrase Kevin, the public isn't there and that remains both a major communication problem and a major policy problem.

Until policymakers see global warming showing up in polling across party lines as a top priority, many will lack the incentive to devote the necessary political capital to passing meaningful policy solutions. . .

Our POQ study does not break down poll trends by partisanship. However, in this case, across polls, we still have a "two Americas" of public perceptions on the issue. According to Gallup and Pew polling, over the past year, Democrats have become more concerned and supportive of policy action while Republicans remain relatively unmoved both in terms of the certainty of the science and the urgency of the issue.

The debate isn't over, the public isn't there. One party is there and that, as Nisbet claims, isn't based on understanding or knowledge of science and policy. It's just politics.

When we start to scrape some of the political dung off our boots and do a little more honest thinking some fairly obvious problems rise to attention.

This is really my insidious way of making a strong plea to the climate science policy (funding) community: stop spending money on GCMs. Start spending those billions we spend on basic climate research on climate solutions. We do not need 21 models feeding the IPCC process to see the risks. . .

We would do quite well to quit crying about science budgets, climate skeptics and inaccurate media representations and finally turn our energies to usable, useful science for a very uncertain future. Our politicians and policymakers will listen if we give them useful solutions, especially if we work with them to figure out what kind of information is useful to them. They will continue to NOT listen if we decide to pad our status quo by indefinitely giving them journals filled with GCM studies and 500-page IPCC reports that are all science and no ways out.

Politics is futile since we don't have any solutions. Indeed, whipping the public into a frenzy for political advantage is vile. It's an example of an expert talking publicly about politically contentious questions and speaking more clearly than he thinks. One reason is political bias, though there may be other contributing factors. Clearly there is a poorly supported assumption that politicians and policymakers have a useful role in mitigating this threat. To date, all of the ideas proposed would either have tiny effects on climate, destroy civilization, or both. Worse perhaps, they ignore other threats that are as pressing and that are more solvable with our clumsy technologies and political systems.

There are two worrying implications to this political mind death: the consensus claimed by many loses credibility since it appears to be a consequence of political bias morphing into unquestioned dogma; the solutions mooted don't solve the problems though they do advance political objectives. Two strikes.

I quite agree that pouring money into more GCMs is wasteful, but there is still a need for boots on the ground data acquisition, and analyses that are more realistic and inclusive than current GCMs. As Dyson put it:

The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

While it seems foolish to empower politicians and implement policies that won't actually help, there are productive things we might do to support the development of technologies that would help. We need them any way since the combined pressures of population growth and economic development for the 5 of 6 humans not yet living well and long outstrip the abilities of current technologies. When we step back from the political hysteria each seemingly separate need is an aspect of the general requirement for a fully developed and populated planet. Even if the climate was not changing we'd need new technologies of the same sort. And the alternative is gloomy: an undeveloped and overpopulated planet.

This is all related to a sort of theme running through recent posts: Sophmoric Reason, which in turn referenced Political Economics. The issue isn't climate change, it's merely a struggle for political power, and the arguments are mere sport that take place within arbitrary bounds which exclude most of reality. The article referenced in Drunkard's Walk noted these facts in a particularly pithy way:

Since 2000, emissions of CO2 have been growing more rapidly in Europe, with all its capping and yapping, than in the U.S., where there has been minimal government intervention so far. As of 2005, we're talking about a 3.8% rise in the EU-15 versus a 2.5% increase in the U.S., according to statistics from the United Nations.

What's more, preliminary data indicate that America's CO2 output fell by 1.3% from 2005 to 2006. If these numbers hold up, it would mean U.S. emissions growth is nearly flat so far this decade. Europe hasn't yet released figures for last year, but it did report in June that emissions from the participants in its carbon-trading scheme, which account for almost half of Europe's CO2 production, rose slightly in 2006.

The news gets worse for Europe when you consider that during this decade, the U.S. population has grown at roughly double the rate of the EU-15 while the American economy has been expanding about 40% faster.

It mystifies me why anyone who was truly concerned about climate change would be advocating political action. No good comes of it, yet society is distracted, resources are squandered and monsters are empowered. These are politicians after all.