As mentioned in previous posts I'm trying to pay more attention to conservative thought. Due to my personal history, cultural origins, yada yada, I've largely ignored them as if I knew what they were about and didn't need to pay attention. Silly idea, that. Also, I've found in the past that minority ideologies that are out of power tend to be more interesting, more creative, more engaged with the current problem set as they thrash about seeking a way into power. They throw off sparks which often die out before landing, but sometimes ignite the underbrush. And so . . .

It often seems that advocates are not just biased, they are self righteously biased, as if this was a virtue. They demand to be proven wrong, yet it seems to me that this is a task that they should perform for themselves.

What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?

I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover, I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determine whether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games. Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here - all you have to do is commit to a criterion for testing. It's easy to criticize science for being "closed-minded". Are you open-minded enough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?

I'd be more impressed if there was any hint of hypothetical apostasy or engagement swaps indicating what I consider to be serious inquiry. The strongest critic of any hypothesis should be those who find themselves - the horror - believing it. There are very, very few such hypotheses that I find credible. That doesn't mean that they have no value, or that there are better options, it means that at best you have an operating hypothesis that you distrust but use for pragmatic and provisional purposes - for lack of a better option at present.

I consider myself a conservative politically, and to me, "conservatism" implies three important things:

1. You face reality. You don't evade it by dredging up reasons not to believe evidence or labeling anything you don't want to believe in a "conspiracy."

2. "Conservatism" and "conserve" come from the same root. You don't unnecessarily squander limited resources you may need later. In fact you don't unnecessarily squander anything - period. You keep your debt limited to the minimum necessary. You pay your bills. If you get an unexpected windfall, you manage it carefully to stretch it out. You treat things in your care like they're your own.

   So completely apart from global warming, fossil fuels are finite and will have a finite lifetime, and we have no practical substitute ready to replace them. Therefore we need to manage them carefully to maximize their lifetime. First we need to extend the lifetime of the resources themselves, and second, we need to buy time to develop alternatives and bring them on line. Doing so will reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a side result.

   It's a painfully amusing irony that most of the people who are lambasting Republicans for abandoning their traditional fiscal restraint, simultaneously pretend that finite resources are not a problem. We would have neither an energy crisis nor a global warming problem if conservatives treated fossil fuels the way they claim money should be treated. (For that matter, we wouldn't be reeling from the collapse of the sub-prime lending market if conservatives had treated money the way they claim money should be treated.)

3. You plan for the worst case. You don't necessarily assume the worst case, but you have a plan if it happens. So even conservatives who regard the war in Iraq as a fiasco nevertheless tend to advocate gritting our teeth and slugging it out, because the worst case scenarios from losing or retreating are much worse than the present mess.

   But when it comes to climate change, the same people see nothing but rainbows and fuzzy bunny rabbits, or warm beaches and palm trees. Terrorist attacks and global Sharia law? Well, those are likely outcomes of retreating from Iraq. Sea level rise, more droughts and severe weather from global warming? That's just fear-mongering.

Well, perhaps this is what conservatives believe, but it seems mistaken to me.

You certainly should dredge up reasons not to believe evidence, and continue to do so until exhausted. Only then do you accept such evidence as real, and even then only on a pragmatic and provisional basis until better evidence is provided, as it surely will be at some point. This doesn't mean that evidence presented and claimed to be strong can be ignored, but there's a difference between recognizing a claim and believing its truth.

The whole argument equating conservatism with conservation is a sophomoric word game. It's mildly interesting but only in that it leads one to ponder how words from a single root can have such different meanings. Words are such clumsy things sometimes.

I'll grant that there are some who call themselves conservatives who hold such simple and rigid views, but the ones I find more interesting are those who have the spark of intellect to question such absolutes since they break down in reality, in practice. In the end they have what seems to me to be an inclination or an intuition that is first and foremost sceptical, of nearly everything, and so hew to positions that have endured scepticism for some time, passed a test of time, though even this isn't full acceptance.

The weakness of simple conservatism is evident in the bunker mentality about fossil fuels. That such fuels are finite is a trivial claim that has been true for all of time, but then as now no one has a particularly sound notion of what it means. Our estimate of how much there is continually rises, making previous estimates of shortages seem naive, at best. Given this fact the idea that "we need to manage them carefully to maximize their lifetime" is silly. Manage how? Manage what? We who? It's a meaningless assertion, more sophomoric word games.

The worst part is the claim that a bunker mentality about fossil fuels will "reduce emissions". Nonsense. Emissions will continue to rise in any event. Hunkering down will not buy time, it will just give you a back ache and make you look ridiculous. Stand straight and face your future with your wits about you so that you have your best chance of acting sensibly. The demand for energy will continue to rise with population growth and development. Fussy little games with fossil fuel abstinence would make this worse, make the "energy crisis" worse, not better. The just-say-no approach to energy will work as well as it does for teenage sex. Won't happen.

There is a similarity between the war on terror and the war on climate, but it isn't a good argument for prosecuting either of those wars. The error in both cases is the specious assumption that war could work, could somehow be worth the blood and treasure spilled in prosecution. Arguments about nation building or emissions reductions ring hollow when you face the reality that the proposed policies can have no useful effect on the stated problems. There's no way to so totally dominate terrorists world wide that they cease to be our constant companions, and there's no way to reduce emissions world wide enough to remove the threat of climate warming. We are too numerous and have too much momentum. It's the simple minded brute force approach to dire threat, like hurling nukes at a huge asteroid hurtling toward us. Wrong approach. Doesn't work. Your tiny ineffectual fists are no match for such problems. Use your mind little man.

A Very Cynical Reason to Endorse Global Warming

Two words: Star Wars. Two more: Soviet Union.

With a few exceptions, mostly Holland and the Scandinavian countries, most of the signatories of the Kyoto Accords are posers. They have no more intention of actually living up to the Kyoto Accords than the U.S. does, but they have one clear advantage over the U.S. They lie. We consider implications and don't sign treaties we can't support or fulfill; other countries merrily sign treaties they have no real intention of living up to.

So we should sign the Kyoto Accords. As an intrinsic part of the plan, we enact measures to help business deal with the costs and protect workers from job loss. We meet the Kyoto standards. Then we hold the EC's feet to the fire, all the way up to the knees. They don't meet the standards, they lose access to U.S. markets. Only one economy in the world is big enough, robust enough and innovative enough to pull this off - us.

This is the bit that interests me, the reason I selected this page to post about. It's utterly insane but may well resonate with conservatives of the simple minded variety. None of the actions and effects are reasonable, but it might have political impact. People might get enthused about sticking it to the lying Euro poseurs by bunkering up in self righteous isolation. I hope not, but it's the kind of outlandish nonsense (see Obama) that can mesmerize electorates.

A bit later: I had the thought while writing this that I'm sceptical of climate change theories, and hugely sceptical of political policy proposals, but it's an intellectual scepticism that contends with my intuitions and first order "walk-up" inclinations. The idea of GHG effects are old hat and fully accepted, but the details matter. It's a complex system with many known factors, few of which are understood to any useful extent, and we keep discovering new factors. It may be that my simple understanding of GHG effects do not warrant the conclusion that our emissions are changing the climate. We might be off by orders of magnitude when all of the interactions of the system are calculated, and we can't do that at present. So, I contain the impulse to believe, try to be adult about it.