Why we have science deniers

The climate change lobby and the pandemic control lobby make lavish and reverent references to science and scientists. Their appeal to the authorities is coupled with a deep contempt for non-believers. This is especially evident in their disapprobation of what they call climate-change deniers as unbelievers in the sanctity and infallibility of science. This post puts forward an interpretation more informed by the threats the heretics are feeling and their quite rational defence of their interests and their pursuit of happiness.

The denial of the climate change threat is not based on climate science at all and there is no sense in stoking more learned papers and position statements onto the fire. The deeper instinct of the opposition to climate change policy is to the policy itself, with the science denial merely a tactical tool to keep the climate scientists as far away from the levers of political power as possible for as long as possible. In essence, climate change skepticism is a delaying action.

What has to be delayed is the policy prescription that is made more or less explicit by the various gradations and permutations of climate activists. Boiled down to its iron fists, the prescription reads: "Climate change is real and is your fault. You must yield to us all power. We are going to use that power to impoverish you and your children and your childrens children unto seven generations as collateral damage in the crusade to keep the planet as cool as we are."

If you think that is ridiculous, please pay attention to how the current medical science and health policy crisis has played out.

January 9 — WHO Announces Mysterious Coronavirus-Related Pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Unemployment rate (January) : 3.6 percent
January 21 — CDC Confirms First US Coronavirus Case.
February 3 — US Declares Public Health Emergency. Unemployment rate (February): 3.5 percent
March 11 — WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic. Unemployment rate (March) : 4.4 percent
March 19 — California Issues [First] Statewide Stay-at-Home Order
April 16 — “Gating Criteria” Emerge as a Way to Reopen the Economy. Unemployment rate (April) : 14.7 percent
May 28 — US COVID-19 Deaths Pass the 100,000 Mark. Unemployment rate (May) : 13.3 percent
June 26 — White House Coronavirus Task Force Addresses Rising Cases in the South Unemployment rate (June) : 11.1 percent

Over the 3 months ending in September, the unemployment rate has declined to 7.9 percent. An unemployment rate of 7.9 percent has, heretofore, been recorded only in the worst recessions since the beginning of the Current Polpulation Survey used to measure unemployment. So, looked at from the economics and political science perspectives, the answer to the medicine and health science problem was to shut the economy down, accept depression-level rates of unemployment and hope for the best.

The best, apparently, is a well-tested, effective vaccine widely administered at no cost to the patient. At no point in this catastrophe has anyone thought through how to get the world back to producing stuff beyond food, beverages, perhaps clothing, toilet paper, and face masks. The first round of policy did what we do in economic recessions, send money to the unemployed, both corporate and individual, so that demand might be automatically stabilized. It doesn't really work that well in ordinary business cycles and is fatuous in a collapsed based on the scientists deciding that the last miles of the distribution channels--stores, restaurants, service shops, and so on-- were superfluous to requiremnents.

They don't have a plan, so I imagine they will toss the steaming potato over to the economists, who have no relevant terms of reference. Cheap money won't work--money's already cheap. So, monetary policy is out. More spending by governments at all levels is out. The state and local governments can't, they're already tapped out. The Federal government might be able to, but they've already gone trillions--trillions--of dollars beyond once unimagineable trillion dollar deficits. Like the psalmist, we have to ask, "From whence cometh my help?"

For us the answer isn't as comforting. For us, nobody knows. But science was served, and the possibility of impoverishment unto seven generations is on the table. Is it any wonder some will start their defense of their pursuit of happiness by attacking the arcanities of climate science?