The Green New Deal Panic

by Fabius Maximus, FabiusMaximus.com

About the Green New Deal, dreams given form – Part 1

This is the first of two parts of an article published in critical review of the Green New Deal. The second part of the original post will be published tomorrow night.

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Summary: The Green New Deal, most recently advocated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, could start the biggest decade for government projects since the 1960’s Great Society & Apollo. Big beyond most people’s imagination. But it has received little critical analysis (other than calling it “socialism”). Here is a brief look at it, analytical not political. This is a brief first cut at it. Please circulate if you find it useful, and post links in the comments to other analyses.

ID 90026293 © Everst | Dreamstime.

The original New Deal

“Extreme remedies are appropriate for extreme diseases.”

– From Hippocrates’ Aphorisms.

They were desperate times requiring desperate remedies. The banking system was in ruins. There was massive unemployment (nobody knows how many, roughly a quarter of the workforce). Businesses were falling like dominoes. Germany showed what might happen here: in the 1930 election the Nazi Party got 18% of the votes, the Communist Party got 13%. In January 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor (FDR took office in March).

The need for immediate action forced use of unconventional and untested methods. The unused economic capacity of America, both plant and people, meant that even fantastically large fiscal and monetary stimulus would cause no inflation. Of course, Americans did not know that in 1932. The first thorough explanation was published in 1936: Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It was a gamble, done by an alliance of progressives and populists. We won.

But that does not mean that gamblers always win, or that high stakes gambles should be made in normal times.

© Chrisharvey | Dreamstime.

Incite panic to begin a Green New Deal

“Let’s stipulate right now that America is in the midst of overlapping crises that are worse, arguably, than anything we’ve seen since 1861 …”

– January 20 article by Will Bunch, nationally syndicated columnist.

“What to Care About When Everything Is Terrible.”

– NYT op-ed by Quinta Jurecic (managing director of Lawfare).

The Left wants to copy aspects of the New Deal, despite our very different circumstances. First, they have to create panic – convincing America that we have emergencies only they can solve. Since that is false, they must rely on propaganda. The barrage of warnings that Trump will end democracy is one such campaign (despite its absurdity after two years):

1. “Donald Trump’s War on Democracy” by John Feffer at The Nation.
2. “Is Donald Trump Ending American Democracy” – about Brian Klaas’ book,
3. The Despot’s Apprentice: Donald Trump’s Attack on Democracy. “This Is How American Democracy Ends” by Bill Blum at Common Dreams.
4. “The Suffocation of Democracy” by Christopher R. Browning at the NY Review of Books.
5. “Does Trump win mark the end for liberal democracy?“, a BBC news story by Ben Wright.
6. Plus the many hysterical columns by Paul Krugman (e.g., here, here, and here).

The use of questions in headlines to arouse irrational fears is the basis of Betteridge’s Law:

“Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”

Another campaign seeks to arouse panic about global warming. The latest phase has abandoned the consensus of scientists, as represented by the IPCC and major climate agencies. As in the July 2017 article by David Wallace-Wells in NY Magazine: “The Uninhabitable Earth” (expanded into a book: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming). Climate scientists seldom criticize even the most outrageous exaggerations and misrepresentations of their work by alarmists. But this went too far. Some spoke out, such as those quoted in this WaPo article – and especially this FB post by Michael Mann. His summary…

“The article argues that climate change will render the Earth uninhabitable by the end of this century. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The article fails to produce it.”

But the NY Mag article went viral, becoming their most successful article ever. So imitators multiplied. NakedCapitalism’s valuable daily links (a guide to the Left’s perspective on events, which I read every morning) cites such articles several times per week). The common elements of these…

(1) A lack of context. Historical – present vs. the past. Quantitative: big numbers to scare, such as gigatons of ice – not mentioning the percent of the ice cap or time required for significant melting. And outright misleading: ocean warming in Joules not degrees (e.g., the ocean heat content of the top 700 meters warmed by 10^22 Joules over 1955 to 2008 – which is 0.17°C).

(2) An exclusive focus on highly improbable worst-case scenarios, often presented as likely. The most frequent example is RCP8.5, a well-designed worst-case scenario in the IPCC’s AR5. It describes a horrific scenario, and the large changes in long-standing trends required for this to happen. For example, the given path to RCP8.5 requires fertility no longer dropping with industrialization (esp. in Africa), although this has been so everywhere else (and doomsters now warn about the coming population crash). And technological progress slowing to a crawl, although it appears to be accelerating (perhaps beginning another industrial revolution). The result: a crowded world in the late 21st century in which coal is again the primary power source (as it was in the late 19th century). Alarmists describe these incredible trend changes as “business as usual.” That’s a lie. For more information, see these posts about RCP8.5 and climate scenarios.

(3) Attributing all extreme weather to climate change. The most mindless example is the recent California wildfires (see the analysis by climate scientist Cliff Mass of the Camp Fire). The US Southwest had a century of grossly inappropriate fire suppression followed by building in nature fire zones – in a region in which fires and long droughts are natural. No anthropogenic climate change necessary to produce this disaster – and the ones to come.

Of course, AO-C is out front on this issue – making statements without even a little in climate science. Even the worst-case RCP8.5 will do little in 12 years.

“Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'”

{See the video.}

Panicking the American public is a smart tactic. It has worked before, and might do so again.

“Mr. President, if that’s what you want there is only one way to get it. That is to make a personal appearance before Congress and scare the hell out of the country.”

– Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s advice to Truman about starting the Cold War. Truman did so in his famous speech on 12 March 1947. From Put yourself in Marshall’s place by James Warburg (he helped develop the US WWII propaganda programs).

See posts about fear and about doomsters. Such as these…

1. Requiem for fear. Let’s learn from failed predictions to have confidence in ourselves & our future.
2. Threats come & go, leaving us in perpetual fear & forgetful of the past.
3. Dreams of apocalypses show the brotherhood of America’s Left & Right.
4. Collapsitarians and their doomster porn.
5. We love scary stories. The reason why reveals a secret about America.
6. Our fears make us weak and easily manipulated.
7. America suffers from the Crisis Crisis, making us weak.

To be continued …

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