Krugman: So will the deniers now concede that climate change is real?

[pampango]

It’s now official: 2014 was the warmest year on record. You might expect this to be a politically important milestone. After all, climate change deniers have long used the blip of 1998 — an unusually hot year, mainly due to an upwelling of warm water in the Pacific — to claim that the planet has stopped warming. This claim involves a complete misunderstanding of how one goes about identifying underlying trends. (Hint: Don’t cherry-pick your observations.) But now even that bogus argument has collapsed. So will the deniers now concede that climate change is real?

Of course not. Evidence doesn’t matter for the “debate” over climate policy, where I put scare quotes around “debate” because, given the obvious irrelevance of logic and evidence, it’s not really a debate in any normal sense. And this situation is by no means unique. Indeed, at this point it’s hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it’s unshakable dogma, across the board. And the real question is why.

First, consider the Kansas experiment. Back in 2012 Sam Brownback, the state’s right-wing governor, went all in on supply-side economics: He drastically cut taxes, assuring everyone that the resulting boom would make up for the initial loss in revenues. Unfortunately for his constituents, his experiment has been a resounding failure. The economy of Kansas, far from booming, has lagged the economies of neighboring states, and Kansas is now in fiscal crisis.

The question, as I said at the beginning, is why. Why the dogmatism? Why the rage? And why do these issues go together, with the set of people insisting that climate change is a hoax pretty much the same as the set of people insisting that any attempt at providing universal health insurance must lead to disaster and tyranny?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/paul-krugman-hating-good-government.html

Krugman's answer to the last question is that the right hates government. Given that, they feel compelled to reject any evidence that government has played a role for good.

Evidence doesn’t matter for the “debate” over climate policy, where I put scare quotes around “debate” because, given the obvious irrelevance of logic and evidence ... (Sad but true that evidence does not matter to the right.)

Indeed, at this point it’s hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it’s unshakable dogma, across the board. (Fortunately liberals are rely much more on facts than dogma. One of the big distinction between the left and the right.)

[onecaliberal]

1. With Inhoffe in charge of science for the government

I'd say the answer to that question is a resounding no.

[City Lights]

2. Never. nt

[greytdemocrat]

3. There is this...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2915061/Nasa-climate-scientists-said-2014-warmest-year-record-38-sure-right.html#ixzz3PDItpJaf

?

[ProfessorGAC]

4. The Answer Is No

You would agree if you had listened to WJ on CSPAN on Sat and Sun morning.

Boy, did the moron brigade come out in force.

[IDemo]

5. Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.

https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Confirmation_bias.html

[n2doc]

6. Doesn't matter how hot it gets, if there is a buck to be made selling carbon

They just say "natural variation!!!!" and walk away as if they have won a prize for their comment.

[GreatGazoo]

7. The front edge of discussion and action on CC have moved on; Deniers are becoming irrelevant

“This is a new kind of storm associated with climate change,” Tom LaPorte, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Water Management, told Medill Reports on day two of the April flood. Extreme flooding is part of a pattern that has emerged in the last two decades, according to Illinois State climatologist Jim Angel.

Now a major insurance company is suing Chicago-area municipal governments saying they knew of the risks posed by climate change and should have been better prepared. The class-action lawsuits raise the question of who is liable for the costs of global warming.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/19/climate-change-get-ready-or-get-sued/

Also:

In an unprecedented federal court case that has made it to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, young people from California are suing the Environmental Protection Agency and Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Defense under the historic “public trust doctrine” for failing to devise a climate change recovery plan. In their legal brief, they argue, “Failure to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions and protect and restore the balance of the atmosphere is a violation of Youth’s constitutionally protected rights and is redressable by the Courts.”

http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/28/young-people-are-taking-the-government-to-court-over-its-failure-to-address-climate-change/

[Johonny]

8. Sam Brownback won reelection didn't he

so there's your answer.