Falsified Data Inevitable Result of Foregone Conclusions

If you begin with a desired conclusion, you may find it difficult to work backwards to logic to support it. So it goes with the anthropogenic climate warming hypothesis. Certain individuals believe it is just plain obvious that emissions produced by coal processors or vehicle exhaust or even ungulate flatulence, being visible and smelly, are harmful and undesirable. These emissions are externalities to the producers (i.e. waste they create but do not have to bear the expense of cleaning up). Rather than enacting laws to require producers to absorb the full costs of their operations, the climate change activists want to shut them down altogether. So they declare that the emissions will cause catastrophic harm to the earth (who, after all, wants the earth to self-destruct?). This plays on real fear of the unknown, as well as on the guilt some people seem to feel for even inhabiting this world. And it is difficult to disprove in the same way as it is impossible to prove. So the loudest, most insistent advocates for climate change control become the most persuasive in the public forum.

These advocates want to cripple economic growth in the name of saving the earth even though their "evidence" is tainted and sometimes falsified. Makes one wonder if there is another agenda behind their protestations - like making money on carbon credits or harming business interests because they consider "business" to be selfish, evil, destructive. Some folks believe people harm the balance of nature and should really just disappear. What better way than to undermine means of production.

Selfish Individuals Must Be Guided by Solons

In an earlier post, I wrestled mightily with the concept that the leftwing and elitist leaders cannot possibly be unaware of the economic analysis conservatives have presented regarding the crushing, monstrous cost that their centralized government approach to health care, carbon emission control and other "greater good" programs will impose on our society. These people are not (all) stupid. Their motives undoubtedly vary from naked thirst for power to the far more benign desire to help the less fortunate. Just because their "help" will do far more harm than good, bringing everyone the egalitarian outcome of greater impoverishment, does not mean they don't mean well. My problem is that I cannot comprehend how anyone could study the data from prior efforts at top-down, centralized control of the economy and not see how extraordinarily inefficient and destructive it is.

A moment of clarity hit me when I heard Glenn Beck explain that the fundamental philosophy of the leftist solons is that individuals operate in their own self-interest, which these elites define as selfish. They characterize selfish as bad, benefiting the individual at the expense of others (the static piece-of-the-pie view of the economy). Hence the need for an elite and altruistic governing entity to redirect resources more "fairly" than would result from individuals deploying what they earn as they see fit.

Personally, I believe there is some willful ignorance going on here. This "greater good" philosophy suits the needs of the elitists, allowing them to rationalize seizing control of citizens' wealth and autonomy, thereby becoming wealthy and powerful themselves.