Cascades Of Hypocrisy

Holman Jenkins, Jr. of the Opinion Journal has noticed something I pointed out some time back. I posted about an article in the New York Times that discussed the "cascade effect" that had led to decades of faulty medical advice about high fat diets. The faulty information pushed by zealots caused doctors and scientists to jump on a bandwagon because their was "consensus." The problem was that the consensus was reached by counting heads of people who believed in the consensus, not by actual scientific fact. Jenkins today points out, as I did then, that a lot of the "consensus" on global warming is also a cascade reached by counting heads. What's more, the "consensus" is being milked for huge profit by mendacious people who know full well that they are scamming.

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

With politicians and lobbyists, of course, you are dealing with sophisticated people versed in the ways of public opinion whose very prosperity depends on positioning themselves via such cascades. Their reactions tend to be, for that reason, on a higher intellectual level.

Take John Dingell. He told an environmental publication last year that the "world . . . is great at having consensuses that are in great error." Yet he turned around a few months later and introduced a sweeping carbon tax bill, which would confront Congress more frontally than Congress cares to be confronted with a rational approach to climate change if Congress really believes human activity is responsible.

Mr. Dingell is no fool. Is he merely trying to embarrass those who offer fake cures for climate change at the expense of out-of-favor industries such as Mr. Dingell's beloved Detroit?

Take Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist working with Kleiner Perkins, a firm Mr. Gore joined last month to promote alternative energy investments. Mr. Khosla told a recent Senate hearing: "One does not need to believe in climate change to support climate change legislation. . . . Many executives would prefer to deal with known legislation even if unwarranted."

Mr. Khosla is no fool either. His argument is that the cascade itself is a reason that politicians can gain comfort by getting aboard his agenda.

As Jenkins points out, if 50% of all gasoline were to be replaced with "green" alternatives the effect on global emissions would be about a 4% reduction. But some people with investments in those "green" energy sources would get very rich, would they not? The average person in this country is going to pay an enormous cost in energy price increases – and that money will go to line the pockets of those pushing the bandwagon down the street. Those folks will fly off to Bali in their private jets and live the life of luxury while the people back home pay for it all and suffer a declining standard of living.