“Will Ms. Lavelle admit that global lukewarming is a valid area of scientific inquiry and conclusion; there are benefits, not only costs, to the human influence on climate; and ‘government failure’ exists alongside ‘market failure’ in the quest to ‘do something’? Adaptation to realistic scenarios, private sector as well as public, is an alternative to–and opportunity cost of–mitigation.”
The article by Marianne Lavelle, “5 Shades of Climate Denial, All on Display in the Trump White House,” a feature at Instide Climate News (June 9, 2017), deserves a second look. The good news is that a much more useful categorization that has been offered (by Richard Mueller, below) can be used to correct the unstudied, biased five categories presented in ICN.
Here are Lavelle’s five categories:
“Until last week, Richard Nixon was responsible for the two worst-conceived American energy policies. On June 1, Donald Trump’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords displaced all competitors as the worst presidential initiative on energy in our nation’s history.”
– Hakes, “Quitting the Paris Climate Pact in Historical Perspective” (June 6, 2017)
“Historian Hakes got it exactly backwards. President Nixon violated economic law by imposing federal pricing on energy; President Trump removed an impetus to federal pricing for carbon-dioxide (CO2). Only if Trump had stayed in Paris would the Nixon analogy come into play.”
His bio line at Real Clear Energy reads: Jay Hakes is an energy historian who has worked for three presidents on energy issues. Experience aside, Mr. Hakes made just about the worst analogy possible regarding Donald Trump’s courageous decision to withdraw the United States from the redistributionist, toothless, ill-conceived Paris climate agreement.…
“But upon closer scrutiny, Epstein’s characterizations are often straw men; his own assertions are strikingly misleading or demonstrably wrong; and his evidence is typically weak and selective or completely beside the point.”
– Jody Freeman, “A Critical Look at The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.” 36 Energy L.J. 327 (2015).
“This response gives a proof that Freeman’s portrayal of MCFF’s method and content is a straw man, and summarizes the actual arguments of the book. It does so primarily through repeated, side-by-side comparisons of unaltered passages by Freeman purporting to describe MCFF’s viewpoint and unaltered passages from MCFF clearly stating its actual viewpoint.”
– Alex Epstein. “A Straw Man Attack on The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” (38 Energy L.J. 79 (2017), p. 79.
It is happening for all to see in the prestigious Energy Law Journal.…