7 ms·

How former professional climate change skeptic Jerry Taylor changed his mind

60 points by DamonHD 10y ago

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
I'm surprised more libertarians aren't worried about the blowback when it becomes common knowledge that they were lying for the benefit of large corporations. I can easily imagine a swing towards nationalisation, confiscation of property etc. when things become visibly messed up.
- Edmond 10y ago
  In the future when the effect of climate change is fully realized and there is no more denying it I do hope retro-active action can be taken perhaps in the form of lawsuits that would lead to the seizure of assets of any business entity that willfully engaged in misinformation on the subject...think fossil fuel industry and assorted politicians who helped them.
  - nikanj 10y ago
    Like we did with e.g. the tobacco industry?
    - Edmond 10y ago
      Yes but likely much more economically costly...Philip Morris is still around and quite healthy...if whole city waterfronts end up under water around the world, the liabilities could be enough to make Exxon et al disappear.
      - gonzo41 10y ago
        i don't see this happening. Right now exxon can explore for gas in the Great Australian Bite and if there is an oil spill as a result of this drilling, its on the taxpayers because it exploratory drilling!
    - sgift 10y ago
      One can hope that we wise up in the future and don't repeat our mistakes. It's naive, but sometimes hope is all we have left.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    Lying for profit - and "PR" which uses that MO - should be criminalised. They're effectively another form of corporate pollution.
    - skummetmaelk 10y ago
      In the past being honorable was important because of unwritten social rules. Today those rules have to be written down because there is no longer any consequence for exploiting people as long as you are within the letter (not the spirit) of the law.
      - dhimes 10y ago
        Not only that but we have accepted this lying into our society. When a businessman lies about something or does something shady, we say "he said what he had to say" or "he did what he had to do." Lawyers likewise are socially excused. And by socially excused I'm referring particularly to the neighborhoods and communities and clubs in which they live and recreate. Not everybody gives them a pass of course, but many do. I'm curious about something: were any of those bankers from the 2007/8 crisis and scandal booted out of their country clubs?
  - throwaway7312 10y ago
    And that is indeed what it's always been about, back to the days of Margaret Thatcher, when the British government first incentivized researchers to produce evidence showing carbon caused global warming, and not the reverse[1]. It's always been about taking out Thatcher's political enemies in the fossil fuel industry. AGW is a terrific example of how political campaigns can go viral and become their own self-sustaining anti-fill-in-the-blank movements, given the right mix of ingredients. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4
    - samiru 10y ago
      Exactly. Somehow we humans are built in a way it is very easy to plant ideologies and make them spread in the society. If you somehow get a group to feel collective guilt for something, you are already halfway of achieving your goals. Groupthink takes care of the rest. I suppose it is the same mechanism in work as for religions in general.
  - ratboy666 10y ago
    Edmund -- that would be a "climate change denier" position. Since climate is always changing, the effect of climate change cannot be, and will never be, fully realized. The question then becomes "when will that retro-active action be allowed"? What triggers that certainty?
    - Edmond 10y ago
      You are right, except clearly the effects of human caused change is still being denied by many. I am guessing/hoping there would come a time when such people will lose their influence.
- breatheoften 10y ago
  Libertarians believe the almighty market will eventually suss out these liars and punish them in the market going forward, that no liars will ever arise capable of deceiving the market for any length of time, and that any action taken to clawback profits made by deceiving the market is socialism because (1) there could never have been market deceit since the market is almighty and/or (2) socialism is the only thing that can distort the market from almightiness and in fact is therefore always the cause of situations where the market is capable of making mistakes anyway, so the cure can't be more socialism. Libertarians are not capable of acting rationally because their ideology is a word soup of contradictory ideas and circular logic.
  - bsbechtel 10y ago
    Is that like advocating for net neutrality because everyone should pay the same rate for Internet access, but those who can pay more, should pay more when it comes to paying taxes?
    - skummetmaelk 10y ago
      Wealthy pay the same price per kWh as people who are poor. They also pay the same rate for water and other utilities. If you frame the net neutrality issue as a tax, then sure, set up some rules and make wealthy corps pay more. I can't believe you don't see it being abused by telecompanies within days though.
      - bsbechtel 10y ago
        My point was more in response to the OP's comment about contradictory ideas and circular logic.
        breatheoften 10y ago
        The parent was expressing surprise that libertarians are not worried about "blowback" against market players who actively mislead society about the negative externalities of their business activities. My comment was about how libertarians are never worried about such things -- that in fact the idea of a market player paying for a negative externality is explicitly against their convoluted philosophical perspective. I was arguing that it's wrong to have an expectation for a libertarian to behave rationally when a negative externality is involved. Nothing about your comment seems to be related -- I'm gathering you are trying to use some kind of slippery slope analogy to show that my thinking when expanded to some imaginary limit actually yields some sort of undesirable result. Thanks I guess -- I suppose next time I make a comment about how environmental damage is mispriced by the market that I will consider the implications of my words when they are reinterpreted randomly as a somehow specific comment about net neutrality ... On the other hand -- thank you for demonstrating very well the exact experience of having a discussion with a libertarian -- I often find it to be an exercise in being confronted with random analogies designed to separate the topic from any arena of specific facts.
- pizza234 10y ago
  It's perfectly possible that the conditions will be [significantly] messed up only in the long term (same as oil predictions)¹. If this is going to be case, denial in the present times would be a malicious but winning strategy - as a matter of fact, some theorize that Trump's denial policy has a the core the belief that the planet is screwed up, but in the relatively distant future, therefore it's a better strategy to capitalize on the adequacy of the present condition. [¹] of course, this is just a possibility.
- TellMeWhoToBan 10y ago
  I'm not surprised liberals embraced social strategies to reinforce a new technological dark age to appeal to supernatural magics to justify technological backwardness to save forests that only exist for paper farming. "GLOBAL WARMING/COOLING/CHANGE" AKA We need to regulate human behavior at the genetic level because trees might revolt against us, and as we all know, trees have been the most important voting bloc in modern democracy since 1950s white girls were trained to hate their dad. Downvote me until you get a Silicon Valley boner. Go fuck things that hardly resemble yourself.
  - orf 10y ago
    That comment is incredibly confused, angry and borderline deranged. That is why people are downvoting you. If you want a discussion about whatever it is you are talking about then put some effort into straightening out your thoughts and writing them down.
    - pottersbasilisk 10y ago
      Its a sign of increasing desperate and polarized america. Very worrisome.
      - Neliquat 10y ago
        Seems more like an attempt to make sense of a noncongruent world. We do the best with the info we have, and boy has that info been bad recently.
    - TellMeWhoToBan 10y ago
      All political discussions are stream of conscious. It is no accident I selected that format.
- louithethrid 10y ago
  I for once bet on torch and fork-futures!
tajen 10y ago
Our best glimpse of hope for climate change would be if Trump, the sceptic amongst the sceptics, changed its mind. "I thought it was bullshit, but I've decided after further information that America will not survive without converting itself to XXIst-century technology, that is, sustainable tech. Let's make America great again."
- theparanoid 10y ago
  Good example of pacing-and-leading, like "Nixon goes to China."
- spodek 10y ago
  Like in this article: http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/how-donald-trump-can-make-himself-one-of-the-greatest-presidents-in-history.html http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/how-donald-trump-can-make-h... If he did reverse his stand, everyone else opposed to acting on global warming could too. Plus the U.S. could invest and act more on alternative energies and related industries.
- jononor 10y ago
  How do we make this happen?
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  That's not how it would work. Trump doesn't change his mind, he merely progresses to a point where he pretends that something he said in the past doesn't actually exist and the fact that people talk about it is a liberal media lie and fake news.
Claudus 10y ago
From the article: On air, I said that, back in 1988, when climate scientist James Hansen testified in front of the Senate, he predicted we’d see a tremendous amount of warming. I argued it’d been more than a decade and we could now see by looking at the temperature record that he wasn’t accurate. After we got done with the program and were back in green room, getting the makeup taken off, Joe said to me, “Did you even read that testimony you’ve just talked about?” And when I told him it had been a while, he said “I’m daring you to go back and double check this.” He told me that some of Hansen’s projections were spot on. So I went back to my office and I re-read Hanson’s testimony. And Joe was correct. Here is a transcript of the testimony, he appears to be referring to... http://climatechange.procon.org/sourcefiles/1988_Hansen_Senate_Testimony.pdf http://climatechange.procon.org/sourcefiles/1988_Hansen_Sena... Having read it twice, I'm not sure exactly which "predictions" he is referring to. John Taylor, according to his Wikipedia article is "an environmental activist and policy analyst", and apparently more than happy to shill for either side. Criticism of him from some random link on the second page of Google: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2017/04/is-jerry-taylor-doing-what-i-think-hes-doing.html http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2017/04/is-jerry-taylor-doin... No matter your opinion on the topic, this guy certainly seems less than credible.
- Claudus 10y ago
  Another note: The user who posted this link created his account 21 days ago, and already has 51 submissions, most related to similar topics. Unsurprising, given the details on the site linked from his profile page. http://d.hd.org http://d.hd.org My big project is OpenTRV which has the modest aim of cutting the UK's entire carbon footprint by 10% (and/or Europe'ss by 8%) at low cost by halving space heating costs especially for homes in a simple and fiddle-free way!
  - DamonHD 10y ago
    Thanks for highlighting a silly typo, now fixed!
  - pavlov 10y ago
    What exactly is nefarious about reducing heating bills? OpenTRV sounds useful: http://opentrv.org.uk/what-is-opentrv/ http://opentrv.org.uk/what-is-opentrv/
Proven 10y ago
I don't see any evidence that shows that costs can be cheaper than consequences (or that there will be any consequences). Bad interview.
louithethrid 10y ago
Doesent the tradition of the convert demand a way morea zealot approach to the once opposite view? After all you got too proof it to the world, to yourself, to the old allys and the new allys- that what you did was right. Everything else would be heresci.

60 points by DamonHD 10y ago

I'm surprised more libertarians aren't worried about the blowback when it becomes common knowledge that they were lying for the benefit of large corporations. I can easily imagine a swing towards nationalisation, confiscation of property etc. when things become visibly messed up.

Edmond 10y ago
In the future when the effect of climate change is fully realized and there is no more denying it I do hope retro-active action can be taken perhaps in the form of lawsuits that would lead to the seizure of assets of any business entity that willfully engaged in misinformation on the subject...think fossil fuel industry and assorted politicians who helped them.
- nikanj 10y ago
  Like we did with e.g. the tobacco industry?
  - Edmond 10y ago
    Yes but likely much more economically costly...Philip Morris is still around and quite healthy...if whole city waterfronts end up under water around the world, the liabilities could be enough to make Exxon et al disappear.
    - gonzo41 10y ago
      i don't see this happening. Right now exxon can explore for gas in the Great Australian Bite and if there is an oil spill as a result of this drilling, its on the taxpayers because it exploratory drilling!
  - sgift 10y ago
    One can hope that we wise up in the future and don't repeat our mistakes. It's naive, but sometimes hope is all we have left.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  Lying for profit - and "PR" which uses that MO - should be criminalised. They're effectively another form of corporate pollution.
  - skummetmaelk 10y ago
    In the past being honorable was important because of unwritten social rules. Today those rules have to be written down because there is no longer any consequence for exploiting people as long as you are within the letter (not the spirit) of the law.
    - dhimes 10y ago
      Not only that but we have accepted this lying into our society. When a businessman lies about something or does something shady, we say "he said what he had to say" or "he did what he had to do." Lawyers likewise are socially excused. And by socially excused I'm referring particularly to the neighborhoods and communities and clubs in which they live and recreate. Not everybody gives them a pass of course, but many do. I'm curious about something: were any of those bankers from the 2007/8 crisis and scandal booted out of their country clubs?
- throwaway7312 10y ago
  And that is indeed what it's always been about, back to the days of Margaret Thatcher, when the British government first incentivized researchers to produce evidence showing carbon caused global warming, and not the reverse[1]. It's always been about taking out Thatcher's political enemies in the fossil fuel industry. AGW is a terrific example of how political campaigns can go viral and become their own self-sustaining anti-fill-in-the-blank movements, given the right mix of ingredients. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4
  - samiru 10y ago
    Exactly. Somehow we humans are built in a way it is very easy to plant ideologies and make them spread in the society. If you somehow get a group to feel collective guilt for something, you are already halfway of achieving your goals. Groupthink takes care of the rest. I suppose it is the same mechanism in work as for religions in general.
- ratboy666 10y ago
  Edmund -- that would be a "climate change denier" position. Since climate is always changing, the effect of climate change cannot be, and will never be, fully realized. The question then becomes "when will that retro-active action be allowed"? What triggers that certainty?
  - Edmond 10y ago
    You are right, except clearly the effects of human caused change is still being denied by many. I am guessing/hoping there would come a time when such people will lose their influence.
breatheoften 10y ago
Libertarians believe the almighty market will eventually suss out these liars and punish them in the market going forward, that no liars will ever arise capable of deceiving the market for any length of time, and that any action taken to clawback profits made by deceiving the market is socialism because (1) there could never have been market deceit since the market is almighty and/or (2) socialism is the only thing that can distort the market from almightiness and in fact is therefore always the cause of situations where the market is capable of making mistakes anyway, so the cure can't be more socialism. Libertarians are not capable of acting rationally because their ideology is a word soup of contradictory ideas and circular logic.
- bsbechtel 10y ago
  Is that like advocating for net neutrality because everyone should pay the same rate for Internet access, but those who can pay more, should pay more when it comes to paying taxes?
  - skummetmaelk 10y ago
    Wealthy pay the same price per kWh as people who are poor. They also pay the same rate for water and other utilities. If you frame the net neutrality issue as a tax, then sure, set up some rules and make wealthy corps pay more. I can't believe you don't see it being abused by telecompanies within days though.
    - bsbechtel 10y ago
      My point was more in response to the OP's comment about contradictory ideas and circular logic.
      - breatheoften 10y ago
        The parent was expressing surprise that libertarians are not worried about "blowback" against market players who actively mislead society about the negative externalities of their business activities. My comment was about how libertarians are never worried about such things -- that in fact the idea of a market player paying for a negative externality is explicitly against their convoluted philosophical perspective. I was arguing that it's wrong to have an expectation for a libertarian to behave rationally when a negative externality is involved. Nothing about your comment seems to be related -- I'm gathering you are trying to use some kind of slippery slope analogy to show that my thinking when expanded to some imaginary limit actually yields some sort of undesirable result. Thanks I guess -- I suppose next time I make a comment about how environmental damage is mispriced by the market that I will consider the implications of my words when they are reinterpreted randomly as a somehow specific comment about net neutrality ... On the other hand -- thank you for demonstrating very well the exact experience of having a discussion with a libertarian -- I often find it to be an exercise in being confronted with random analogies designed to separate the topic from any arena of specific facts.
pizza234 10y ago
It's perfectly possible that the conditions will be [significantly] messed up only in the long term (same as oil predictions)¹. If this is going to be case, denial in the present times would be a malicious but winning strategy - as a matter of fact, some theorize that Trump's denial policy has a the core the belief that the planet is screwed up, but in the relatively distant future, therefore it's a better strategy to capitalize on the adequacy of the present condition. [¹] of course, this is just a possibility.
TellMeWhoToBan 10y ago
I'm not surprised liberals embraced social strategies to reinforce a new technological dark age to appeal to supernatural magics to justify technological backwardness to save forests that only exist for paper farming. "GLOBAL WARMING/COOLING/CHANGE" AKA We need to regulate human behavior at the genetic level because trees might revolt against us, and as we all know, trees have been the most important voting bloc in modern democracy since 1950s white girls were trained to hate their dad. Downvote me until you get a Silicon Valley boner. Go fuck things that hardly resemble yourself.
- orf 10y ago
  That comment is incredibly confused, angry and borderline deranged. That is why people are downvoting you. If you want a discussion about whatever it is you are talking about then put some effort into straightening out your thoughts and writing them down.
  - pottersbasilisk 10y ago
    Its a sign of increasing desperate and polarized america. Very worrisome.
    - Neliquat 10y ago
      Seems more like an attempt to make sense of a noncongruent world. We do the best with the info we have, and boy has that info been bad recently.
  - TellMeWhoToBan 10y ago
    All political discussions are stream of conscious. It is no accident I selected that format.
louithethrid 10y ago
I for once bet on torch and fork-futures!

tajen 10y ago

Our best glimpse of hope for climate change would be if Trump, the sceptic amongst the sceptics, changed its mind. "I thought it was bullshit, but I've decided after further information that America will not survive without converting itself to XXIst-century technology, that is, sustainable tech. Let's make America great again."

theparanoid 10y ago
Good example of pacing-and-leading, like "Nixon goes to China."
spodek 10y ago
Like in this article: http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/how-donald-trump-can-make-himself-one-of-the-greatest-presidents-in-history.html http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/how-donald-trump-can-make-h... If he did reverse his stand, everyone else opposed to acting on global warming could too. Plus the U.S. could invest and act more on alternative energies and related industries.
jononor 10y ago
How do we make this happen?
saosebastiao 10y ago
That's not how it would work. Trump doesn't change his mind, he merely progresses to a point where he pretends that something he said in the past doesn't actually exist and the fact that people talk about it is a liberal media lie and fake news.

Claudus 10y ago

From the article: On air, I said that, back in 1988, when climate scientist James Hansen testified in front of the Senate, he predicted we’d see a tremendous amount of warming. I argued it’d been more than a decade and we could now see by looking at the temperature record that he wasn’t accurate. After we got done with the program and were back in green room, getting the makeup taken off, Joe said to me, “Did you even read that testimony you’ve just talked about?” And when I told him it had been a while, he said “I’m daring you to go back and double check this.” He told me that some of Hansen’s projections were spot on. So I went back to my office and I re-read Hanson’s testimony. And Joe was correct. Here is a transcript of the testimony, he appears to be referring to... http://climatechange.procon.org/sourcefiles/1988_Hansen_Senate_Testimony.pdf http://climatechange.procon.org/sourcefiles/1988_Hansen_Sena... Having read it twice, I'm not sure exactly which "predictions" he is referring to. John Taylor, according to his Wikipedia article is "an environmental activist and policy analyst", and apparently more than happy to shill for either side. Criticism of him from some random link on the second page of Google: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2017/04/is-jerry-taylor-doing-what-i-think-hes-doing.html http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2017/04/is-jerry-taylor-doin... No matter your opinion on the topic, this guy certainly seems less than credible.

Claudus 10y ago
Another note: The user who posted this link created his account 21 days ago, and already has 51 submissions, most related to similar topics. Unsurprising, given the details on the site linked from his profile page. http://d.hd.org http://d.hd.org My big project is OpenTRV which has the modest aim of cutting the UK's entire carbon footprint by 10% (and/or Europe'ss by 8%) at low cost by halving space heating costs especially for homes in a simple and fiddle-free way!
- DamonHD 10y ago
  Thanks for highlighting a silly typo, now fixed!
- pavlov 10y ago
  What exactly is nefarious about reducing heating bills? OpenTRV sounds useful: http://opentrv.org.uk/what-is-opentrv/ http://opentrv.org.uk/what-is-opentrv/

Proven 10y ago

I don't see any evidence that shows that costs can be cheaper than consequences (or that there will be any consequences). Bad interview.

louithethrid 10y ago

Doesent the tradition of the convert demand a way morea zealot approach to the once opposite view? After all you got too proof it to the world, to yourself, to the old allys and the new allys- that what you did was right. Everything else would be heresci.