Political beliefs affect what one wants to be true. People are pretty good at persuading themselves that what they want to be true is true.
That works in both directions in the context of arguments about climate change. People who share my political views are suspicious of government regulation, CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) provides an argument in favor of more government regulation and is used as such an argument at present, so we naturally want to look for arguments against CAGW.
On the other side, it's my experience that people who think global warming is a terrible problem that must be dealt with are also, by some odd coincidence, people who think the things that need to be done to deal with it are things most of which ought to be done anyway, that the real cost is low or negative. They are likely to put that point in terms of creating a cleaner, more sustainable world. From their standpoint, CAGW provides arguments to persuade people to do things they want done, so they naturally want to look for arguments in favor of CAGW.
There is no logical reason why there could not be people out there who believe that a forced shift away from fossil fuels has very large human costs, that by raising the cost of energy it will slow or stop the process by which several billion people are finally escaping from poverty, but think the cost of not doing it is even worse. But despite participating in quite a lot of online climate arguments, I do not think I have encountered a single person who takes that position.
That works in both directions in the context of arguments about climate change. People who share my political views are suspicious of government regulation, CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) provides an argument in favor of more government regulation and is used as such an argument at present, so we naturally want to look for arguments against CAGW.
On the other side, it's my experience that people who think global warming is a terrible problem that must be dealt with are also, by some odd coincidence, people who think the things that need to be done to deal with it are things most of which ought to be done anyway, that the real cost is low or negative. They are likely to put that point in terms of creating a cleaner, more sustainable world. From their standpoint, CAGW provides arguments to persuade people to do things they want done, so they naturally want to look for arguments in favor of CAGW.
There is no logical reason why there could not be people out there who believe that a forced shift away from fossil fuels has very large human costs, that by raising the cost of energy it will slow or stop the process by which several billion people are finally escaping from poverty, but think the cost of not doing it is even worse. But despite participating in quite a lot of online climate arguments, I do not think I have encountered a single person who takes that position.
[I specify CAGW rather than AGW because the argument for action to hold down CO2 emissions requires not only that the globe is warming because of human action but that the net effect of that warming will be negative and large. Also because my own view is that global temperatures have trended up over the past century, that at least part of the reason is probably CO2 produced by human action, but that there is no good reason to expect the consequences to be negative and large—for details see my old post on the subject and related posts. Hence I believe in AGW but not in CAGW.]
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