Senator Marco Rubio Demonstrated How Partisanship Trumps the Ability to Make Intelligent Points Hidden in One’s Theme — Is This a Sign of Stupidity or Intellectual Laziness?

12 May 2014

Senator Marco Rubio said something dumb about climate change — when he just as easily could have said almost exactly the same thing in an intelligently persuasive way

Why does the American political Right Wing insist on appearing to be stupid, when a little more thought could have them making essentially the same points in much more persuasive ways?

Take this bit of Senator Rubio’s nonsense:

“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” Rubio said on ABC's "This Week."

"I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy,” he added.

“Our climate is always changing.

“And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that's directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activities.”

What he just as easily might have said, without coming across as an anti-scientific dope

It is unlikely that humanity’s rather spectacular contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is not the cause of the climate warming that the planet has witnessed in recent decades.

So, why deny the phenomenon, when one can still make the policy point that Senator Rubio did without appearing to be foolish?

After all, Republicans’ main bullet blurbs are that:

(a) the impact of global warming is uncertain

and

(b) changing gas emissions policy will harm the economy.

These are not unreasonable perspectives. Therefore, why make oneself look like a denialist bonehead, when the key points that one wants to emphasize could legitimately and scientifically become part of rational debate?

It is perfectly consistent to say that we humans are warming the planet and simultaneously pose the caveat that:

(a) the change may not be as catastrophic as some predict

and

(b) our responses to warming should be considered in light of the range of:

(i) probable future hazards

and

(ii) the likelihoods of success for our proposed solutions to them.

Arguing the warming issue this way could make even dyed-in-the-wool obstructionists seem reasonable.

Why does the Republican crew argue these (and many other) issues so ineptly?

I don’t know.

During my lifetime, the American political right has gone from being reasonable to borderline insane.

Where once I could call myself a Republican, I no longer can without implicitly confessing that I am abysmally ignorant, globally fearful, irretrievably stupid, incorrigibly warlike — with a pronounced tendency toward making unsubtle displays of blatant bigotry.

What irks me is that the political right could just as easily make its global warming points in reasonable and often persuasive ways. Being brainlessly rock-headed is not a necessary ingredient to the conservative viewpoint.

Arguing climate issues more persuasively

Having once been an attorney, I do not find it especially challenging to support virtually any proposition in seemingly reasonable ways. It is a matter of emphasis and point selection. Very few positions do not have at least some element in their favor.

In regard to climate change, one can admit that human beings have almost certainly caused the planet’s increased warmth, without implicitly conceding the Left’s policy points as to what to do about it.

Our climate models do not accurately predict what is going to happen and where. And, regardless of what the catastrophists predict, we do not know just how bad this is going to be, if left to its own devices.

Therefore, the core issue in responding to global warming is deciding the amount of attention we should pay to anticipating the variety of uncertainties, and their potentially maximum impact, over the long term.

Does the probably limited potential for genuine, planetary catastrophe argue in favor of taking painful measures today?

Or do the uncertainties justify generating a variable spectrum of responses that might be potentially reasonable ones?

Nobody knows.

Nobody knows how many lands we can tolerably let submerge and at what cost. No one has reliably calculated the likely effect that warming will have on global fresh water supplies — nor on agricultural production totals located “here” as opposed to “there”.

Planetary science is not advanced enough for us to calculate the risks of runaway heating. We have no way of anticipating whether, once past a certain tipping point, Earth metaphorically burns up and everything biologic on the surface is doomed.

These are the references that Republicans could be making, but are apparently too lazy or thoughtless to present. Instead, like corner-cutting school children, they generate the “science is wrong” answer and leave the climate issue with that statistically improbable assertion.

Climate change issues that people could debate

Starting with what I consider to be the lesser ones first —

Sea level rise

Sea level rise has already been catastrophic for some Pacific atolls. And it certainly is going to be for some impoverished sea coast nations.

But for Miami, New York, and New Orleans?

Would having to move these cities burden rich America to the point of being legitimately labeled a catastrophe? I don’t think so. Which illustrates the region versus region, rich versus poor problem that works against coming up with coherent global climate policy.

Increasingly violent storms — also maybe not such a big deal in the medium term

On a planet of 7 to 8 billion people, a lot of rich folk are not going to get especially upset over the regionally limited excitement that more violent storms might cause.

Life is cheap in a lot of places. Choosing between a job now and the limited likelihood of being able to reduce storm ferocity in the near future is going to be an easy choice to make for many, even for those most likely to be swept away.

A potentially way bigger deal — declining fresh water supplies

Anticipated diminished fresh water supplies will pose more of a human survival problem than sea level rise and/or enduring more violent storms will.

Yet, even today, not many people are thinking about this.

Warming and agriculture

Take a look at the Texas, Oklahoma and the California droughts and you get an idea of a potentially real catastrophe that may face some regions of the planet — if warming is allowed to continue at the impressive rate predicted.

But even here, uncertainty reigns. Some regions will certainly become more productive and others markedly less.

What will the total effect be? No one knows.

In addition to the difficulty of predicting the variables that contribute to shifting agriculture productivities, it is difficult to predict how adaptable human institutions will be in responding to changing breadbaskets. Who will feed whom? And how willingly?

The moral? — In regard to climate change, there is lots of room for policy arguments that do not involve distorting scientific fact and looking foolish

A more reasoned debate would encourage the scientific community to come up with probabilities and quantities that policy-makers could work with.

Admittedly, as I have written before (here and here), I think it unlikely that humanity will cooperate in attempting to prepare for climate change. But that does not mean that localities cannot begin to prepare for water and agricultural problems.

Last — in response to why Senator Rubio allowed himself to appear to be a scientific ignoramus (to sensible people), I suspect that his comparative youth, lack of humility, and inexperience all played a role.

Indicatively, in regard to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s anticipated run for president in 2016, Rubio said:

“I’m sure she’s going to go out bragging about her time in the State Department.

“She’s also going to have to be held accountable for its failures, whether it’s the failed reset with Russia or the failure in Benghazi that actually cost lives.”

Assuredly so.

That said, noticeably lacking in Senator Rubio’s arrogant take on Clinton was any appropriate sense of the lack of experience that he himself has in having to deal with global issues of the kind that she has repeatedly faced. Senator Rubio’s delivery in regard to Clinton reminded me of a five year old criticizing his mother’s simultaneous handling of the house burning down and being CEO of Hugely Big Corporation.

I suspect that Senator Rubio suffers from the same kind of ambition and inexperienced overconfidence that President Obama seemed to, when he first ran for president. Senator Rubio has not favorably impressed me — either as to his knowledge, character, or ability to sound competently attuned to America’s real, as opposed to pretend, problems.

That, sadly, seems to be the state of American political leadership.

PeteFree.com

Senator Marco Rubio Demonstrated How Partisanship Trumps the Ability to Make Intelligent Points Hidden in One’s Theme — Is This a Sign of Stupidity or Intellectual Laziness?