Head-Spinning Political Shit!

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by AtLastHome

They sure have been!

And all of the areas you speak of in terms of the overt appeals to anti-science and anti-reason rings so true for me. When Limbaugh went after Romney the other day because he believes that the state of our eco-system is in such a mess due to human beings and science indeed, demonstrates this, I just wanted to scream. I support Obama's re-election, so Mitt's conversion won't move my vote, but Liombaugh's power over the GOP is amazing.

Although, lately, Limbaugh's popularity seems to be decreasing in terms of his radio audience. Who knows, maybe some people in the GOP are getting their heads out of their butts.

I keep hoping that at some point some political consultant will realize that there is a large group of Americans who want what I will call, for lack of any better term, reality-based politics. By that I mean simply this, your ideology follows the dictates of reality and not the other way around. To take just one example, global climate change is an empirical question amenable to observation. Our policy should follow the dictates of the empirical questions.
To see how this works (and why I find the idea that we're still treating the propositions advanced by either side as if they are equally true maddening and baffling) let's deconstruct this a bit.

So, according to the theories advanced in climatology IF the Earth's climate is heating up THEN we should be able to make certain kinds of observations. Those observations include--but are not limited to: melting of polar ice caps at one or both poles, rise in average temperatures with more record highs being set, increased precipitation in certain places, more intense storms for those storms driven by either heat or water vapor or both (here think hurricanes and tornadoes). These are just a partial list. Now, do we have any observations that match the predictions (each of the items above is based upon actual predictions)? If so how're the predictions holding up?

Melting of polar ice caps? Check. In fact, the Arctic is set to be ice free during the summers within five years. Has this happened before? Yes. The last time we know, with any degree of confidence, that this happened was ~125,000 years ago. Prior to that you have to go back to a time when dinosaurs still walked the planet--dinosaurs. Rise in average temperatures with more record highs being set? In the United States, the 10 hottest summer periods on record have all been in the last 10 years. So we'll add that to the 'yes' column. More intense storms driven? Yes for *both* hurricanes and tornadoes. Now this should give us a serious moment of pause because hurricanes, particularly, are sensitive to temperatures in the oceans. The frequency of power hurricanes (3+) are increasing and the number of category 4 and 5 storms have increased. I have not taken the time to chart this out (yet, I probably will this summer) but I suspect that if one looks solely at cat 4 or 5 storms starting with the middle of the 20th century (have to see how far records go back) one would see a, more or less, random distribution of storms until the mid-seventies. Then the distribution will become less random. If one looks at the trend of the last 15 years I suspect (I'll let you know either way) that we'll see a clustering of 4s and 5s after 2000 that is far less random than the pattern from, say, 1950. More precipitation? Yes, again, we are observing this. In places like the Pacific Northwest we see a longer rainy season and in places where it gets a lot of precipitation in the form of snow, we are seeing more of that as well.

The snow problem brings up an issue with the cheeky games that pass as critical analysis in modern US politics. Note that I said we should see increased precipitation, not increased rain. That was deliberate. More moisture in the air will come down either as rain or as snow depending upon the season. People use increased snowfall to argue that 'global warming isn't happening because it snowed so much in Buffalo, NY last year'. This is like saying that my house can never get above 90 degrees because it hasn't been above 90 since last August.

I harped on this issue to give an idea of what I think we should be counting as evidence. In science if your theory is not in agreement with observation and there is reason to believe that the observations were accurate then it’s the theory that is wrong. Right now our politics is being driven by exactly the opposite ethic such that if your ideology is not in agreement with observation then it is your observation that is wrong, not your ideology (to be fair, neither liberals or conservatives are particular great on this issue but right now conservatives are worse than liberals on this in more areas--liberals are primarily not reality-driven about foreign policy and certain aspects of criminal justice policy, while conservatives are not reality-driven about a whole raft of policy issues).

It doesn't matter if you *believe* that cutting tax rates actually *increases* the amount of taxes that flow in. The actual revenues taken in by all government levels are an empirical question for which there is plenty of empirical data. If we look at the tax rates over time and compare them with actual revenues over time we should be able to determine if, in fact, cutting tax rates increases revenue (hint: the theory is not in agreement with observation). At the point that your ideology is found wanting by reality, you should modify it or, if necessary, abandon it completely (this is why, for instance, I find Marxists to be a little sad now). Failure to do so in a timely fashion should come with a high political price but, at present, it doesn't.

The party that figures out that reality-based politics are not just viable but a winner both electorally and ideologically will be in a very good position.

Cheers
Aj