The Column: Science Has Returned

“Science made a comeback at the State Capitol on Tuesday.”

Thus the Minneapolis Star Tribune blares in the opening sentence of a news story in this morning’s paper.  The line invokes images of a wrathful Godzilla, returned to St. Paul to exact its terrible revenge (this time for global warming, rather than nuclear power), as a young Raymond Burr flees in terror.  In the event, the only persons fleeing the State Capitol in advance of the beast were Hope, Prudence, and Common Sense.

I’ve been told that certain Democrat members of the legislature have literally wandered the halls of the Capitol these last few weeks, like ancient heralds, chanting “Science is Coming!  Science is Coming!”

Likewise, the Democrat party-organ Star Tribune has heralded the return of “Science” by publishing a series of increasingly alarmist news stories and commentaries on the urgent problem of global warming.  A sampling:

• Rising temps could change landscape of Midwest, January 14, 2013
• Pushing for energetic change, January 12, 2013
• 2012 poised to tie record for warmth, December, 30, 2012

Each story comes complete with hand-wringing quotes from local paid activists and academics that—shall we say—gently point our politicians in the correct direction.  Here is one such quote from University of Minnesota climatologist Mark Seeley,

"The change in political leadership allows for, shall we say, a fuller and open vetting of what climate change means to us," Seeley said. "I think we have people who are more willing to listen and engage on this topic," Seeley said.

Subtle.  Sometimes the Star Tribune does not even bother teasing out a quote.  Here is a paragraph reported as straight news from the December 30^th story,

Minnesotans will be moving to the forefront of efforts to attack climate change in 2013. The DFL-controlled Legislature will be looking at supporting more alternatives to fossil-fuel energy, efficiency standards for home appliances and how Minnesota might cope with the effects of a warmer climate--including drought and floods.

Ah, the vagaries of weather.  Reports have been coming out of China this week about off-the-charts air pollution choking the skies over the capital, Beijing.  A “smog” index that the World Health Organization considers healthy at a number of 20 and hazardous at a number of 300, clocked in at 755 on Saturday.  Use of coal power and the city’s unique geography contribute to the problem.  Whatever the case, the result is air that you can’t cut with a knife, not without dulling the blade.

How odd, then, that the “Chinese model” of governance is touted as the solution to the world’s environmental problems.  Pulitzer-prize winner and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has said on more than one occasion that America needs to be “China for a day.”

Here’s what Friedman said on NBC’s Meet the Press, September 7, 2008, in response to an interview question from Tom Brokaw,

MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, it comes from actually a dialogue I had with Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, and Jeff was making the point that, you know, really almost out of exasperation of a company that's been trying to be an energy innovative leader, saying, "Look, Tom, we need is"--what Jeff said is we need a president who's going to set the right price for carbon. Set the right standard, set the right regulation. Shape the market so it will be innovative. Everyone will kind of whine and moan for a month and then the whole ecosystem will take off. And I thought about that afterwards and I said to him, "You know, Jeff, what you're really saying is, `If only we could be China for a day. Just one day.'" So I wrote a chapter called "China for a day, but not for two." Really, about what we would do if for one day we could impose, cut through all the lobbyists, all the amendments, all the earmarks, and actually impose the right conditions to get our market to take off.

In 2013, China will be China for 365 days and the 20 million residents of its capital city are literally choking on carbon.  The government of the Peoples Republic has an unlimited ability to “impose the right conditions” but hasn’t got the job done.

Unfortunately, we in Minnesota also live under one-party rule, that of the Democrats (or as we style them, the DFL—Democrat-Farmer-Labor party).  And our DFL has very much bought into the Friedmanian concept that central planning, in the correct dose, backed by “Science” can cure all environmental ills.

So, “China for a day,” it is!  Except that in Minnesota it will be China every day for the next five months that the legislature is in session.  You can’t have, in Friedman’s formulation, "China for a day, but not for two."  You can “set the right price for carbon” but you also have to live with the brown air, metaphorically speaking.  

Meanwhile, back in China itself, the air is not just brown, it's cold.  Cold as in the record cold in Southern California this week:  cold enough to destroy the orange crop and cause starlets to shiver at Sunday’s Golden Globes awards.  But weather is just weather, and not climate, unless it helps prove your theories about global climate change.

So the new DFL majority in St. Paul is eager to consult Science on global warming.  Funny, they seem less willing to listen to Science on the subjects of genetically modified food, wind turbine noise, nuclear power, or childhood vaccinations.

I’ve written about this uneasy relationship between the DFL, science and democracy before.  But I am not the first observer to note that science as a discipline is ill-equipped to make the tradeoffs and to balance competing interests that are a necessary part of life in a democracy (or republic, if you prefer).  The world doesn’t come in 1’s and 0’s.  Letting “Science” dictate policy is what prompted Bard Professor Walter Russell Mead to write,

“Its core tactic to cloak a comically absurd, impossibly complex and obviously impractical political program in the authority of science.  Let anyone attack the cretinous and rickety construct of policies, trade-offs, offsets and bribes by which the greens plan to govern the world economy in the twenty first century, and they attack you as an anti-science bigot.”

Nevermind.  The DFL sees the second coming of Science more like the return of a muse after a long exile, come to take her place under the Dome alongside Truth, Beauty, and Justice.  Over the next five months, we shall see what gifts she bears.