{"id":367020,"date":"2025-02-20T17:56:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T16:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=367020"},"modified":"2025-02-20T18:07:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T17:07:03","slug":"adler-on-climate-policy-more-vague-weak-argumentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=367020","title":{"rendered":"Adler on Climate Policy: More Vague, Weak Argumentation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Master Resource<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Bradley Jr.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shikha Dalmia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My least favorite think tank is Shikha Dalmia\u2019s Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism<\/a>, publisher of The UnPopulist<\/a>. Left-funded and a pretend classical-liberal group, it promotes a vague \u2018liberalism\u2019. ISMA is a Trump-hate group of disaffected, politically homeless folk who have forgotten that statism<\/em> is the enemy, not Donald Trump. Thus, they do not apply their metrics to the Progressive Left\u2013just Trump. And their TDS has put them at odds with normal folk. [1]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fringe group<\/a> is a home to Left Libertarians who, among other things, play up climate alarmism and thus the Climate Industrial Complex\u2019s forced energy transformation. Jonathan Adler<\/a>, who I have taken to task<\/a> (without his promised rebuttal), fits right in with Shikha\u2019s group. Employing judicial activism, Adler assumes CO2 is a deleterious pollutant to argue for tort law for the \u2018victims\u2019 (fill in the blank) to sue the \u2018guilty\u2019 (everyone, really).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sound crazy? It is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer, ISMA\/The UnPopulist held its inaugural Liberalism for the 21st Century<\/a> conference in Washington, DC. One session on climate featured Adler himself, with nary a person on the other side of the quite unsettled debate. The fix was in with the participants:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Climate Change: Liberal Solutions<\/strong>
Jonathan Adler, Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve, University School of Law
Nils Gilman, EVP & COO, Berggruen Institute
Joseph Majkut, Director, Energy Security and Climate, CSIS
Moderated by Matt Yglesias<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The discussion was published as Climate Catastrophism Leads to Illiberalism but Doesn\u2019t Solve the Problem<\/a> with the subtitle (ahem), \u201cThere are liberal solutions available, but the right\u2019s denialism and the left\u2019s alarmism are getting in the way.\u201d Denialism<\/em>? As in those who think that carbon dioxide enrichment is not<\/em> catastrophic but just the opposite? \u201cDenialism\u201d as in what is now U.S. climate policy with the world moving in our direction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here are the transcript highlights with my comments interceded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJonathan, you\u2019re the expert in this. There is <\/em>a \u2018liberal\u2019 way to think about climate change, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan H. Adler: <\/strong>There certainly is, and a lot of folks who take at least the libertarian manifestations of liberal policy positions in a lot of other contexts abandon it in the context of climate change, which is a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/em><\/strong>: Incorrect. Classical liberalism 101 concludes that government (global government in this case) should not price or otherwise regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) or other man-made greenhouse gas emissions to \u201csave\u201d or \u201cstabilize\u201d the planet. This was true in the 1980s and is truer today, with the forcing effect of CO2 encountering diminishing returns (saturation effect) and natural adaptation in free societies internalizing the alleged negative externality. Time is on the side of classical liberalism\u2019s \u201cfirst, do no harm\u201d and \u201cnaturally adapt\u201d conclusion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Alder<\/strong>: [When] we step back and think about environmental protection generally as something that we ask government to do, or what the liberal case for environmental protection is, it begins with the government protecting people and their property from harms caused by the misuse of other people\u2019s property. One of my favorite old cases is William Aldred\u2019s case from [1610]. A guy has a pig farm, and his neighbor\u2019s like, \u201cThe pig stink, and I can\u2019t sit at my table and have dinner because of the odors.\u201d And this opinion sounds like something that some law and economics person would have written in the 1970s, because the farm owner is like, \u201cWell, I\u2019m producing valuable stuff for society. I am helping people be fed. If it weren\u2019t for me, you wouldn\u2019t have pork on your dinner plate. From a welfare-maximizing standpoint, I have to be allowed to do this, and your nose shouldn\u2019t be so sensitive.\u201d The court says, \u201cNo, that\u2019s not how it works. You have the right to do things on your property. He has the right to do things on his. But when you start to intrude\u201d \u2026 it\u2019s the pollution version of the aphorism about my right to swing my hand ends at the tip of your nose<\/em>. It\u2019s the same principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/em><\/strong>: What does this have to do with CO2, which was never thought to be a pollutant until politics made it so? CO2 is not<\/em><\/a> a pollutant. CO2 is not pig stink but odorless. It is a trace gas with numerous benefits<\/a> for plants and other forms of human life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler<\/strong>: Historically, that was the beginnings of environmental policy, before we had big federal regulatory agencies. Over time, we realized that it\u2019s often not this bilateral problem. It\u2019s not one farmer and one homeowner; it\u2019s lots of people, lots of activities\u2014the accumulation of many activities in a particular area, so that the concentration of effects reaches a point where it actually becomes a problem. Again, the same principles would underlie the early zoning laws that were designed to deal with this. How do we prevent these sorts of conflicts ex ante rather than ex post? The Progressive Era smoke control movement [was] very much designed to make sure you can burn coal, but you can\u2019t burn it in a place that\u2019s going to make people nearby sick, and that resulted in moving a lot of these facilities outside of the cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comment<\/strong>: Again, this is not applicable to CO2 but to real<\/em> air and water pollution. CO2 does not produce smoke (it is colorless) , ruining the above analogy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> At a certain point, the politics of environmental issues, as the problems become more complicated, as the stakes become larger, make these coordination problems look more difficult, and they\u2019ve produced this illiberal response of not merely saying, not just in terms of the policy measures, but the reaction of being involved, \u201cthe problem can\u2019t be real.\u201d The need to deny the problem so as to deny the rationale for government intervention. It\u2019s this binary choice: if it\u2019s a catastrophe, yes, we have to do terrible things. But if it\u2019s not, we can ignore it. But of course, that\u2019s not the traditional liberal way of thinking about these sorts of problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: \u201cThe need to deny the problem so as to deny the rationale for government intervention\u201d is a slight toward decades of classical liberal attention to this subject, from physical science to climate economics to public policy. \u201cilliberal response of \u2026 \u2018the problem can\u2019t be real\u2019\u201d is a non sequitur. And certainly not a classical liberal position where the burden of proof is on those who declare a global emergency calling for global government intervention. \u2018Liberal\u2019 is Statism, as Adler uses it. Throw this vague term away.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler<\/strong>: I worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which I guess is still today the leading don\u2019t take action on climate change<\/em> organization here in D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Another vague, incorrect statement. The government<\/em> should not take action. Free people and civil society should<\/em> take action based on their opinion of the trustworthiness of physical climate science based on global climate models.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> A few years after I left and went to academia, I wrote a paper saying, \u201cLook, if we take these ideas about protecting property rights\u2014not merely from the government but from others\u2014seriously, you don\u2019t have to be [a catastrophist] to think that climate change is a problem within this traditional, classical liberal framework.\u201d You can take very modest, non-apocalyptic scenarios about things like sea level rise. And you can point out that just as there are old cases about pig farmers, there are old cases about land modifications that cause the flooding of a neighbor\u2019s property, and it was recognized [that if] you do something on your property that causes standing water on your neighbor\u2019s property, that\u2019s a trespass, that\u2019s a property rights violation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can have a discussion about when it\u2019s not one landowner versus another landowner, it\u2019s millions of people emitting stuff, and millions of people\u2019s land being affected very far away, about what sort of institutional mechanisms we want to have to deal with that \u2026 but you don\u2019t actually need to prove very much. You don\u2019t need to prove we only have six years to show that that\u2019s a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Climate change as a tort? How problematic can this be from proving causality and assigning blame in a global, multi-billion-person world. A negative pig externality is one thing; indirect, unsettled causality involving countless business and consumers is quite another. And if the \u201cproblem\u201d has been bandied about for several decades (it has), why should a speculative damage be entertained?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> Similarly, if we just think about it as a risk problem, is it all that different from national defense? We don\u2019t invest in national defense because we know with certainty<\/em> that Russia, China, pick the country you want, is going to do x by a particular date. We know that the risk of them doing something sufficiently bad is such that prudent investments that can reduce the likelihood or the consequences of those actions are worthwhile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You think of it kind of like an insurance problem. In terms of thinking about the problem, it is very useful to not think about climate change as this kind of separate category\u2014apocalypse\u2014that means all the rules are thrown out the window, but rather just a more complicated, more difficult version of the problem that we\u2019ve been thinking about dealing with liberal institutions and liberal ideas about the role of government for a very long time. Part of the problem is that we\u2019ve forgotten a lot of that, and we don\u2019t talk about climate change in those kinds of terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Another bad analogy from lawyerlike make-your-best-case-for-one-side-of-the-debate. Is this scholarship or just advocacy?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> When I worked at CEI, and I began there in 1991, there was this great quote from former Senator Tim Wirth that was always kind of fun to deploy about climate change. This is in the \u201990s, and I\u2019m paraphrasing, but it was basically, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to ride this issue, because even if it\u2019s not really a problem, we\u2019ll still be doing the right things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there\u2019s this idea that\u2019s very pervasive, that\u2019s not wholly unfounded, that climate change creates an excuse to give government control over lots of things, energy in particular, and that if your view of government is that that\u2019s threatening, that\u2019s scary, something that\u2019s ultimately very illiberal, in the sense that it\u2019s hostile to innovation, hostile to market dynamism \u2026 that\u2019s a really scary thing. It\u2019s okay to be defending property rights, if you\u2019re talking about defending the property owner from the farm next door\u2014that\u2019s just a little localized problem. But if you\u2019re talking about energy use throughout the global economy, oh my gosh, that\u2019s really scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: It is scary\u2013and an argument to separate government from climate\/energy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> I think part of what feeds that is the only way we want to talk about climate policy is: How do we hit that target that Joe [Majkut] mentioned? How do we know that the policy we\u2019ve adopted will hit that target? So even on the left and with the environmental community, there is a preference for regulation over pricing, because regulation at least gives you the illusion that you have a target that will be met by a particular day. I say \u201cillusion\u201d because it turns out environmental law does not work that way. It has never worked that way. We don\u2019t meet targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Okay, so pricing CO2 is out\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> I did a paper<\/a> for Joe [Majkut] at Niskanen [Center] that actually points out that we pretend as if you say, \u201cWe should have regulations,\u201d and you snap your fingers, and suddenly they\u2019re in place and they\u2019re complied with, and their targets are met. And that\u2019s just not the world we live in. The throughput capacity for right environmental regulations is kind of like the throughput capacity for environmental impact statements\u2014the government can\u2019t do the volume that we need if that\u2019s the way we\u2019re going to decarbonize\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Why decarbonize? No intellectual case has been made, just vague assertions that CO2 is bad.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> But the big point is that there\u2019s this fear: Which am I afraid more of, climate change or climate change policy? And if climate change policy means the government is going to decide how much, and what sort of, energy each industry gets to use, and in what time frame, and what car you drive, and what kind of stove you have, what kind of house you live in, and so on \u2026 well, then, climate change has got to be really, really bad to justify that. And I would argue that not only is that not<\/em> the choice we face\u2014that in fact, going down the road is actually not even the best way to deal with climate change\u2014but that\u2019s what feeds the right side of the political spectrum\u2019s fear of climate policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Correct: there is a competing fear of climate change vs. climate change policy. And a grand reason to get off The Road to Climate Serfdom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> There are ways of thinking about the collective action problem where we think about reciprocity of advantage, and where we\u2019re all allowed to engage in equivalent types of conduct, and we engage in some sort of collective enterprise to make sure it\u2019s not too excessive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: \u201cCollective\u201d as in global? \u201cCollective action problem\u201d as in guilty until proven innocent with the global greening gas of life? Adler is out on a limb with no tree.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> On this issue of adaptation that was just brought up, though, I\u2019ve been pointing this out to people for close to 20 years that the UN IPCC<\/a> on issues like water rights is more liberal and more market oriented than pretty much any major environmental NGO in this town, and certainly than the U.S. government\u2019s policy. Because for 20 years, the UN IPCC has noted that on the issue of water availability and access to water\u2014which is a huge issue, and something that climate change is going to affect in a lot of unpredictable but significant ways\u2014you\u2019re not going to be able to build your way out of that with infrastructure, especially in the Global South, but not only in the Global South. You\u2019re going to have to have ways of pricing and reallocating water in response to demands. And we know how to do that. We\u2019ve shown how to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Water markets are very robust where they\u2019re allowed to operate. And \u2026 crickets. Policy-makers don\u2019t want to talk about that. It feeds into the idea that it\u2019s a watermelon thing, because here\u2019s an example where we have clear empirical evidence, we know how to deal with dramatic changes in the availability and supply and timing of water, and we know what sorts of institutions can handle that sort of thing\u2014and yet, we don\u2019t want to talk about that. We want to tell you what shower-head you use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: A free market in water, yes. Adaptation, yes. Nothing here on the problem or solution to \u201cclimate change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> There\u2019s a lot of pressure to maintain what is ultimately a similar narrative. There\u2019s a belief, and it\u2019s a well-intentioned belief, that the nuts and bolts on climate change are complicated: It\u2019s not immediate, so it\u2019s a long-term problem, but it\u2019s still very important. And the way you get\u2014in a democratic society\u2014people to act is simplifying it and scaring people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: This is a reason for the climate lobby to cease-and-desist, not for global government or a misapplication of tort law where it cannot possibly succeed except for judicial activism\/statism. Complexity calls for markets and not government, and markets include Civil Society, not only profit\/loss business.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> So the folks [who] want to attribute every hurricane or whatever to climate change aren\u2019t trying to \u2026 this isn\u2019t a stalking horse for some broad liberal agenda. It\u2019s, well, \u201cWe\u2019re oversimplifying some, but this is the sort of thing we are worried about over the long term, and we don\u2019t think the democratic process will be able to handle the complexity that what\u2019s really going on is we\u2019re increasing the upward potential of hurricane damage and hurricane storms and the likelihood over a longer period of time. But we can\u2019t say it about a particular storm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you try to say that on the evening news, people are going to change the channel, or they\u2019re going to fall asleep. Whereas, if you say, \u201cOh, my God. [Hurricane] Beryl or whatever is the result of climate change,\u201d maybe that gets politics in action. The problem, of course, is that when someone goes and looks at the science, and they pull out the IPCC, and they talk about, \u201cOkay, what are the different levels of attribution we can engage in with regard to different types of changes in weather?,\u201d and they see the IPCC is saying, \u201cHurricanes? Yeah, we can\u2019t really tie the knot yet,\u201d well, it\u2019s like we saw with Covid: \u201cWell, now they\u2019ve exaggerated. Climate change is still a problem, but the specific thing they led with wasn\u2019t true, so maybe that\u2019s an excuse that gives me permission now to say they\u2019re lying about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Has Jonathan Adler contradicted the deep ecology belief that nature is optimal and fragile and that the human perturbation cannot be good but bad?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> In a democratic polity, it\u2019s undermined the ability of science to inform the policy process, because the way the science of climate is presented oversimplifies and glosses over a lot of complexity, and, in some cases, just says stuff that isn\u2019t quite true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Global climate models are science? Reliable and settled? And attribution models based on them (for tort claims) are not less so? Remember Climategate?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> Yes, it\u2019s true that we are not good at building some Grand Cathedral that takes 150 years to build, but we do a lot of other things much, much better. China\u2019s gonna be able to build lots of stuff if they wanna do it. The evidence that we have so far \u2026 and there\u2019s some research coming out soon that, actually, when you look at it qualitatively as opposed to quantitatively, they obtain far more patents for clean energy products, but the patents they\u2019re obtaining are very low value patents. All the high value patents are still here. They\u2019re not in China, they\u2019re not in Europe. The problem we have here is that we make it too difficult to do stuff. The discussion we\u2019ve been having about permitting for transmission lines is a very salient example of a problem that is endemic of that we\u2019ve made it too hard to do stuff, and part of what we\u2019ve made it too hard to do are the natural things that make problems like climate easier to solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: This excursion into energy policy is a reason for a separation of government and climate\/energy. Nothing more,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> So the least talked about and yet most important environmental trend of the 21st century in countries like the United States is net dematerialization\u2014using less stuff that\u2019s physical material year over year. The United States will use fewer molecules of physical stuff next year than this year. That\u2019s mind blowing. That wasn\u2019t planned. That wasn\u2019t designed. That wasn\u2019t programmed. That wasn\u2019t scheduled. It was because stuff costs. We pay for stuff. We pay to get it, we pay to manipulate it. We pay to deploy it. We pay, unless we can figure out a way to turn it into smoke, to dispose of it. In a world in which you can innovate, that over time leads to these trends. We don\u2019t do that with energy because we don\u2019t fully integrate it into those market processes, those very liberal processes that encourage all of us, collectively, to try to make more with less tomorrow than we did today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Yes, and a reason, again, to separate government from climate\/energy policy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> So if we want these bigger, longer term trends, we know what the institutional framework needs to look like to decarbonize. And we don\u2019t do that. China\u2019s not doing it either. Now, if we figure stuff out, China will build a ton of it, and I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s bad if they build a ton of it, and it\u2019s less expensive for us, so then it\u2019s even easier for us to deploy it. The real challenge for an issue like climate change that\u2019s global is: Are we able to be the engine of figuring out how to how to decarbonize? And we\u2019re kind of failing at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comment<\/strong>: Alder\u2019s premise \u201cto decarbonize\u201d is a fatal one both in the \u201cproblem\u201d and the \u201csolution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adler:<\/strong> And it\u2019s not clear it\u2019s democratic, right? Because the people who show up at the planning meeting to complain about the wind turbine that\u2019s going to go on the other side of the hill that they heard about, and they\u2019re afraid they\u2019re going to see when they drive to work, are not necessarily representative of the people as a whole. And I should just note: the more you dig into it, [when] we talk about NEPA and environmental impact statements, especially for energy infrastructure, state and local barriers are probably greater than federal barriers for everything but large transmission projects that have to go across federal land, and perhaps across tribal lands. Otherwise, the state and local barriers are greater. We have things in federal law that magnify those state and local impacts. And I\u2019ll say, as someone who loves decentralizing political authority, that\u2019s a hard fact to wrestle with. Because I like letting different communities make different choices. But letting different communities make different choices means it\u2019s really hard to build linear infrastructure. And you can\u2019t electrify and decarbonize through electrification if you can\u2019t build linear infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comment<\/strong>: Again, Adler poses an issue that he has not defended as a problem. CO2 enrichment is positive from the most settled science of all: CO2 science under laboratory conditions. He arbitrarily puts his faith climate models that cannot be tested and have no way of knowing that their physics are right. No convincing case here!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/strong> Here is my exchange with Tom Palmer (Shikha Dalmia joined in) who has not taken a deep dive into Progressive Left authoritarianism. (Note how I was \u2018indefinitely suspended\u2019 for my comment. How authoritarian, ISMA!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To get an idea of ISMA head Shikha Dalmia, a \u201cleft liberal<\/a>\u201d and Kamala Harris supporter, consider this rant<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, these low information [Trump] voters, voting based on what their media ecosystem is telling them rather than what the truth is, it bothers me that all of us, including the Kamala Harris operatives, just kind of gave up on informing those voters and trying to at least win some of them over, or at least take the edge off their cynicism of the establishment. If we keep giving up on those voters, that\u2019s just going to deepen. Elections are a great moment to educate voters\u2014at least the informative function that it serves is highly important to keep both sides somewhat in line. (The UnPopulist, November 10, 2024)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The November election results inspired these reactors from the TDS bunch:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shikha Dalmia: <\/strong>To me, it was a gut punch. Obviously we all knew going in that it was 50-50. But I was hoping it wouldn\u2019t be Trump. And it was. So I spent the first day completely in shock. And if I could have my way I would curl into a fetal position and wake up in four years. But there\u2019s work to be done, a country to be saved, our republic\u2019s fate is on the line\u2014so here I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andy Craig: <\/strong>Yeah, I share a lot of that. Not necessarily shock as in surprise, but shock as in, \u201cWow, this is really happening.\u201d We\u2019d still had the hope that it wouldn\u2019t. I think a lot of people are still, understandably, taking the time to emotionally process it. I think it\u2019s not wrong that people are feeling it as a gut punch. I mean, it is. I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belvedere: <\/strong>The gut punch, for me, is that there was no shortage of coverage about Trump\u2019s manifold barbarisms. And yet Americans saw all of that, processed it, and in the end said, \u201cThis is the guy we want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In denial and out of touch. The real world must be a strange place for this cult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My least favorite think tank is Shikha Dalmia\u2019s\u00a0Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, publisher of\u00a0The UnPopulist. Left-funded and a pretend classical-liberal group, it promotes a vague \u2018liberalism\u2019. ISMA is a Trump-hate group of disaffected, politically homeless folk who have forgotten that\u00a0statism\u00a0is the enemy, not Donald Trump. Thus, they do not apply their metrics to the Progressive Left\u2013just Trump. And their TDS has put them at odds with normal folk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":367030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691829997,691819134,691830765,691819716,691833426,691833424,691833423,691833425],"class_list":{"0":"post-367020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-carbon-dioxide-co","9":"tag-climate-alarmism","10":"tag-climate-industrial-complex-2","11":"tag-climate-policy","12":"tag-denialism","13":"tag-institute-for-the-study-of-modern-authoritarianism","14":"tag-shikha-dalmia","15":"tag-the-unpopulist","17":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/0Photosynthesis-Diagram-scaled-1.jpg?fit=2560%2C1897&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1xtG","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":367079,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=367079","url_meta":{"origin":367020,"position":0},"title":"Denialism? Zwolinski Punts on Climate Science, Policy (statism on parade)","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"21\/02\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Matt Zwolinski, an academic philosopher and \u201cbleeding heart libertarian\u201d\u00a0[1]\u00a0who likes to criticize classical liberalism,\u00a0promoted\u00a0an article by Shikha Sood Dalmia on why she, as a former libertarian, is voting for Kamala Harris and not Trump.\u00a0[2]","rel":"","context":"In \"carbon dioxide (CO\u2082)\"","block_context":{"text":"carbon dioxide (CO\u2082)","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=carbon-dioxide-co%e2%82%82"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/0-authoritarianism-on-the-Left-side.jpeg?fit=1024%2C682&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/0-authoritarianism-on-the-Left-side.jpeg?fit=1024%2C682&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/0-authoritarianism-on-the-Left-side.jpeg?fit=1024%2C682&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/0-authoritarianism-on-the-Left-side.jpeg?fit=1024%2C682&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":363056,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=363056","url_meta":{"origin":367020,"position":1},"title":"Election Realities, Progress Ahead","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"23\/01\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cThe enemy is not Donald Trump and never has been. The enemy is Statism. Left libertarians such as David Boaz and Tom Palmer, with their emotions raging, and outfits like the Left-funded, TDS-infested, Kamala-supporting Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism never got it and still don\u2019t.\u201d","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate politics\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate politics","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-politics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0donald-trump-inauguration-1-2025-01-689831e659554d9556506edaf9d18f6d-16x9-1.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0donald-trump-inauguration-1-2025-01-689831e659554d9556506edaf9d18f6d-16x9-1.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0donald-trump-inauguration-1-2025-01-689831e659554d9556506edaf9d18f6d-16x9-1.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0donald-trump-inauguration-1-2025-01-689831e659554d9556506edaf9d18f6d-16x9-1.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/0donald-trump-inauguration-1-2025-01-689831e659554d9556506edaf9d18f6d-16x9-1.webp?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":291123,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=291123","url_meta":{"origin":367020,"position":2},"title":"Beyond Parody: Misogyny, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"13\/12\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"There\u2019s nothing I can add to the self-parody that is this paper. I will get the obligatory citations out of the way and then just paste extensive quotes from the open access paper. Let the hilarity ensue. For masochists who wish to read the paper in its entirety\u00a0use this link.","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/image-301.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/image-301.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/image-301.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/image-301.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":282857,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=282857","url_meta":{"origin":367020,"position":3},"title":"Mann Tweets Study Claiming Climate Deniers Are Misogynist Authoritarians","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"11\/10\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael Mann introduce new absurd pseudo- studies. From Watts Up With That? h\/t Dr. Willie Soon; Mann beclowning himself promoting absurd studies \u2013 but I guess that is nothing new. The study abstract; Misogyny, authoritarianism, and climate change Nitasha Kaul,\u00a0Tom BuchananFirst published: 18 May 2023 Abstract Globally,\u00a0democratic politics are under\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"authoritarianism\"","block_context":{"text":"authoritarianism","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=authoritarianism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/0Screenshot-2023-10-11-144903.png?fit=1106%2C555&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/0Screenshot-2023-10-11-144903.png?fit=1106%2C555&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/0Screenshot-2023-10-11-144903.png?fit=1106%2C555&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/0Screenshot-2023-10-11-144903.png?fit=1106%2C555&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/0Screenshot-2023-10-11-144903.png?fit=1106%2C555&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":435145,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=435145","url_meta":{"origin":367020,"position":4},"title":"Despite the Liberal Media\u2019s Insistence, Americans Must Judge \u2018Experts\u2019 With Caution","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"29\/03\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"From Watts Up With That? By\u00a0Gary Abernathy This article was orginally published at\u00a0The Empowerment Alliance\u00a0and is re-published here with permission.\u00a0 Pronouncements from President Trump describing his actions are almost always countered by the far-left media with something along the lines of, \u201cBut experts say\u2026,\u201d followed by high-minded, eggheaded lecture from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate Central (CC)\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate Central (CC)","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-central-cc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Despite-the-Liberal-Medias-Insistence-Americans-Must-Judge-%E2%80%98Experts-With-Caution.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Despite-the-Liberal-Medias-Insistence-Americans-Must-Judge-%E2%80%98Experts-With-Caution.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Despite-the-Liberal-Medias-Insistence-Americans-Must-Judge-%E2%80%98Experts-With-Caution.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0-Despite-the-Liberal-Medias-Insistence-Americans-Must-Judge-%E2%80%98Experts-With-Caution.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":289372,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=289372","url_meta":{"origin":367020,"position":5},"title":"WHO To Declare Climate Emergency? – In The Tank\u00a0#425","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"30\/11\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"The Heartland Institute's Donald Kendal, Jim Lakely, Justin Haskins, and Chris Talgo present episode 425 of the In The Tank Podcast. With the global climate conference, COP28, starting this week, global warming rhetoric is being ramped up into high gear. Last week, over 200 medical journals called on the World\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/0Screenshot-2023-11-30-183523.png?fit=963%2C558&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/0Screenshot-2023-11-30-183523.png?fit=963%2C558&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/0Screenshot-2023-11-30-183523.png?fit=963%2C558&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/0Screenshot-2023-11-30-183523.png?fit=963%2C558&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=367020"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367032,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367020\/revisions\/367032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/367030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=367020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=367020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=367020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}