In an unbelievable turn of events, the New York Times, the most openly hostile newspaper to the views of anybody remotely conservative, has published an article today that looks at the social science behind global warming and delves into some psychological reasons for the hysteria. And of course, what would a decent article be is we did not include some fact-busting and questioning of the unquestionable, Al Gore.

John Tierney conveys the sentiments about global warming that I think many conservative-types have:

“’Many people concerned about climate change,’ Dr. Sunstein says, ‘want to create an availability cascade by fixing an incident in people’s minds. Hurricane Katrina is just an early example; there will be others. I don’t doubt that climate change is real and that it presents a serious threat, but there’s a danger that any ‘consensus’ on particular events or specific findings is, in part, a cascade.’

“Once a cascade is under way, it becomes tough to sort out risks because experts become reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom, and are ignored if they do. Now that the melting Arctic has become the symbol of global warming, there’s not much interest in hearing other explanations of why the ice is melting — or why the globe’s other pole isn’t melting, too.”

And:

“The planet has indeed gotten warmer, and it is projected to keep warming because of greenhouse emissions, but this process is too slow to make much impact on the public.”

“When judging risks, we often go wrong by using what’s called the availability heuristic: we gauge a danger according to how many examples of it are readily available in our minds. Thus we overestimate the odds of dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash because we’ve seen such dramatic deaths so often on television; we underestimate the risks of dying from a stroke because we don’t have so many vivid images readily available.”

As a result, activists hijack the cause, as Al Gore has done, and made things appear to be much worse than they are to push a certain set of policies on a gullible public that is unknowing of the facts. Anyway, it’s a very good article, John Tierney writes good pieces anyway.

On another note, if we use such great science to measure the effects of greenhouse gases on warming, why are carbon reduction goals always always always a percentage divisibile by five (e.g. 30%, 45%, etc.)? Look, I may have gone to Tech for international affairs, but I did my fair share of science, hell I was an engineering student for my first year and a half there. Not once in my calculations did a number come out to a five divisor. Not once. If we are truly looking to stem the tide with minimal economic damages, don’t you think we would have at least one 26% goal in there? Just a thought. And this goes for all sectors, we see it in government all the time. What is the obsession with whole numbers on the fives?

Enough for now, read the Tierney article, it’s something to think about. And we can solve the global warming issue without hysteria and radical economic effects, as the worldwide environmental protocols and calls for a heavier government hand in the private sector would produce.