National Review puts smack down on Milloy

Jim Manzi responds to Steve Milloy's response to Jim Manzi's article. Clearly I don't agree with either one, but some of Manzi's takedowns of Milloy are delicious:

Scientists are not selfless automatons. Financial incentives do drive them to change (or re-label) research projects, and do influence results. I have posted on the fact that this has probably created at least a couple of blind spots in the science of global warming. The process of science tends to be self-correcting, but like all markets, this can take a long time to work, and is imperfect.

Like Milloy’s statements about the politicization of the science, these are generalities. They shouldn’t lead us to say that since it is imperfect, we will simply ignore all science on this topic, or to blindly accept that anything that is labeled as “science” must therefore be true. Milloy has put forward numerous examples of what he believes to be bad science; upon scrutiny, each of his objections falls apart. If he has other specific examples, he should present them.

More importantly, it gives insight into where some conservative thinkers want this conversation to go: from overhyped fear of the mad scientist to overhyped fear of taking action.

The key policy that I propose conservative politicians should advocate is resistance to a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system. Huge momentum is building behind these (especially cap-and-trade) right now. It is a foolish political strategy to counter this with “global warming is a fiction” when very few people will accept that (and with good reason – see the prior parts of this post or my article). Conservatives have shut themselves out of the debate with this position. It lets advocates of a massive intervention in the economy, that neither Milloy nor I want to see, argue with a straw man of “there is no global warming”. Conservatives will lose that political debate.

The more conservatives can focus the debate on “here’s what cap-and-trade will cost” (hint: hundreds of dollars per month per family in the US) vs. its benefits (hint: it’s a combination of a foreign aid program for people who might live in tropical regions a hundred years from now plus an incredibly over-priced insurance program for an unquantifiably small risk to the US in the 22nd century), the better they will be able to prevent it.

And they accuse us of fear mongering. Finally, here's Manzi's summary of Milloy's paranoia:

Here are the groups that Milloy posits are parts of a conspiracy to hose us: environmentalists, Margaret Thatcher, Europe, scientists, American business and the US Congress. Who’s not part of it? Do you really think it’s a smart political idea to run against all of them?

But this conspiracy theory is such an integral part of conservatism's repertoire of talking points on global warming it's hard to imagine they'll ever want to give up on it. After all, it worked so well for so long and this current tide against them might just be a passing fad. On the "fuck you liberals!" issue of global warming, there seem to be only two approaches for conservatives: conspiracy theories of how everyone's out to get us and overhyped fear of the consequences of taking action just in case things might turn out not to be so bad after all.