How former professional climate change skeptic Jerry Taylor changed his mind | Hacker News Reader

How former professional climate change skeptic Jerry Taylor changed his mind

theintercept.com

60 pointsDamonHD40 comments

From the article:

On air, I said that, back in 1988, when climate scientist James Hansen testified in front of the Senate, he predicted we’d see a tremendous amount of warming. I argued it’d been more than a decade and we could now see by looking at the temperature record that he wasn’t accurate. After we got done with the program and were back in green room, getting the makeup taken off, Joe said to me, “Did you even read that testimony you’ve just talked about?” And when I told him it had been a while, he said “I’m daring you to go back and double check this.” He told me that some of Hansen’s projections were spot on. So I went back to my office and I re-read Hanson’s testimony. And Joe was correct.

Here is a transcript of the testimony, he appears to be referring to...

http://climatechange.procon.org/sourcefiles/1988_Hansen_Sena...

Having read it twice, I'm not sure exactly which "predictions" he is referring to.

John Taylor, according to his Wikipedia article is "an environmental activist and policy analyst", and apparently more than happy to shill for either side.

Criticism of him from some random link on the second page of Google:

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2017/04/is-jerry-taylor-doin...

No matter your opinion on the topic, this guy certainly seems less than credible.

Another note: The user who posted this link created his account 21 days ago, and already has 51 submissions, most related to similar topics. Unsurprising, given the details on the site linked from his profile page.

http://d.hd.org

My big project is OpenTRV which has the modest aim of cutting the UK's entire carbon footprint by 10% (and/or Europe'ss by 8%) at low cost by halving space heating costs especially for homes in a simple and fiddle-free way!

Thanks for highlighting a silly typo, now fixed!

What exactly is nefarious about reducing heating bills? OpenTRV sounds useful:

http://opentrv.org.uk/what-is-opentrv/

Those are some pretty flimsy criticisms of this article.

1. Did you really read what you linked? Twice? Because I saw clear prediction in there. I'm also not sure which predictions he's referring to, but that's certainly not evidence of Taylor being untrustworthy.

2. Yes, John Taylor, brother of Jerry Taylor about whom this article Is written, is a climate denier. This is addressed in the article. It's weird that you're using that as evidence of Jerry Taylor's untrustworthiness.

3. The criticism in the last link you give is vapid and lazy. They don't prove any of their claims, they just assume premises that allow them to draw negative conclusions.

Our best glimpse of hope for climate change would be if Trump, the sceptic amongst the sceptics, changed its mind. "I thought it was bullshit, but I've decided after further information that America will not survive without converting itself to XXIst-century technology, that is, sustainable tech. Let's make America great again."

Good example of pacing-and-leading, like "Nixon goes to China."

Like in this article: http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/how-donald-trump-can-make-h...

If he did reverse his stand, everyone else opposed to acting on global warming could too. Plus the U.S. could invest and act more on alternative energies and related industries.

How do we make this happen?

That's not how it would work. Trump doesn't change his mind, he merely progresses to a point where he pretends that something he said in the past doesn't actually exist and the fact that people talk about it is a liberal media lie and fake news.

I'm surprised more libertarians aren't worried about the blowback when it becomes common knowledge that they were lying for the benefit of large corporations. I can easily imagine a swing towards nationalisation, confiscation of property etc. when things become visibly messed up.

In the future when the effect of climate change is fully realized and there is no more denying it I do hope retro-active action can be taken perhaps in the form of lawsuits that would lead to the seizure of assets of any business entity that willfully engaged in misinformation on the subject...think fossil fuel industry and assorted politicians who helped them.

Like we did with e.g. the tobacco industry?

Yes but likely much more economically costly...Philip Morris is still around and quite healthy...if whole city waterfronts end up under water around the world, the liabilities could be enough to make Exxon et al disappear.

i don't see this happening. Right now exxon can explore for gas in the Great Australian Bite and if there is an oil spill as a result of this drilling, its on the taxpayers because it exploratory drilling!

One can hope that we wise up in the future and don't repeat our mistakes. It's naive, but sometimes hope is all we have left.

Lying for profit - and "PR" which uses that MO - should be criminalised.

They're effectively another form of corporate pollution.

In the past being honorable was important because of unwritten social rules. Today those rules have to be written down because there is no longer any consequence for exploiting people as long as you are within the letter (not the spirit) of the law.

Not only that but we have accepted this lying into our society. When a businessman lies about something or does something shady, we say "he said what he had to say" or "he did what he had to do." Lawyers likewise are socially excused. And by socially excused I'm referring particularly to the neighborhoods and communities and clubs in which they live and recreate.

Not everybody gives them a pass of course, but many do.

I'm curious about something: were any of those bankers from the 2007/8 crisis and scandal booted out of their country clubs?

And that is indeed what it's always been about, back to the days of Margaret Thatcher, when the British government first incentivized researchers to produce evidence showing carbon caused global warming, and not the reverse[1]. It's always been about taking out Thatcher's political enemies in the fossil fuel industry.

AGW is a terrific example of how political campaigns can go viral and become their own self-sustaining anti-fill-in-the-blank movements, given the right mix of ingredients.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4

Exactly. Somehow we humans are built in a way it is very easy to plant ideologies and make them spread in the society. If you somehow get a group to feel collective guilt for something, you are already halfway of achieving your goals. Groupthink takes care of the rest.

I suppose it is the same mechanism in work as for religions in general.

Edmund -- that would be a "climate change denier" position.

Since climate is always changing, the effect of climate change cannot be, and will never be, fully realized.

The question then becomes "when will that retro-active action be allowed"? What triggers that certainty?

You are right, except clearly the effects of human caused change is still being denied by many. I am guessing/hoping there would come a time when such people will lose their influence.

Libertarians believe the almighty market will eventually suss out these liars and punish them in the market going forward, that no liars will ever arise capable of deceiving the market for any length of time, and that any action taken to clawback profits made by deceiving the market is socialism because (1) there could never have been market deceit since the market is almighty and/or (2) socialism is the only thing that can distort the market from almightiness and in fact is therefore always the cause of situations where the market is capable of making mistakes anyway, so the cure can't be more socialism.

Libertarians are not capable of acting rationally because their ideology is a word soup of contradictory ideas and circular logic.

Is that like advocating for net neutrality because everyone should pay the same rate for Internet access, but those who can pay more, should pay more when it comes to paying taxes?

Wealthy pay the same price per kWh as people who are poor. They also pay the same rate for water and other utilities.

If you frame the net neutrality issue as a tax, then sure, set up some rules and make wealthy corps pay more. I can't believe you don't see it being abused by telecompanies within days though.

My point was more in response to the OP's comment about contradictory ideas and circular logic.

The parent was expressing surprise that libertarians are not worried about "blowback" against market players who actively mislead society about the negative externalities of their business activities.

My comment was about how libertarians are never worried about such things -- that in fact the idea of a market player paying for a negative externality is explicitly against their convoluted philosophical perspective. I was arguing that it's wrong to have an expectation for a libertarian to behave rationally when a negative externality is involved.

Nothing about your comment seems to be related -- I'm gathering you are trying to use some kind of slippery slope analogy to show that my thinking when expanded to some imaginary limit actually yields some sort of undesirable result. Thanks I guess -- I suppose next time I make a comment about how environmental damage is mispriced by the market that I will consider the implications of my words when they are reinterpreted randomly as a somehow specific comment about net neutrality ...

On the other hand -- thank you for demonstrating very well the exact experience of having a discussion with a libertarian -- I often find it to be an exercise in being confronted with random analogies designed to separate the topic from any arena of specific facts.

That's actually not entirely correct at least where I live (Seattle area). The first X kWh or gallons of water are at a lower rate. The idea is that smaller houses requiring less power and water can pay less whereas larger ones end up paying more because they will exceed the discounted tier. It's not exactly charged based on your income but it's closely correlated.

If my internet was billed like my water bill then it would be something like

     $20/month for access
     $1/GB for first 50 GB download
     $2/GB for any GB over 50 download
     $5/GB for upload traffic

And that would be the city rate, and on top of that there would be extra charges per GB for the county because, and a whole bunch of surcharges and taxes.

I for one am glad that internet is not billed like my water is.

>Wealthy pay the same price per kWh as people who are poor. They also pay the same rate for water and other utilities.

This isn't always true in the UK.

Wealthy people can afford to pay by direct debit, which almost always carries some discounts. They can also shop around and change supplier. Poor people sometimes get locked into a more expensive supplier because they have to clear their bill before they change, and they can't afford to immediately pay that debt.

And some people are on prepayment meters which are usually more expensive than standard rates.

There is also a fixed fee per day of around 30p (which hits poor people harder as its a bigger part of their bill). As well as a higher rate for the first (6KWh? tariff dependent, though common) and a lower rate for every KWh after that (meaning a lower average for richer/bigger households)..

It's perfectly possible that the conditions will be [significantly] messed up only in the long term (same as oil predictions)¹.

If this is going to be case, denial in the present times would be a malicious but winning strategy - as a matter of fact, some theorize that Trump's denial policy has a the core the belief that the planet is screwed up, but in the relatively distant future, therefore it's a better strategy to capitalize on the adequacy of the present condition.

[¹] of course, this is just a possibility.

I for once bet on torch and fork-futures!

Doesent the tradition of the convert demand a way morea zealot approach to the once opposite view? After all you got too proof it to the world, to yourself, to the old allys and the new allys- that what you did was right.

Everything else would be heresci.

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