Hide your wallet

I am writing this in my Jerusalem hotel room, watching Jacques Chirac on TV as he scrambles for the high ground on climate change. What is one to do when almost all of the political hacks from the U.S. and abroad do the same? Hide your wallet.

One does not have to go back very far in time to find a majority of elite opinion convinced that socialism (or worse) was humanity's future -- no matter the cost. (The sound bites from Davos were as nuanced and diverse.)

Ronald Bailey has abandoned his skepticism on climate change. But is the proposed cure worse than the disease? Do we expect the political-and-media crowd to consider cost-effectiveness?

Beyond all that Art DeVany reminds us that the models that scientists rely on cannot plausibly be extrapolated to the extent that they now are. DeVany recalls how large-scale econometric models failed when pushed to perform beyond their capabilities. He also knows that scientists do not easily agree ("consensus science is not science") -- but that they do know from where the money flows.