The New Republic's New Motto: "Just Wait 50 Years and Someone Will Agree With Us"

Jonathan Chait, of The New Republic, begins a blog post today with a fascinating opening paragraph. Let's start with the first two sentences:

With the entire political world focused on the dangers of the national debt, it's worth stepping back and thinking about how this came to be. After all, I think a very solid case can be made that climate change presents a more urgent problem than the national debt.

Many bright people have been trying for decades to make the case that climate change is an urgent problem. A few weeks ago, I wrote about this issue:

Intelligence Squared US hosted a global warming debate in 2007. For 100 minutes, two panels argued over the following motion: Global Warming Is Not a Crisis. The audience was polled before and after the event. The pre-debate numbers were: 30% for the motion, 57% against, and 13% undecided. After the debate, the numbers were 46% for the motion, 42% against, and 12% undecided. In less than two hours, the alarmists had lost more than a quarter of their supporters!

The panelists included some heavy hitters and the event might be the most high profile climate change debate ever held. Nevertheless, the alarmists could not convince a New York audience that global warming is a crisis (unlike Chait, they didn't even have to argue it presents a bigger crisis than the national debt).

Chait's opening graph continued: 

The damage from climate change, unlike the the [sic] damage from the debt, is irreversible.

This is a claim without substance. Climate always changes, regardless of whether humans are influencing it. If human beings never existed - never evolved from lower primates - the climate would still be changing right now. The climate can't be frozen in time. It is not static. Labeling climate change "irreversible" so it can be distinguished from other threats is sophistry, because climate change is irreversible whether humans are influencing it or not.

Numerous empires have collapsed from excessive debt. I don't think all of those collapses were reversible. The reversibility, or lack thereof, of climate change and national bankruptcy is not the issue.

But, Chait is not going to give up. Climate change is more of a fact, and a bigger threat than the growing debt:  

Moreover, while climate science is being treated as speculative and budget forecasts as hard fact, the reverse is closer to reality: budget forecasts are highly unreliable.

Maybe we don't even have a deficit? Who can know for sure? 

I have a hard time believing that a highly informed person transported from the future to the present would analyze the problems facing the United States and conclude that the political class should focus like a laser beam on the budget deficit while largely ignoring climate change.

When people defend their positions by saying: I'm right because this person agrees with me - it should raise a red flag. This is one of the laziest forms of argumentation known to man. They are relying on authority and consensus rather than facts. If I had to argue the Earth is round, I'd prove it. I wouldn't argue I'm right because all of these scientists over here agree with me. Why do that when I have the facts to prove the Earth is round? 

But, Chait's argument is even more duplicitous. Chait isn't arguing that he is correct because scientists today agree with him. Chait is arguing he's right because educated people in the future will agree with him. Chait rests his piece on the authority of people who don't exist!