It's not about the science

The Czar of Muscovy muses on how Global Warming Climate Change Climate Disruptivenesscalifragilisticsexpialidocious (Whatever the Approved Trademark is this week) seem to be shooting themselves in the foot:

A young lady named Jennifer might, for example, particularly like Duffies, a new breakfast cereal. But when she hears the doorbell ring, opens the door, and someone punches her square in the face and says ’Eat Duffies, assface!” she progresses to think a different product is in her future. For you see, this is sort of how Climate Change is being sold to us right now. As a punch in the face.

Very smart it is indeed, and you should RTWT.  I was struck by the similarities between the climate debate and the gun control debate.  In both, the "non Progressive" side spends a lot of time discussing the actual data.  In both, the Progressive side spends a lot of time talking about how evil and stupid the other side is.

As Robb Allen likes to say, We have facts and data.  They have penis jokes.

The Czar says the same thing in his post, differently:

The problem, which all climate change proponents have to face sooner or later, is that climate change deniers as you call them do a much better job of getting their message out because of your efforts to humiliate them for not seeing how smart you want to seem. When they excise the obscenity, obscurity, and politics of your latest messages, they find nothing left.

Alas, the disagreement is over first principles, and so no discussion of the data or science is likely to prove fruitful.  There is the same whiff of desperation from both the Kyoto and the Brady groups; a feeling that their day has passed and that they need to get something now or never.  The rhetoric is dialed up to 11 in the climate debate in order to shout down an inconvenient dissent; the Brady crowd has given up on debate entirely which is why we see back door regulatory efforts as the preferred choice of action.

The E.P.A. is moving in the same direction as the ATF.  That's where the action is.

So while the Czar's post is 100% correct as to how an actual political debate should run, that's not what we're going to get.  The Progressive side is convinced, they know that they don't have the votes to win in our representative democracy, and so the war will be continued by other means.  The suspicion is that the rhetoric is used to justify their anti-democratic actions to themselves.

In other words, we have to be evil, or they'll realize that they're the bad guys.

You can't coexist in that environment.