So says Clive Crook for Bloombergview here.
It illustrates a more general point, that the vision of the anointed is always frustrated by the lumpenproletariat. The elites' response to them is sometimes hyperbolic, as in Lenin's recourse to a vanguard to foist the revolution on a less than enthusiastic population, or as in a certain Penn State climate scientist's recourse to the courts to shut down his critics.
Old Clive doesn't mention those, but he does mention Secretary of State John Kerry's kooky statements, and adds this:
[T]his cause isn't advanced by exaggerating what is known in order to scare people into action, nor by denouncing everybody who disagrees with such proposals as evil or idiotic.
The scientists themselves -- some of them, at least -- are partly to blame. They chose to become political advocates, no doubt out of a sincere belief that policies needed to change a lot and at once. But scientist-advocates can't expect to be seen as objective or disinterested. Once they're suspected of spinning the science or opining on questions outside their area of expertise, as political advocacy is bound to require, they lose authority.
I'd say Clive is definitely showing signs of mellowing since his association with Bloomberg. Before that he seemed less temperate, although too temperate for Paul Krugman.
The incremental change of good old Fabian socialism is what Clive seems to have settled on, as has Obama after an early explosion of revolutionary zeal in 2008 when the realities of office overwhelmed everything.
Fortunately for those of us who disagree about the climate alarums, the John Kerrys and Penn Staters don't seem to have received the memo and keep doing everything to hurt their cause.
