By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The traditional theology of the Judaeo-Christian world has a useful concept known as invincible ignorance. It is an ignorance so profound, so all-pervading, so irredeemably, pig-headed, so irremediably scatter-brained, that nothing can be done to save its victims from themselves except to smile, shake the dust of their one-horse dorp off one’s cowboy boots, get astride one’s Ducati and thunder off to the next dorp.
One of the most difficult and highly specialist tasks in the counter-intelligence community is that of interdicting the agents of influence of hostile powers so that they cannot create or maintain a climate of invincible ignorance by deploying linguistic warfare, gaining control of our news media, suppressing freedom of speech, corrupting the minds of young people in schools and universities, canceling those who dare to speak the truth and eventually prosecuting or even executing the few brave and independent souls who continue to commit the gravest of all mortal sins against hate-filled totalitarianism: to dare to step out of the Party Line and politely suggest that the Emperor’s valet must have been off duty this morning.
But what if invincible ignorance has become so well established that the enemies of liberty and democracy, free markets and prosperity do not have to do anything except sit and wait until the hated free West collapses all by itself?
Here is perhaps the most spectacular instance of invincible ignorance I have come across in a long career studying this phenomenon and working to prevent its weaponization and deployment by those who mean harm to democracy. Here is a verbatim clip from a recent interview. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guess who the interviewee is.
Interviewee: “The US government can’t go bankrupt because we can print our own money.”
Dim interviewer: “Like you say, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow?”
Interviewee: “Well, um, the – er – so the – I mean – again, some of the stuff gets – some of the language that the – erm – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money, which is why – erm, er – the government definitely prints money, and then it lends that money by – er – by selling bonds – er – is that what they do? They, they – erm – they – yeah, they, they – erm – they sell bonds – yeah, they sell bonds, right, so as they sell bonds and people buy bonds and lend them the money – yup – so a lot of times, a lot of times – at least to my ear – with MMT the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to – um, er, uh – er – so – um – yeah, I – I – I guess I’m just – I don’t – I can’t really talk – eh, I don’t – I don’t get it – I don’t know what they’re talking about, like, ’cos – it’s like – the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this that ’n’ defic – conversation, so I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.”
I’ll give you a clue. It could have been (but wasn’t) the Cellar-Dweller, for he has given fewer interviews than any other President (real or purported) in my lifetime. It could have been (but wasn’t) his gibbering, cackling, grossly inadequate deputy, la Harris.
Some further clues. It wasn’t a typically ill-informed, inarticulate Communist undergrad trying and failing to debate Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA on campus.
It was a graduate in music from the Manhattan School of Music. He also holds a Master’s degree in “social” “work” from Hunter College and a Diploma in “social” “work” from Columbia “University” School of “Social” “Work”.
Give up? OK, I’ll tell you. The interviewee was one Jared Bernstein, of whom the world has hitherto justifiably heard little. Believe it or not, our Jared is a member of the U.S. Cabinet in his incapacity as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. I kid you not. That’s his job title.
I should explain that “MMT”, mentioned by Bernstein, is “Modern” “Monetary” “Theory”, which, like “Critical” “Race” “Theory”, is a non-subject manufactured by the shrieking far Left to advance its fell political objectives.
The purpose of MMT – which is not modern, is not monetary and is not a theory – is to induce the West to complete its continuing decline and eventual collapse by abandoning all monetary and fiscal discipline and bankrupt itself by overspending, over-borrowing, over-taxation and excessive money-printing.
It should be clear to all from the above verbatim transcript that Jared the Jejune is not the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors because he knows anything about economics. He is there because he is a Party Line footballer, and for no other reason.
Throughout history, the spend-borrow-tax-print regime has been tried over and over again, and has failed over and over again, from late imperial China via medieval England to the Weimar Republic. It doesn’t work. And that is precisely why it is so attractive to the West-hating far Left.
There is a visible overlap between the invincible ignorance of the Jareds of this world on how many beans make five and the invincible ignorance of the wider governing class in the West on the climate question.
Imagine trying to explain to the U.S. government’s musical “social” “worker” why it is that every cent squandered on interfering in the energy marketplace in the name of Saving The Planet from warmer weather is a cent entirely wasted.
The table shows that even if the Party Line on how much warming we may cause were correct, and even if all nations went directly from here to net zero by 2050, the world would be only 0.2 degrees cooler by then than if our influence on global temperature continued its near-linear increase of the past third of a century over the 26 years to 2050.
After adjustment for the fact that for 34 years global warming has occurred at half the predicted midrange decadal rate, the world would only be 0.1 degrees cooler than now if all nations actually achieved net zero emissions by the target date.
What of the cost? The least unrealistic figure I can find for what it might cost to get to net zero by 2050, the target year, is that of the UK’s National Grid, which has estimated that just to net-zero the UK grid will cost $3.8 trillion. But grid emissions are only a quarter of UK emissions, and UK emissions are only 0.8% of global emissions. So the pro rata cost of net-zeroing the entire planet would be of order $2 quadrillion.
Now for a question way, way over puir wee Jared’s head: value for other people’s money. The candy-cane question is the central question in economics. Tom Sawyer goes into a sweetie-shop, slaps a handful of sticky coins on the counter, points to a pile of candy-canes and says, “Gee, miss, how many candy-canes can I git fer this?”
By the age of ten, most kids know the value of the candy-cane question. Jared hasn’t gotten there yet. So let’s slap a sticky $1 billion of taxpayers’ money on the counter and ask, “Gee, miss, how many degrees’ global cooling by 2050 can I git fer this?”
Spend $1 billion and buy just one 20-millionth of a degree of global cooling by 2050. Even by the low standards of the far Left, that is surely the worst value for money in the history of macroeconomics since the construction of the Great Wall of China. Now we know why the male equivalent of a Karen is a Jared.
Contrast Jared’s invincible ignorance with the alertness of the preceding administration. One day President Trump’s then chief of staff asked me to send the President a brief on a scientific result obtained by my team. The main points of the brief are in two simple slides.
First, if temperature-feedback strength has not changed since 1850, final warming by doubled CO2 – roughly equal to all anthropogenic warming this century – will be 1.1 K, not 2 to 5 K.
Secondly, if the feedback strength has changed since 1850, one cannot use feedback analysis to predict global warming at all, because an increase of just 0.01 in the feedback multiplier would be enough to put up this century’s warming from 2 to 5 K.
Since uncertainties in data and in process understanding altogether prevent the constraint of feedback variables to any such precision as 0.01, feedback analysis cannot be used to predict global warming. But the methods of prediction that do not use feedback analysis tend to predict far less warming than those using that incorrect method, and using it incorrectly.
For instance, the total anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcing in the industrial era is about equal to the forcing from doubled CO2. But the warming since 1850 is only 1.1 K. Since the sensitivity-relevant feedbacks are short-acting (days to years), 1.1 K (not IPCC’s predicted 2 to 5 K) is the final warming we may expect this century from anthropogenic causes. And that is the end of the climate “emergency”.
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