Confirmation Bias Watch

Image by John S. Dykes for Wall Street Journal, July 2012.

A little over a month has passed since famous conservative genius Yuval Levin accused Paul Krugman of refusing to entertain evidence that challenges his beliefs even as he criticizes everybody else for doing the same thing. Here at the Rectification of Names we were able to adduce empirical evidence that Krugman has, actually, repeatedly changed his mind in the face of facts and publicly admitted it, as scientists are supposed to be capable of doing, but not as it happens that Yuval Levin has ever done so.

I just want to note here that Krugman has done it again, on the very important question of whether humanity can afford to stop destroying our Earth with greenhouse gases, in yesterday's Times column:

One front many people didn’t take too seriously, however, was renewable energy. Sure, cap-and-trade might make more room for wind and the sun, but how important could such sources really end up being? And I have to admit that I shared that skepticism. If truth be told, I thought of the idea that wind and sun could be major players as hippie-dippy wishful thinking. But I was wrong.

Still no data on Levin. In 2008, incidentally, he wrote on the subject of climate change denialism,

the genuine abuses of science have been (and frankly continue to be — just listen to “rolling back the waters” Obama lately) more serious on the left in this debate than on the right. 

Maybe now we have some hard evidence on the relative abusiveness of left and right in this connection, this could be a good opportunity for him to demonstrate his ability to revise his views in the light of reality. I can't find that he's said anything on the subject at all lately.