A winning argument in la la land
James Q. Wilson may be the most prominent social scientist in the United States. Today he wrote us with a "summary of a fascinating Los Angeles Times story about how the Santa Barbara City Council was persuaded not to paint a blue line across the city showing how high the ocean would rise if Al Gore's statement that it will be 23 feet higher were true." Professor Wilson's writes:
On August 26, 2007, the Los Angeles Times published an article explaining why the city council of Santa Barbara has been prevented from painting a blue line across the city to mark how high the water will be if you believe Al Gore’s prediction that global warming will make the oceans rise by 23 feet. The idea was not defeated because people realize that Gore’s prediction is silly and wrong, but because a realtor threatened a law suit based on the argument that property values below the line would fall.
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