Swarthmore native Holman Jenkins explains the Nobel prize winning concept of "Availability cascade" as it relates to the Nobel prize-winning Al Gore and his campaign to "save the planet."

Money Q:

How this honor (the Nobel) has befallen the former Veep could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on "availability bias," roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind.

Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: "Availability cascade" has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; "informational cascade" for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd's beliefs; and "reputational cascade" for the rational incentive to do so."

Read the whole thing.