Posted by
Josh Todd on Saturday, August 11, 2007 8:43:43 AM
Newsweek ran a clever and snide headline this past week: “Global Warming is a Hoax*.” Note the asterisk, which indicated that a group of “well-funded naysayers” deny “overwhelming evidence” of climate change.
Chief among the naysayers is Exxon, which is the main devil of the industry largely blamed for climate change. But Newsweek has two huge problems: its authors miss the conservative counterpoints to the global warming hysteria and ignore the well-funded folks on what now appears to be its side of issue.
First of all, many conservatives have conceded that the climate is changing, because, of course, it does change over time. Thus, to say that these well-funded naysayers (read: conservatives) are denying that climate change is occurring is absurd. In fact, the editors of National Review—the conservative’s bible—penned an editorial on February 5, 2007 stating, “climate change is real.”
What is in doubt, however, is the source of the climate change. Likewise, naysayers challenge the assertion that climate change is a crisis. (Take, for example, the melting glaciers. Recall from basic geology that melting ice creates water, which evaporates, eventually creating condensation and rain, or snow. Then, the glaciers gain mass on top, effectively becoming more massive, only taller and thinner. So, the glaciers are not disappearing.) The denial of crisis seems to be the crime in this case.
Second, the well-funded naysayers are only reacting to well-funded melodrama kings and queens. Al Gore has a ton of money, and is making a ton more cash with his hyperbolic demagoguery. Likewise, George Soros—a multi-billionaire—funds global warming/climate change functions regularly.
One can also name any of a number of rich actors who lobby for the scare as well as large corporate CEOs like JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, who invited Al Gore to the corporation’s headquarters in New York earlier this year. Other corporations have succumbed to the fad so they don’t appear to be behind the times.
Third, without having calculated the money on either side of this debate, I would guess that the climate change hysteria camp is better funded than the “global warming deniers” (a defamatory allusion to “Holocaust denier” designed to vilify those not convinced by the so-called consensus.)
Newsweek and other publications, then, have joined this hysteria camp on a black-and-white basis, a stance that liberals typically loathe. And instead of considering “naysayer” arguments, the hysteria camp dismisses them out of hand, turning skeptics into primitive ogres with evil intentions. Thus, the side of reason exhibits anything but.
(Townhall's Daytonian also recommends
The Tygrrrr Express)