Global Warming Redux

The Washington Post has been rather interesting on the non-phenomenon of global warming over the last couple of days. First, we have George Will's excellent piece, which reminds us that not too long ago, the advocacy scientists and journalists were singing another tune. First, he lays out today's Known Facts™:

So, "the debate is over." Time magazine says so. Last week's cover story exhorted readers to "Be Worried. Be Very Worried," and ABC News concurred in several stories. So did Montana's governor, speaking on ABC. And there was polling about global warming, gathered by Time and ABC in collaboration.

Eighty-five percent of Americans say warming is probably happening, and 62 percent say it threatens them personally. The National Academy of Sciences says the rise in the Earth's surface temperature has been about one degree Fahrenheit in the past century.

But there's a catch:

Did 85 percent of Americans notice? Of course not. They got their anxiety from journalism calculated to produce it.

Got that right, George. But it gets weirder. Maybe buying more coal can help fix global warming, according to Montana's current governor:

Recently, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer flew with ABC's George Stephanopoulos over Glacier National Park's receding glaciers. But Schweitzer offered hope: Everyone, buy Montana coal. New technologies can, he said, burn it while removing carbon causes of global warming.

Stephanopoulos noted that such technologies are at least four years away and "all the scientists" say something must be done "right now." Schweitzer, quickly recovering from hopefulness and returning to the "be worried, be very worried" message, said "it's even more critical than that" because China and India are going to "put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with conventional coal-fired generators than all of the rest of the planet has during the last 150 years."

Now, Will swings the hammer, which is where he's been going with this:

While worrying about Montana's receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling. Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age." The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool." Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age." The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."

You'll note that one of the magazines listed above, "Science" (scare quotes intentional), which has been promoting "global warming" month after month lately, was on the New Ice Age bandwagon just 30 years ago. Will accurately points out that the Earth has always experienced lengthy heating and cooling cycles. Problem is, in today's short-attention-span world, half an hour is forever, and 30 years is an eternity. People have come to have no sense of context or proportion, because the press is constantly trumpeting this or that disaster scenario, most of which they pin on George W. Bush or the Republicans. In short, we have another situation here where science has become politicized.

Will concludes:

About the mystery that vexes ABC -- Why have Americans been slow to get in lock step concerning global warming? -- perhaps the "problem" is not big oil or big coal, both of which have discovered there is big money to be made from tax breaks and other subsidies justified in the name of combating carbon.

Perhaps the problem is big crusading journalism.

Perhaps it is. Bob Novak also notes this phenomenon, highlighting a crusading NASA official who's been making a career of beating the same drum:

Basketball junkies watching March Madness on CBS March 19 may have been enticed by promotions for ''60 Minutes'' to stay tuned for a tale of impending global doom that the Bush administration was suppressing. A senior government scientist apparently risked his job to at long last reveal that only 10 years remained before global warming would ruin planet Earth. But the impression given on the broadcast did not square with reality.

James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been telling the world that story for many years. Nor was his charge that the science is being covered up by the Bush administration anything new. He made that complaint during the 2004 election year in the same speech in which he endorsed Sen. John Kerry for president against his boss, George W. Bush. If that suggests Hansen is more political than a scientist ought to be, the dispute over whether the U.S. government should regulate emissions of greenhouse gases is at heart political.

Author Michael Crichton has written extensively on this topic, including a full scale attack on politicized science in his latest thriller, State of Fear. In a satirical but nonetheless serious lecture, Crichton asked of advocacy science:

Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.

We do, too. Global cooling was an issue in the 1970s. Global warming is an issue now. Both, to some extent, measurably occurred within specific timeframes. But did we, or do we really have the data that enable us to declare categorically that this or that phenomenon is permanent and irreversible? No we do not. But the die-hard left, the people who are driving this issue, are determined to use it to weaken the Bush administration. Further, they are determined to use it to cripple American industry, as they did even during the Clinton administration, relentlessly pushing the asinine Kyoto accords which would clamp down on U.S. industry but leave the Third World free to pollute.

All you have to do is follow the ideological trail of these scientific and journalistic charlatans, and you'll see that the usual Marxist suspects are involved, running on auto-pilot, employing the same Gramscian tactics that have corrupted politics, literature, the arts, and the judiciary in this country nearly to the point of no return. It's this evisceration of our culture that we fear far more than the passing fad of global warming.