Oddly enough, I agree with (most) of one of them.
The attack on Newsweek’s article “The Truth About Deniers continues with a piece from Robert Samuelson in the WaPo. Samuelson, true to form, sees a hard problem and resorts to saying, “It’s hard, we can’t do anything about it!” His boring fatalism on any difficult problem seems to always end with assertions that if something requires regulation, or proactive government, it’s impossible. He’s also critical of Newsweek’s correct assertion that the attacks on the science aren’t for legitimate “dissent” but rather represent an organized disinformation campaign.
But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: We simply don’t have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale — as Newsweek did — in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.
The problem is that the people who are questioning global warming are fools, cranks, and industry stooges (or those duped by them). And Samuelson, without denying the science, is being a typical scold, crying about people who point out the anti-science, and economic motives of those who question the science for no other reason than they don’t like what they hear. We don’t call them denialists because we disagree with them or merely because they dissent. We call them denialist and cranks because they act like denialists and cranks! How many examples of cherry picking, or fake experts, or conspiracy theories, or references to being Galileo do you need to hear before it becomes clear the “dissenters” don’t have a leg to stand on? Take last weeks glorious exclamations from the denialists over the correction of the US record for instance. It did not change the global average for 1998, it did not change the trends, it had no real effect on the science. This is not the behavior of honest actors who merely are interested in finding the truth about the state of global climate. This is the behavior of people who don’t like a scientific result, in will latch onto anything, no matter how insignificant, to bolster their denialist position.
Dissent and denialism should not be confused Mr Samuelson. Global warming is not a “moral” crusade, as much as the denialists would like to compare themselves to heretics like Galileo being oppressed by the evil left-wing Al Gore global warming conspiracy. The only moral issue is the dishonesty of those who lie and misrepresent science for a political aim.
The second article, from Michael Gerson of all people, is a much better example of how global warming should be addressed – with technology. Giving credit where credit is due, the Bushie has a much more reasonable approach to the problem in “Hope on Climate Change? Here’s Why”
(more…)
