Elizabeth Kolbert is The New Yorker’s most zealous proponent of man-made global warming. It’s such an article of faith with her that she’s gotten lazy. Take the opening paragraph of her “Talk of the Town” comment in the magazine’s latest issue:
Except in certain benighted precincts—oil-industry-funded Web sites, the Bush White House, Michael Crichton’s den—no one wastes much energy these days trying to deny global warming. Credit Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” or this winter’s snowless ski season in the Alps, or the fact that it was seventy-two degrees in Central Park on January 6th. Still, the release last week of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents an important, perhaps even historic, event.
In other words, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, you stupid oil companies who deny the truth before your eyes: it didn’t snow much in the Alps and it was hot in Central Park. Of course there’s climate warming — and it’s all your fault.” Rather than argue with her about whether there is human-made climate warming, a subject on which I’m not qualified to talk, let me just approach her at an advocacy level, an area in which I have vast experience. There, I can comfortably say that she’s made the stupidest, unfounded argument I’ve ever seen.
You can always tell a bad legal brief when it starts with insults. Insults are the legal equivalent of the adage that “when you have the facts, argue the facts; when you have the law, argue the law; when you have neither facts nor law, yell.” Sticking out her tongue and wagging her fingers at interest groups she doesn’t like is childish and proves nothing.
Moving along from the insults, you get Kolbert’s actual “proof” of global warming: this year, we’ve had a dry Alpine winter and a warm central park summer. I’ll get to the former in a minute, but let me first deal with the latter. While January may have been toasty in New York, just the headlines for today tell us that Sweden’s reindeer are starving to death because of thick ice, and that Michigan is experiencing the coldest “beginning of February” in 100 years. You can page through Drudge headlines for the last few weeks and find several similar headlines (Matt Drudge does like his weather) . Therefore, using Kolbert’s algorithm, it’s manifestly clear that, “except in certain benighted precincts,” the globe is cooling.
As for the Alpine peculiarity, keep in mind that the press keeps touting the fact that this is the warmest winter in the Alps in 500 years. There’s really no doubt about the fact that it is a stinky Alpine winter that has, expensively, killed the ski season. But think about that last warm Alpine winter, 500 years ago — for the math challenged among us (which would include me), that would see a warm winter in about the year 1500. The year 1500 was part of the Little Ice Age. In other words, you can have warm winters during ice ages.
Again, let me say that I reserve judgment on this whole man made global warming thing. The politics have gotten so strident that I no longer trust the conclusions being touted by either side. I will say, though, that the type of argument Kolbert advances is no argument at all. It’s an article of faith, unsupported by the scientific method, that grabs at disparate facts to prove a point, and hides its weaknesses behind harsh, intemperate, insulting language. If this is the best they’ve got, don’t count me amongst the converted.
UPDATE: Using Kolbert’s analysis, there’s no global warming in England right now either.
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Just put a lawn chair behind your tail-pipe, start up your car, take a seat in the chair and breathe in for a few hours–you’ll find it’s not very healthy.
Air pollution kills and is the number one cause of cancer.
The question of whether or not climate change is man-made has given people an excuse to avoid the subject of the FACT that the way we currently create energy (on a large scale) pollutes the atmosphere and kills people, animals, plants, and other living things unnecessarily and before their time.
The technology to burn cleaner fuels and create more environmentally friendly forms of energy for the masses has been there for years…and still people refuse to even discuss why it hasn’t happened on large scale.
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/
BigAl: I’m all for clean air, although it is a luxury of affluence — which is why I think this whole thing is a Western tempest in a teapot. China and the rest of Asia will spew pollutants in the air that will make the whole preceding Industrial Revolution, starting in 1760, look like a Fresh Air extravaganza. What I object to is the approach that takes as an article of religious faith the fact that this current round of global warming in Earth history is all our fault.
By all means, let’s clean the air, land and water. Let’s just not read too much into the thing until we have a more emotion- and politics-free concensus about our role and our future.
Al! AL!! You made it through three paragraphs, plus a line, and didn’t once mention black soot!!
Any of us that grew-up during the `60s and `70s, when there were precious little pollution controls in place, know that air and water quality have improved tremendously since those days, when rivers caught fire and people wore face masks during pollution alerts (you can thank the Lefties’ arch-boogeyman Pres. Richard Nixon for creating the EPA, by the way). What I don’t get is how so many gullible people can ignore the evidence around them and actually believe that air and water quality are getting worse. If you want data, go to http://www.epa.gov and click under [air] and [air trends] for access to any number of .pdf files. The fact that so many people actually believe that the (U.S.) environment is getting worse rather than better gives proof to the unqualified successeses of environmentalist demagogues and their partners in the MSM in controlling the message. Countries like China and India may be big polluters, but they, too, will eventually clean up their act as their societies become wealthier and demand a better quality of life.
bw, it sounds like you’re saying we should acknowledge that air pollution is bad and kills, but we shouldn’t demand change in the way we approach energy in this country…all because we don’t quite know yet whether climate change is 100% man-made.
Isn’t that exactly the kind of attitude I was describing in line 1?
Oh never mind, you also added that we shouldn’t worry about it because China and Asia are the worst offenders and they will only get worse.
Yeah, China and Asia are doing it and much worse, so we shouldn’t worry about it….they also love to do the unwarranted wire-tapping thing, and the no habeus corpus thing, and the torture thing.
Are we getting all our ideas from them nowadays?
i didn’t know we had such an affinity for Chinese Government morals…..if they do it, it gives us an excuse to do it too.
Sweeeeeeeeeeet…..can’t wait for all-out communism in America!
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/
BLACK SOOT RULES!!!!!! EVERYBODY’S DOIN IT…EVEN CHINA!
YEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!
OK BW,
I was really half-joking, I know what you mean and what you’re saying…and I don’t really think it means we’re following China’s lead or anything like that. But when you look at our foreign policy, our auto-makers, our energy companies, there seems to be a tendancy to avoid the subject of things like:
whokilledtheelectriccar.com
i hope you get my point
I’m saying, BigAl, that our current hysteria about global warming is probably silly. We’d do better to focus on pollution and industrial wealth and poverty, which are realistic, and infinitely less political and hysterical.
“…and kills people, animals, plants, and other living things unnecessarily and before their time…
And what was life expectancy before the industrial revolution? And what is it now?
And didn’t I read recently that the cancer rate has gone down for the second year in a row?
Just asking.
I’m not claiming that air pollutin is good for you, but this subject needs a little more perspective and a little less hysteria.
I’m surprised our Book would regale so bellicosely against a New Yorker casual. Many readers understand such pieces serve as amusements.
Book, hope you caught the newest ss cast over at neoneocon. they were talking directly about weather warfare. Topic of interest now a days it seems.
What bothers me more is that the political hype on global warming is steamrolling the science and trying to silence scientists who disagree with them, like in the Dark Ages, which is wrong and scary all by itself. Suggests that if one side needs to do that, they probably don’t have the facts to support their position.
“political hype on global warming is steamrolling the science” (Eli)
Global warming hysteria is a cool substitute for thinking.
Don’t understand all the hype. Folks getting all worked up over projections of doom and gloom. Those predicting global warming are the same guys that can’t get this and next week’s weather forecast right.