Redstate

(to save the planet and elect Dems, mind you)

By Mark Kilmer Posted in Liberals — Comments (34) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Pulitzer Prize-winning climatologist column-writer Ellen Goodman is one righteous lady. Without viewing the related science, she has accepted the words of the bureaucrats who hyperbolize the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Because what they say frightens her, the "level of alarm" has been raised and she has concluded in her little, round head that "[t]he fact of global warming is 'unequivocal.'" She's scared; in fact, she seems to have wet herself and is now blaming the rest of us.

Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

In that sense, then, Ellen is asserting that global warming deniers are worse than Holocaust deniers, because their denial is destroying the future while Holocaust deniers are merely disagreeing about ancient history. This is perverse thinking on many levels, but angry posturing confuses the easily agitated. I hope that is all this is.

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The German Nazis of World War II kept detailed records of their mass slaughter of human beings: Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. The common figure is that 6-million Jews were killed by the Nazi machine, and while that exact figure can be disputed up or down, the fact of the Nazi Holocaust is not disputable. And it is not something which, as Ellen would have it, can be considered behind us. As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tells us at their web site, Anti-Semitism is "an ongoing event." Anthrogenic global warming is an Al Gore flick, based on fragmentary observations over a short period of time and on this computer model and that.

Ellen is more concerned about the politics. You see, that's where she shines. (Or not. Depends.)

Only 23 percent of college-educated Republicans believe the warming is due to humans, while 75 percent of college-educated Democrats believe it.

This great divide comes from the science-be-damned-and-debunked attitude of the Bush administration and its favorite media outlets. The day of the report, Big Oil Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma actually described it as "a shining example of the corruption of science for political gain." Speaking of corruption of science, the American Enterprise Institute, which has gotten $1.6 million over the years from Exxon Mobil, offered $10,000 last summer to scientists who would counter the IPCC report.

Why do the 77-percent of college-educated Republicans consider this to be junk science? She tells us that it is because Big Oil uses its political tools, Inhofe and the Bushies, to do our thinking for us. The Democrats, on the other hand, are far more discerning. They are kept in line by an antipathy for progress, beguiled by the global warming industry, and addled by Bush Derangement Syndrome. And Ellen's ready to get on with the show:

American University's Matthew Nisbet is among those who see the importance of expanding the story beyond scientists. He is charting the reframing of climate change into a moral and religious issue -- see the greening of the evangelicals -- and into a corruption-of-science issue -- see big oil -- and an economic issue -- see the newer, greener technologies.

She still has not said what Big Oil has done. She makes the allegation that they paid the American Enterprise Institute to look for opposing views rather than accepting the scare tactics of a team of U.N. bureaucrats, but even if that were the case, how is $10,000 significant when we're talking about freaks spending millions to spread their propaganda about industry destroying the globe.

To Ellen, this is about politics. This is about electing Democrats.

Can we change from debating global warming to preparing? Can we define the issue in ways that turn denial into action? In America what matters now isn't environmental science, but political science.

We are still waiting for the time when an election hinges on a candidate's plans for a changing climate. That's when the light bulb goes on.

Electing Democrats, which requires making little, straw dolls of big Oil, the Bushies, the neocons, the illuminati… whatever. Stick them with pins, Ellen. Chant. Make movies about how we're all going to die and it is our fault. But do not compare this to the Holocaust. Those who deny the Holocaust do so out of pure hatred. Those who are skeptical about global warming don't swallow the spoon fed dung.

Ellen's column also contains a running gag about a light bulb, "an environmentally friendly, compact fluorescent light bulb." Perhaps the problem, then, is really Big Bulbs.