The End of the Innocence

Not to get all Don Henley on everybody, but is the fringe left finally starting to grow up on the issue of global warming? Because a long article basically debunking the idea, debunking Al Gore, and shooting down a bunch of other global warming strawmen appear on.....The Huffington Post.

You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.

Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

And it (surprisingly) goes on line this, noting that:

1. The phrase "Climate change" is redundant;
2. Al Gore and company are "flat-earthers" for knowingly misinterpreting the relationship between climate change and the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
   
3. Record sea-ice growth in Antarctica.

Author Harold Ambler closes with this:

To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore, again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem.

So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.

Now, there is a lot to find interesting here, not the least of which is that somebody on one of the left's largest "news-sources" finally is starting to agree with people like me and Mark Newgent on the fallacy that is global warming. And it is also interesting that such an idea being floated by somebody on the left didn't bubble up until long after the hysteria was used as one way of helping to propel Barack Obama to the White House.

What is most interesting to me is the fact that this may be the beginning of the end of the loony left, at least in it's most vocal form.

When you think back to the 1960's, 60's radicalism as we remember it really didn't start getting moving until the escalation in Vietnam in 1965. At that point, things in America were still relatively good. Obviously, it wasn't good for everybody (race relations being the most obvious of these examples) but it was relatively easy to protest the war and protest against the government when the preponderance of society had food and shelter. The Sixties as a movement reached their cultural apex in 1969 with Woodstock and their political apex in 1972 with the nomination of George McGovern.

But what really killed the Sixties zeitgeist? Sure, McGovern's defeat helped. But look at what was going on in 1973. Gas shortages. Economic troubles. U.S. withdrawal in Vietnam. Once the protesters and rabblerousers began to worry about their own backyard, they didn't seem to worry too much about protesting the war and the government anymore. Perhaps the combination of victory in Iraq, the election of Obama, and the downward spiral of the economy is brining the so-called "reality based community" back to an actual reality for once, and beginning to question thing such as global warming hysteria. When folks realize that proposed global warming "solutions" may unnecessarily inflict further harm upon an already beaten down economy, those ideas really don't look like such a great solution anymore.

Speculation about the reasons for the stand down on global warming policy aside (and I think there may be other reasons out there that I did not necessarily touch on) I find it somewhat comforting that people on the left side of the aisle are finally starting to look critically at so called arguments for global warming policy change, and are starting to take the more reasoned position that a lot of us took some time ago...