Working on Big Blue this weekend it was time for coffee when suddenly the microwave quit. No problem, I used the backup system.
These Vulcans haven’t been fired up since George Steinbrenner owned the Roundtable Resturant in the 1960’s. Think we’re ready for the Tour Of Kitchens 2008?
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it’s time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.
What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA’s Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of “99% confidence”).
![[Global Warming as Mass Neurosis]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AH813_glovie_20080630171632.jpg)
But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world’s oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that “80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters,” according to a report by NPR’s Richard Harris.
The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere’s coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.
This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.
So let’s stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.
The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific “consensus” warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to “patriarchal” science; curtains to the species.
A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” That’s Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.
And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the “solutions” chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.
Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What’s remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?
As it turns out, a lot, at least if you’re inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature’s great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.
In “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, “morbid-minded” religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
The Wife, our friend Mike, and Leonard Pennario several weeks ago celebrating The Wife’s birthday.
Leonard Pennario passed away quietly last night in La Jolla, California. I am very happy that Mr. Pennario became such a large part of my life.
I first met Leonard Pennario last November when he came to Buffalo to accept his induction into the Buffalo Music Hall Of Fame. Later that weekend, over our lunch at the Century Grill, The Wife accepted Mr. Pennario’s request to write his authorized biography.
Leonard Pennario was an extraordinary man and he will continue to inspire me every day of my life.
http://buffalopundit.wnymedia.net/blogs/archives/6642#comment-229593
Buffalo Pundit wrote today about evil fossil fuels and the entire gang, left and right, seem to have bought into that notion.
I bloviated in a comment:
All of you my friends, with all due respect, are hamsters curled up in an anxiety ball like Lucinda Basset. The purveyors of panic have corrupted your minds. I am speaking to all of you, both on the right like Hank and the left like Pundit.
We are not addicted to oil any more than an artist is addicted to paint. Any more than a mother is addicted to caring. Any more than a teacher is addicted to preparing young people for life. Oil is a tool that has marked the greatest upsurge of mankind. Utilizing oil has revolutionized transportation, countless labor saving devices, medicine, building materials, plastics, food production, and information technologies.
The Earth’s energy is the greatest gift to mankind and it should be celebrated. (I must also add that likewise, mankind is the greatest gift to the Earth.) We are using more fuel today because it is being used to elevate humanity. What do you find so depressing about third world nations achieving modernity? That can’t be a bad thing! As the world most benevolent society we should celebrate the freedom and technology that we export. And I do.
Fossil fuels will be out of fashion and irrelevant well before they run dry because we will innovate more convenient and cheaper energy sources. I have no doubt about that.
Fossil fuels are mankind’s bridge between the past and the future, the bridge between potential and accomplishment. Walk with me across this bridge.
No generation and no society has been more blessed than we are. Opportunity abounds. These are exciting times. There is no time to be curled up like a hair-ball.
Hey Wall Street Journal subscribers. I discovered the trick to saving money on renewals.
In order to get the $99.00 Wall Street Journal print plus online editions, you have to logout so that the WSJ.com website thinks that you are not already a subscriber. Then click on subscribe.
This will save you at least $29.00.
Next. Use the $29.00 to short crude oil because I think the price of oil is going to crash.
