perfidy

While I'm making fun of the editorialists at the Boston Globe (see below), I might as well bang on the piece by Ross Gelbspan (a rental, not a staff member of the paper) earlier in the week, informing me, among other things, of Katrina's real name:

THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

Now, I know - the two foot snowfall in Los Angeles has been thoroughly debunked, for the simple fact it didn't happen, and Gelbspan's article is full of inaccuracies, not least of which is that, you know, actual meteorologists think he's blowing bubbles here. There's nothing out of the ordinary about the cycles of hurricanes in recent years, and while that doesn't diminish the pain felt by the Gulf Coast victims of Katrina, it does invalidate hurricane season as the jumping off point for another slobber-fest about global warming. Perhaps more important, it gives me a reason to cite an interesting article in today's UK Telegraph on the matter.

I'm a global warming skeptic, relative both to the importance of the small changes alleged to have occurred over the past couple centuries and to the asserted causes. You see, I remember only too well the claims of last century that we were heading for a new Ice Age. And, heck, I've even seen stories about global warming being caused by the sun, for cripes' sake, and I don't want to hear that this, too, is within Bush's purview.

As to causes, and the blame for their existence, it's probably not helpful to Mr. Gelbspan's already weak case to find, all gathered up in one place, the purported cause for a significant fraction of all global warming:

Burning peat bogs set alight by rainforest clearance in Indonesia are releasing up to a seventh of the world's total fossil fuel emissions in a single year, the geographers' conference heard yesterday.

It would be a lot easier to take the alarmists on this and other matters more seriously if they did their homework. From the Taranto column linked above, Gelbspan gets tweaked pretty hard by a reader, excerpted here for anyone who doesn't care to go read the entire piece, even though you should:

(from reader Eric Free of Oceanside, Colo.)
You are way too cynical and know-nothing in your mockery of RFK2 et al. The flood in Genesis was caused by Global Warming. So was the Johnstown Flood. So was Curt Flood. So were the Ten Plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea.

The Chicago Fire of 1871 was caused by Global Warming. So was the Panic of 1873. So was the Panic of 1837. The bubonic plague too was caused by Global Warming (how could you forget this?). So was the fall of Constantinople (note the parallel with the war in Iraq). And the Red Chinese onslaught across the Yalu River in the Korean War was caused by Global Warming. So was the Normandy Invasion in World War II. So was the Norman Invasion of 1066. And the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and Haley's Comet. And for that matter the Hale-Bopp Comet.

The title weather in "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" was clearly caused by Global Warming. So was the pink snow in "The Cat in the Hat." So was Andersonville Prison during the Civil War. So was the entire Civil War. So was the Amityville Horror. So was the Dunwich Horror. So was the failure of the Colorado Rockies to make it to the World Series every single year that they've been a Major League franchise. So was the failure of any of the three "Matrix" movies starring Keanu Reeves to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.

AND GEORGE W'S ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY IN 2000 WAS CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING!!! (Why do you think he opposes an end to it, after all?)

Lack of homework + alarmism = not being taken at all seriously. But then, if folks like Gelbspan did their homework, while they might still hold the same opinions, in very few cases would they remain alarmists.

And that don't sell newspapers, now do it?