Dartblog

One unfailingly entertaining aspect about the global Global Warming fracas is the intellectual sophistry—though that may be too flattering a word, since sophists possess the veneer of plausability—of the environmentalist movement. The argument, as it is played out in a peculiarly fractured way in the mass media, goes something like this:

— Listen, we’ve got global warming.
— Mmm.
— So will you sign on to this protocol?
— Nah. Gutting American industry doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
— But the world is going to end in ten years.
— So how will not opening a few new car factories help? And wouldn’t this protocol encourage our chief competitors to open their own new factories while we’re hamstrung here?
— Because it will. Sign here, please.
— I don’t think that’s good policy.
— Listen. Why do you hate science?
— I don’t hate s—
— You’re a crazy Christian, aren’t you?
— What? Yes, the earth is getting warmer but this cycle’s been happening f—
— What we need to do then is sign this protocol here. Ready to sign?
— …
— Here’s a pen.
— …
— Sign.
— Look, the problem is that even if you can throw off a million years’ worth of evidence and demonstrate that human industry, in the plink of time we’ve had here, has caused a planet-killing shift in atmosphere, your ideas about fixing it are absolutely unworkable. I mean, it’s a gnat compared to the leviathan weight of human history you claim led us here.
— Stop it. OK? Just stop. Look at this picture. It shows a mountain with snow. Now, that was fifty years ago. Here’s another picture. What do you see?
— No snow.
— No snow! How can you not believe in global warming now, you planet-hating bastard? Don’t you understand that there is a scientific consensus? A consensus!
— Right, I know it’s getting warmer.
— Then sign on to my policy slate. Don’t read it. Just sign.
— No.
— When will we ever convince you Global Warming skeptics?

And that’s how it goes. For a glimpse of how this sort of tack is taken against President Bush, read this post on National Review’s The Corner, which details all the various times Bush has “finally” admitted the existence of Global Warming.