Given Climategate II, no noticeable heating of the planet during the last decade, and all sorts of questionable research on supposed problems like polar bear population declines and Himalayan glacier melting — not to mention the wind and solar debacles here and in Europe — the man-made-global-warming movement is about done for now. We sometimes forget that the fad gained its traction during the Bush years, fueled in large part by the myth that a Texas Bible-thumper was going to prevent wise technocrats from saving the planet from the neanderthals.
The years 2001 to 2009 saw a lot of that — hysteria attributable to Bush derangement syndrome. I say hysteria because, like global warming, there no longer seems to be much furor over, for example, guidelines on stem-cell research. Iraq has become one of the administration’s “greatest achievements.” Afghanistan is no longer the “good” war that we “took our eye off.” Renditions, Guantanamo, tribunals, preventive detention, Predators, and the Patriot Act are no longer destroying the Constitution. Bombing a Muslim oil-producing country is no longer a war crime.
It is as if all these -isms and -ologies of the early 21st century — and their representatives, from Al Gore to Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and Sean Penn — were entirely negative, not positive developments, valid simply because they were the opposite of what Bush was (or supposedly was) for or against. With Bush removed from the calculus, the progressive community is silent and sometimes even embarrassed about the issues that once inspired them.
In psychological terms, there was some sort of deviant paranoia in which the progressive mind felt that all sorts of terrible things were happening beyond its control and, by blaming all of them on Bush, gained a sort of release from examining any of these things on their merits. Obama was a creation of this malady: Just as Bush had cooked the planet, so Obama would cool it and the seas would recede; just as Bush had destroyed civil liberties, so Obama would restore them by stopping renditions and closing Guantanamo; just as Bush was anti-science, so Obama would promote scientifically “proven” man-made global warming; and just as Bush had polarized the world, so Obama would reset relations and win over unduly snubbed Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, China, Cuba, etc.
But because there was never any real Bush illness, there could not be any real Obama cure — and so the hysteria quietly subsided and is now being Trotskyized away.
NYT ran a piece on the 28th called the "Doctrine of Silence" by Roger Cohen. A perfect example of the equivocation of.....guess will call it "revisionist presentism", that you describe here in your post.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"no noticeable heating of the planet during the last decade"?
Really?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReally, the planet has been cooling since 1998, and even Phil Jones has admitted that there hasn't been a statistically significant heating since 1995. (And that was before the big drop in temp this year.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseQuoting Phil Jones to refute climate change is like using Psalms 137 to advocate smashing babies' heads on rocks.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAre you denying the quote?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI never said that Jones had recanted his religious views, I just noted that even he is enough of a scientist to acknowledge the obvious, once all attempts to dodge it had failed.
You mean the quote where he says, ‘Independent researchers analysing long-term trends of these indicators have seen an increase in air, sea and land temperatures, rising sea levels and decreasing Arctic sea ice, spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere and glacier extent.’? And where Jones notes that the cyclic La Nina oceanic cooling trend have depressed overall global temperatures? But also where, in the same article, they note that the 13 warmest years on record have all occurred in the 15 years between 1997 and 2011?
I just don't think Jones is saying what you think he's saying. And I'm not sure quote-mining him helps your case.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn view of Climategate 2.0, please don't buy the white cans of Coke, which is sending money to WWF to stop "global climate change"!
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile many of Bush's policies may have been adopted by Obama, it hardly heralds the end of BDS. That's because BDS, irrational as it may be, is permanently fixed in the brains of millions of Americans, thanks to the unceasing efforts of the MSM. What did not get into a person's head by reason cannot be gotten out of it by reason. You can argue all day with someone that Obama is pursuing exactly the same policies that Bush did, but you won't persuade them that Obama is just as bad as Bush.
To these people, the facts don't matter. I got into a discussion with a neighbor a few years ago when she was denouncing Jim Delay: "He should be in prison!" I asked her what crime he had actually committed. She paused, stumbled for a moment, and came back with, "Just being born!" She knew Delay was evil, but didn't know why - he just was. She didn't need to know the facts, because the MSM had already provided her with her conclusion.
And that's the way BDS works.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm all for discrediting the climate alarmists, but has it not been determined that 'Climategate II' is just a bunch of emails from 'Climategate I' that weren't released until now?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseyep ... they are from the same leak ... and there is a third batch that is currently password protected ...
doesn't change the fact that they have been caught lying, cheating and deleting ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMr. Davis Hansen doesn't let facts get in the way of a partisan polemic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy, my. A liberal invoking facts. Will miracles never end?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy should that matter?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe facts in the e-mails remain the same.
Although I'd like to, I can't agree that the man-made global warming movement is about done for now. We are still living with the effects of the movement. For example, the government is still going to take away my incandescent light bulbs next year. Air flights to the EU on US carriers may yet be subject to a carbon levy. The Securitites and Exchange Commission may force public companies to include climate-change "risks" in their public filings. I could go on to list numerous other ways in which the global warming theory lives on in the form of government edicts and regulations. Perhaps as a theoretical, political and intellectual debating point the movement is done, but unfortunately it lives on in a very real way in the real world.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseConcur. I just read an article today about proposed changes at Cincoteague Island (pls excuse the spelling). The feds want to move the beach and cull some horses because of the inevitable sea level rise. That is the problem with unscientific science. The reactionaries react real fast but it takes years to unravel the damage (if ever). When we see Federal support for solar, wind, ethanol, electric cars, etc. disappear I might believe we are done with it.
Look at ethanol. It has spiked food prices, used enormous amounts of water from an aquifer that is already dwindling, caused the decrease in conservation acreage, harmed our cars and small engines (mowers) and did it without lowering the amount of imported oil by a barrel. In fact, it is estimated to take MORE than a gallon of fuel to produce a gallon of ethanol! Has that changed the minds of anyone in Washington?
The reality is, we won't be able to end them because it will "harm" the individual industries. If the individual industry was viable, it wouldn't have needed the subsidy. These have always been nothing more than liberal vanity projects (or political payoffs for campaign contributions).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo paraphrase the abusive hippy boyfriend in Forrest Gump:
"I'm sorry America, it's just the d&^% war and that SOB Bush!"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut it will quickly come back the instant Obama is replaced with a Democrat. In a way that is to the good since I'm basically a libertarian. Nobody seems to care about civil rights when a Democrat is in office, just the way no one seems to care about the ever enlarging welfare state when the GOP runs the show.
My mother is from the old left, and I grew up wearing a red diaper, but since LBJ, who made up for his liberalism by being a Texan and therefore an object of hatred, I have never seen the moral outrage toward a Democrat who mouths the right pieties. Bill Clinton got in some trouble in 1995, but Gingrich bailed him out. Always remember the New Left is a reactionary group, solely defined by their perceptions of their enemies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust after the election in 2008, a friend was kvetching about Bush and his crimes, relieved they would be accounted for. This man is a veteran Democrat Party operative, card-carrying ACLU member, etc.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFed up, I prophesied Obama would do all Bush did and worse, and my friend would shrug it off.
His shoulders are getting awfully tired.
You, of all people, are talking about "derangement syndrome" and "deviant paranoia"? You don't have a well developed sense of self, do you?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHeh! Hanson seems to have a supreme sense of self, having read much of his writing, including about his familial roots and life from there forward. He knows exactly who he is and what he believes and why.
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