By their headlines shall ye know them. Daily Mail: “Will there be a global famine in 2050? Crops will be overwhelmed by pests in the next 30 years, scientists warn.” Salon: “Detroit is drowning: Why our cities are in danger and global warming’s to blame.” Guardian: “Miami, the great world city, is drowning while the powers that be look away.” Slate: “Do not buy oceanfront property.” New York Times: “Game over for the climate.” And, finally, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which, among other things, keeps track of polar ice caps, the source of much of the world’s angst about the possibility of rising sea levels: “New Reverb Subsetting Services Available for NASA GLAS HDF5 Data.” It would be safe to bet that the headline written by the people with the most knowledge is the one that was least read.
I have neither the expertise nor the inclination to relitigate the ups and downs of the climate-change debate, which rivals the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in its tediousness and intractability. But even if we set aside the criticism of the skeptics, including the best-informed of them, and limit ourselves to the projections of the more enthusiastic true believers, there is not much to justify the apocalyptic tone generally associated with the issue. The International Panel on Climate Change, for example, predicts that the costs of adapting to global warming will amount to a couple of points of global economic product a century from now. Obviously, some places will suffer more than others, but if the IPCC model is correct, then we are talking about a burden, not an apocalypse.
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