I. Intellectual Climate Change
Just three months after Climategate broke, the global warming establishment is in full rout.
In the main link below, the folks at RealClimate.org—the Climategate conspirators' mouthpiece on the Internet—find themselves under siege by a suddenly hostile British press. It's gotten so bad that they are now expressing "disappointment" as The Guardian begins to defect to the skeptic camp. And they are even complaining that the New York Times, of all places, is "an echo chamber for the climate disinformation movement."
Meanwhile, a very respected source, the Columbia Journalism Review has been egging on the American press to join in the frenzy, arguing that "outlets in the UK, India, and Australia have been eating the American media's lunch, churning out reams of commentary and analysis. Journalists in the US should take immediate steps to redress that oversight." Another journalism watchdog urges reporters to "follow the story wherever it leads" and not be held back by "fear of undermining policy action on global warming."
Back at RealClimate, all of the second-handed, consensus-worshipping groupthink of the global warming establishment is summed up in one sentence: "In any public discussion there are bounds which people who want to be thought of as having respectable ideas tend to stay between." Remember that phrase: "people who want to be thought of as having respectable ideas." Peter Keating couldn't have put it better. The rest of the article below is devoted to complaining that the global warming establishment can no longer dictate what "respectable people" are allowed to say.
What is also amusing about the webpage linked to below is that off to the right of the main text is a blurb for a climate alarmist's book, Global Warming:
Understanding the Forecast. The book's cover illustration features a giant chunk of ice. So let me see if I get the message: the forecast is that global warming will lead to giant blocks of ice?
"Whatevergate," Gavin Schmidt, RealClimate.org, February 16
It won't have escaped many of our readers' notice that there has been what can only be described as a media frenzy (mostly in the UK) with regards to climate change in recent weeks. The coverage has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation, and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere….
In any public discussion there are bounds which people who want to be thought of as having respectable ideas tend to stay between….
Prior to the email hack at CRU there had long been a pretty widespread avoidance of "global warming is a hoax" proponents in serious discussions on the subject. The skeptics that were interviewed tended to be the slightly more sensible kind—people who did actually realize that CO2 was a greenhouse gas for instance. But the GW hoaxers were generally derided, or used as punchlines for jokes. This is not because they didn't exist and weren't continually making baseless accusations against scientists (they did and they were), but rather that their claims were self-evidently ridiculous and therefore not worth airing.
However, since the emails were released, and despite the fact that there is no evidence within them to support any of these claims of fraud and fabrication, the UK media has opened itself so wide to the spectrum of thought on climate that the GW hoaxers have now suddenly find themselves well within the mainstream. Nothing has changed the self-evidently ridiculousness of their arguments, but their presence at the media table has meant that the more reasonable critics seem far more centrist than they did a few months ago.
A few examples: Monckton being quoted as a 'prominent climate sceptic' on the front page of the New York Times this week (Wow!); The Guardian digging up baseless fraud accusations against a scientist at SUNY that had already been investigated and dismissed; Sunday Times ignoring experts telling them the IPCC was right in favor of the anti-IPCC meme of the day; The Daily Mail making up quotes that fit their GW hoaxer narrative; The Daily Express breathlessly proclaiming the whole thing a 'climate con'; The Sunday Times (again) dredging up unfounded accusations of corruption in the surface temperature data sets….
[E]ven more concerning is the reaction from outside the UK media bubble. Two relatively prominent and respected US commentators—Curtis Brainard at CJR [Columbia Journalism Review] and Tom Yulsman in Colorado – have both bemoaned the fact that the US media (unusually perhaps) has not followed pell-mell into the fact-free abyss of their UK counterparts. Their point apparently seems to be that since much news print is being devoted to a story somewhere, then that story must be worth following.
II. Intellectual Climate Change
The global warming hysteria is also collapsing in politics.
As I noted recently, advocates of cap-and-trade controls on carbon dioxide emissions have begun to drop the scientific rationale—because they know it won't fly any more—and they are now trying to sell energy rationing as if it's good for the economy because it would be a source of government-subsidized "green jobs."
Meanwhile, a major British power generator has decided not to shut down a giant coal-fired power plant because the British government can't afford enough subsidies to make "alternative energy" remotely feasible. So much for all of those "green jobs."
In America, the rebellion against global warming dogma is taking hold most firmly on the state level. The article below—in Britain's Daily Telegraph, of course—describes a series of lawsuits and state-level legislation meant to block the EPA from regulation carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, Arizona and Utah are dropping out of the Western Climate Initiative, an unconstitutional attempt by the states to negotiate their own international climate treaty and create a regional cap-and-trade scheme.
"Barack Obama's Climate Change Policy in Crisis," Philip Sherwell, Daily Telegraph, February 20
President Barack Obama's climate change policy is in crisis amid a barrage of US lawsuits challenging government directives and the defection of major corporate backers for his ambitious green programs.
The legal challenges and splits in the US climate consensus follow revelations of major flaws in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which declared that global warming was no longer scientifically contestable….
Oil-rich Texas, the Lone Star home state of Mr. Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, is mounting one of the most prominent challenges to the EPA, claiming new regulations will impose a crippling financial toll on agriculture and energy producers.
"With billions of dollars at stake, EPA outsourced the scientific basis for its greenhouse gas regulation to a scandal-plagued international organization that cannot be considered objective or trustworthy," said Greg Abbott, Texas's attorney general.
"Prominent climate scientists associated with the IPCC were engaged in an ongoing, orchestrated effort to violate freedom of information laws, exclude scientific research, and manipulate temperature data.
"In light of the parade of controversies and improper conduct that has been uncovered, we know that the IPCC cannot be relied upon for objective, unbiased science—so EPA should not rely upon it to reach a decision that will hurt small businesses, farmers, ranchers, and the larger Texas economy."…
Also last week, the United States Climate Action Partnership, a grouping of businesses backing national legislation on reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, suffered a major blow when oil firms BP America and Conoco Phillips and construction giant Caterpillar left the group.
The two oil firms, the most significant departures, walked out on the industry-green alliance protesting that "cap and trade" legislation would have awarded them far fewer free emission allowances than their rivals in the coal and electricity industries.
III. Intellectual Climate Change
Finally, the global warming hysteria is beginning to face resistance on the federal level. Recently several Democrats have joined with congressional Republicans seeking to deny the EPA regulatory authority over carbon dioxide. In a desperate attempt to stall that legislation, the EPA is now promising to delay its new regulations for at least a year.
But in another year, of course, Republicans are likely to control Congress. And Richard Pombo—former scourge of the environmentalist movement—may be back in Congress, though he will still have to get through a contested Republican primary.
Pombo held the line against global warming legislation in the House for the better part of a decade, and we all owe him an enormous debt of gratitude for staving off cap-and-trade just long enough for Climategate to come along. With Pombo back in the House and James Inhofe back in control of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, we would have an excellent clean-up crew in place to fully exploit the intellectual climate change that has occurred in the past year.
"EPA Delays Start of New Rules on Emissions," Ian Talley and Stephen Power, Wall Street Journal, February 23
The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency said Monday the agency would delay subjecting large greenhouse-gas emitters such as power plants and crude-oil refiners to new regulations until 2011, and would raise the threshold for using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
After an outcry from state regulators and members of Congress, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency would also limit regulations for the first half of 2011 to emitters already required to apply for new construction and modification permits under the Clean Air Act….
Industry officials say regulating emissions such as carbon dioxide with the Clean Air Act could be overly burdensome to many energy-intensive sectors, such as steel mills and cement kilns, and regions that rely on coal-fired power.
Ms. Jackson's decision could help Democrats who want to undercut a Republican-led proposal to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases from stationary sources.
Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist (TIA) and contributor to The Freedom Fighter's Journal
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