Cool Planet

Bill Burtis

By Bill Burtis
Manager, Communications and Special Projects
Clean Air-Cool Planet

I’m going home.  My work, apparently, is done.  The globe is cooling; global warming has been called off, revoked, turned around – miraculously permitted to disoccur.

That’s the latest pitch by the global warming deniers in their continuing attempt to save the profit margins of big oil and big coal – big carbon – from a sudden decline.  I wonder, do Rush, and Sean, and Glenn have stock in Peabody and Exxon?  Maybe it’s part of the benefit package at Fox News.

Actually, I think it’s surprising that Fox has chosen to continue to make global warming a political issue and, therefore, one of its bull’s eyes on Barack Obama’s back.  I mean, Fox is all about fear, disaster, horrible stuff of which you, Mr. American, need to be really, really afraid.  And most of it is nonsense.

But here is something – catastrophic storms, floods, droughts, displaced millions, sea-level rising (Personally, if I worked for them, I’d be working up something on giant methane clouds that are going to ruin your wedding!) – that is actually happening.  Or was, depending on whether you understand the science.

As near as I can figure, what these evil pitchmen have latched on to is the same kind of take-what-you-need-and-leave-the-rest approach to the science that the tobacco industry used in the sixties and seventies.  Find something, anything, that indicates to the smallest degree that the science might be slightly different from what the main stream says and set it up as absolute evidence that what the main stream says is, well, not true.  Or not true enough to keep selling cigarettes, tobacco, chew – or coal, oil, Tahoes, Denalis, Tundras, Sequoias (Ever noticed that a lot of the really big honkers are named after stuff they are destroying?) and seriously big houses.

What they’ve come up with this time is this “The planet’s been cooling for the last 11 years!  Global warming is over!” hokum.  How do they do it?  Easy.  1998 was the hottest year on record – every year since has been less hot, with 2008 relatively cooler.  Draw the line; it slopes downward.

But wait: Aren’t they doing the very thing they’d accused the IPCC of doing? Ignoring something?  Like the fact that these are relatively small changes in a very large change for the planet – small changes accounted for by a sustained La Nina, volcanism, a low point in the sun-spot cycle and a downturn in global economic activity (read: carbon burning)?  Yes, they are.

But they know that the people they are trying to reach – those who are scared enough to hate and spread hate and so spread more fear and get more advertising dollars for Fox – won’t bother to think beyond the propaganda.

And that’s why global warming is politicized.  It’s not easy to prove – and few scientists worth the title are willing, or have been willing, to take the risk of stepping out from behind the veil of scientific uncertainty to say look, this is big trouble, period.  It’s against their training – which is why we ought to trust them when they – 2000 strong with real climate-related credentials – say it’s really, really likely!  If the dentist told you it was really, really likely you had a cavity that was causing that pain, would you fix it?

But you can’t see global warming.  It’s covered up in weather and lost in the vastness of the planet.  So, you have a hard to prove, naturally unpopular idea and you are trying to wrest power (read here: MONEY) from those who hold it.  Grab it and wield it!  Take the little doubt of the scientist and puff on it until it’s the size you need to get your pals back in power.  Easy enough to see why these people are just as willing to throw away the future of the species as they were to let people continue to die for big tobacco’s profits.

Did I mention that Fred Singer, skeptic-in-chief, worked for tobacco, too?  Sorry.