So Andrew Sullivan says global warming is like the WMD "debate" before the Iraq War:
It occurs to me that the global warming debate is not unlike the WMD-terrorist debate, except the sides are reversed ....
In both cases, however, the evidence is complicated and hard to pin down with absolute certainty. We know we are at much greater risk now from Islamist terror than we were a decade ago - but measuring how much, and where from specifically, is very hard. Equally, we know that global warming is real, but whether it has reached or will soon reach a dangerous tipping point is not a given.
Riiight. I can think of a number of ways that Iraq and climate change are similar, but that isn't one of them. Let's count the ways:
- Before the war began, the professional weapons-hunters said that Iraq was disarmed, and that Bush was doing the wrong thing. Similarly, the scientific community is unanimous that climate change is happening, and Bush is doing the wrong thing.
- Left unchecked, Bush's policies in Iraq have led to disaster. Left unchecked, Bush's policies on climate change have led to disaster.
- To wage the war, Bush assembled a sham "coalition of the willing" to give his actions credibility drag. To ignore climate change, Bush has assembled a sham coalition to give his actions ... aw, hell, it isn't even credible.
- The case for Bush's policies in Iraq relied heavily on a well-planned campaign of deception and misinformation. The case for Bush's policies on climate change relies on calling carbon dioxide "life."
- Andrew Sullivan was wrong about Iraq. Andrew Sullivan is wrong about climate change. Andrew Sullivan wouldn't know right if it got drunk and shot him in the face.
Comments View as Flat
Amy Gregory Posted 5:47 am
06 Jul 2006
Saw this on MyDD Too
There was a similar post over at MyDD on the same thing. Someone there posted a comment saying Sullivan was actually arguing that, based on the conservative logic of "We must act now whether or not we really know what the truth is," we should act on global warming.
I haven't gotten a chance to read the article, so I don't know. But I do know that it is a good thing for so many people to be talking about and taking seriously global warming (about time).
Two explorers just reached the North Pole, becoming the first people to do so in the summer, and they found plenty of troubling signs, like not so much ice and polar bears farther north than expected. Take a look at their site: http://www.projectthinice.org/
Amy Gregory GreenpeaceUSA
Permalink
bookerly Posted 10:25 am
06 Jul 2006
Chatter counts, maybe
I agree with Amy that it is a good thing for so many people to even be talking about global warming. In theory the more people talk about it, the higher level it is in people's consciousness, the greater chance that anything is actually done about it.
In pratice, much of the American "noise" is still the out-of-control ravings of the lunatic right, oops, I mean MainStream Media.
One of my concerns is that they will gum it to death as a subject, so that people start to hear it without anything happening, ever.
patrick
Permalink