...of providing a metaphor for larger emissions -- what if Bush's body weight increased at a decreasing weight, he'd get to over 400 pounds by 2025 (or something like that).  I have a feeling she'll be appending a future column because of her oversight

Co2 is hard to see! Show the American public where the coal comes from in graphic pictures of Mountain Top Removal and Valley Fills.

Stop MTR and save a mountain.

Stop MTR and save a forest.

Stop MTR and save a stream.

For each MTR you stop you save a mountain, a forest and a tree.

Show the people where the coal that is destroying the planet is coming from.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

George W. Bush would have been, toward the end of 2000, before the Supreme Court had pronounced on Gore v. Bush, if he had simply called Al Gore and conceded, on the grounds that Gore had won the popular vote, no matter how the electoral vote shook out.

But, yes, it is not all that edifying to re-imagine history with "what-ifs."  E.g., what if Cleopatra had not fled the battle of Actium, and what if Antony too had stayed to fight it out to the end? ...

Anyway, Gail Collins likes to paint with big brushes.  I generally like everything she writes in her op/ed column, but she is indeed sometimes a bit loose with facts.

And whether Jon is right to foresee a mea culpa, she certainly does not intend to make George W. Bush look any better than he deserves.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

 That is basically Bushes strategy, determine what will happen if he does nothing. Claim you are going to do something important. Propose that we/he take credit for the change that would have happened anyway.

    When pressure for actual action builds, rinse, and repeat.

...I know that GHG emissions (in America) kept risin' until 2006, when they supposedly dropped by almost 1% and made another 1% drop in 2007.  

Was that an actual drop or a drop compared to economic growth?

I thought it was an actual drop, but I never really thought of it in terms of economic growth comparison, so I could be wrong.

looking at Kristof!

Both Gail Collins and Nicholas Kristof have their hearts in the right places (he and his wife Sheryl Wu Dunn, after all, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for reporting on the Tiananmen democracy movement and massacre; and lately, he has been able to get some money together for humanitarian causes in Africa and South Asia, and has engineered a couple of good travel programs for young people).

Whatever we may make of Kristof's vague dependency on Roger Pielke, we should take away that (a.) this is not his field, and he retains an open mind; and (b.) he retains an open mind, because this is not his field.

And Kristof is certainly right, at the end, to worry that, while the presidential candidates may have said promising things on GW-mitigation and energy policy from time to time, it is not at all obvious that they are focused on the problem.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I certainly hope that Kristof explores the subject a little more -- I was hoping he had heard of or read or been in contact with Joe Romm, so he could get the other side, but apparently not.  The mainstream press has been accussed quite often of "taking dictation" from those in power instead of actually investigating what they are told -- I hope that for Kristof, that is a temporary slip, but he's been a bit conservative on various other subjects, so I'm not so sure.

..has a history of this sort of thing. Some years back I read a column of his where he in effect played the "elitist" card, castigating enviros for focusing on things like ANWAR and Wilderness designations rather than more masses-friendly things like more Appalachian Trail-type trails.
(Of course, I'm not an unbiased observer, given Kristof's despicable hostility to atheists.)

I was not aware, Russ, that that was a recurrent theme.  But anyway, one needs to understand the context; religionists feel plenty bashed in certain quarters.

In general, though, given the prevailing political winds, standing up for atheists takes courage; standing up for religionists looks like pandering.  If Kristof does the latter, then that is not to his credit.

And I vaguely recall his petulant complaint to environmentalists, that we should "knock it off already about ANWR."  Yes, he definitely cleaves toward anthropocentrism.

The original problem of which Jon complains is perhaps a matter for the excellent Public Editor Clark Hoyt.  But realistically, there is only so much fact-checking that one can do, with any op-ed columnist.

One could always just write to Kristof himself, I suppose, and hope that he takes the time to pay attention.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

K has often indulged a loathesome false equivalence wherein he equates the thousands of years of religious oppression vs. all dissent with we atheists' relatively meager attempts at self-defense in recent years. K is like a school recess aide who watches a big kid brutally beat a smaller kid every day all year and does nothing, and then the moment the small kid dares to try to fight back he runs over to try to separate them and says "You're both equally at fault." WRONG.

He's not the only liberal who engages in this false equivalence. I'm trying to come up with a good term for this type, but I haven't thought of anything good yet.

That is exactly the way I feel.

And I get angry with my co-religionists, who resent the publications of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris: "These are intelligent people," I tell them, "and we should be listening to them!  We have been the bullies for many centuries!  We have been the tyrants, the inquisitors, the executioners!"

Which is not to say that I think we should all become atheist ...

As for Nicholas Kristof, he may have written suggestive things now and again, but I do not know that he is very involved in these matters.  Please instruct further, dear Russ, if you have reason to believe otherwise.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Well, I didn't mean to imply that this is one of his leading themes, but he hits it from time to time, which is more than enough for me.

If you want something more relevant to this board, consider that K is also a practicioner of what Paul Krugman calls "McCain rules", whereby whenever McCain says anything stupid or obnoxious (which means pretty much anything he says by now), or backpedals from all his erstwhile "straight-talker" positions, as long as he issues anything remotely like a qualifier or self-correction, the press not only gives him a pass but celebrates it as another display of M's alleged "character".
Just a month or so ago K wrote M a love letter along these lines, even as M makes it more and more clear that if anything he'd be even MORE stupid and irresponsible than Bush, something I never would've thought possible.
(I just read yesterday that M now wants a maximum income tax rate of 20%, while basically doing away with all other taxes. Exactly where does he think he's going to get the money for 100 years in Iraq? Leprechauns? I really think the guy's senile. As for the MSM's love affair with this idiot, it's simply disgraceful.)

Ah, there you are!  I knew the Celts would get entangled in this somehow!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.