Abusing science
“This [past] week marks 20 years since NASA’s James E. Hansen testified before a joint Congressional hearing that there was a strong ’cause and effect’ relationship between ’current’ climate conditions and emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Patrick J. Michaels writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
“Every climate scientist knows there’s been no — zero — net change in surface temperatures in the last 10 years, as shown in the climate history of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” said Mr. Michaels, senior fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute.
“Unless you throw in a volcano (there hasn’t been a decent one in the last decade), none of Hansen’s valid 1988 models predict what’s actually happened. He simply predicted too much warming, especially for the last 10 years. Why should we believe what he forecasts for the rest of the 21st century?
“Hansen’s 1988 predictions were flatly wrong about the extent of global warming. Yet on the 20th anniversary of his original testimony, Hansen said that people ’should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature’ for spreading doubts about the promised global warming holocaust. He named names, too: the CEOs of Exxon Mobil and Peabody Energy.
“Excuse me, Inquisitor Hansen, but what exactly are their crimes against humanity? Being demonstrably wrong about climate science? …
“The fact of the matter is: Hansen is out of control. NASA employees aren’t supposed to call for tax hikes, endorse candidates, or attack businessmen. Any other federal employee would be warned for doing so, and if he continued, fired (or worse). You have to hand it to him, though: he’s a single, scientific outlier, terrorizing the American people.”
Scapegoat search
“Right now, Americans’ economic anxiety is reaching feverish levels. The primary culprit for the nation’s heebie-jeebies is the record price of fuel. At such times, the political and chattering classes share a vital responsibility — they must identify a villain. Inevitably, they have settled on ’speculators’ as their bogeyman,” Dean Barnett writes in the Weekly Standard.
“The terminology can be a bit confusing to those not steeped in the arts of demagoguery. For instance, in recent years, lots of people bought homes that they quite simply couldn’t afford. They assumed (mistakenly or naively) that the homes they purchased would be worth more the following year. In other words, they were speculating. But the political class does not call such people ’speculators.’ Instead, it reserves for these purported victims the more benign sobriquet of ’homeowners’ and debates how much taxpayer-funded largesse should be lavished on them to ease the pain of their unwise speculation,” Mr. Barnett said.
“But how about people who think oil will be worth more next year — do we call them petroleum owners? No, politicians and pundits have dubbed them ’speculators.’ ”
Fleeing liberalism
“The earth’s landscape is now littered with former Obama commitments, and his embrace of the conservative court’s views on the child rape and Second Amendment cases this [past] week is head-snapping. Obama sounds like the president of the Federalist Society,” Peter Wehner writes in a blog at www.commentarymagazine.com.
“Barack Obama may be the best political embodiment of Woody Allen’s character Leonard Zelig we have seen. The complete ease with which Obama shifts positions, with only the slightest bit of media scrutiny, is quite amazing. And the original conceit of the Obama campaign, which is that he is above the ’old politics,’ won’t play the ’Washington game’ and is a one-man antidote to cynicism, should now evoke a belly laugh,” Mr. Wehner said.
“There is, though, a larger lesson to draw from what is unfolding. Obama, in order to win the presidency, is fleeing liberalism as fast as his feet will carry him. McCain, on the other hand, proudly presents himself as a ’Ronald Reagan conservative.’ That is the best testimony there is to the fact that America remains a center-right, and certainly not a liberal, nation. It is also an important reminder that the Republican Party and the conservative movement are separate, with the former in considerably worse shape than the latter.
“The ways in which America is more and less conservative than it once was is an interesting matter to explore. But it’s safe to say, I think, that if the presidential race is framed as Barack Obama, Democrat v. John McCain, Republican, Obama will win. If on the other hand the race is framed as Barack Obama, liberal v. John McCain, conservative, McCain will win.”
Virtually ignored
“Despite the ’historic’ nature of Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment is an individual right, all three morning shows virtually ignored the decision, devoting a combined total of three minutes and 33 seconds to the story. And between CBS’s ’Early Show,’ NBC’s ’Today’ and ABC’s ’Good Morning America’ that’s out of eight hours of programming,” Scott Whitlock writes at newsbusters.org.
“In fact, the [3½] minutes of story time does not even equal the over four minutes that Wednesday’s ’Early Show’ alone gave to the critically important subject of how to Feng Shui your house for pets. On Friday, however, the CBS program could only find a mere 30 seconds for the most definitive gun ruling the Supreme Court has ever made. And while ’Good Morning America’ spent almost three minutes on Madonna and whether or not she’s getting divorced, the show only allowed 93 seconds of air time for the D.C. gun case,” Mr. Whitlock said.
“Similarly, the ’Today’ show devoted 90 seconds to the topic, despite admitting that it was ’the most important ruling ever on gun rights.’ Now, what could the cause for all this be? Could it have something to do with the fact that presidential candidate Barack Obama has repeatedly flip-flopped about his position on the case? Or maybe it’s because Democrats in general don’t seem eager to see gun control become a major issue in the 2008 presidential race and liberals in the media are helpfully playing along.”
Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.
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