Conservatives: Global warming is real. But so what?
Ross Douthat publishes the fallback position of conservatives who oppose doing anything about climate change. This second-resort argument has been predictable since the 1980s, when Forbes magazine and Pat Michaels were trying to impugn science showing that global warming was a threat. OK, they were wrong, conservatives are saying. But it doesn't matter. Douthat:
But the evidence that carbon emissions are altering the planet’s ecology is too convincing to ignore. Conservatives who dismiss climate change as a hoax are making a spectacle of their ignorance.But this doesn’t mean that we should mourn the death of cap-and-trade. It’s possible that the best thing to do about a warming earth — for now, at least — is relatively little.
Incredible stuff. The planet's ecology is being altered but we shouldn't do anything. By this logic we shouldn't have done anything about chlorofluorocarbons eating the ozone layer, either. The people who thought global warming is a hoax were wrong. So are the people who think we don't need to do something about it. Ross Douthat is young enough that I predict he will someday regret this column.
Comments
What scares me is I still have friends who do think the warming is a hoax, and that its driven by the solar cycles. The argument is they can't fathom how humans could have any sort of impact on something as big as our planet, and I say they clearly have never looked at google earth and just how paved over the planet is becoming! Even if the carbon is not the primary cause of warming, the increasing pavement, loss of vegetation and desertification are all sources of increased heat.
Posted by: BB | July 27, 2010 8:47 AM
Okay maybe we should do nothing if we like more raging forest fires, more extreme weather events, drought and floods, acidic oceans, glaciers in the sea, species extinctions and invasive species all over. Oh and fixing this stuff, of course, the private sector will do it happily in every country where the impacts are felt and it will cost tax payers nothing.
People really think 6 billion of us and rising don't impact the earth's systems?
Posted by: Baltimore | July 27, 2010 9:53 AM
The cap-and-trade bill passed by the House was larded with give-a-ways to the same industries it purported to cap. None or few of the House members got a chance to read it before the vote.
-- Robert Moen, http://www.energyplanUSA.com
Posted by: Rmoen | July 27, 2010 12:06 PM
Howdy Y'All,
What the republicans meant to say was yes they were wrong, but let's continue to get rich and eat those oysters until their extinct.
As long as these guys can shovel their mouths full of food and take family vacations with the oil lobby, things won't change.
Posted by: Earl_E | July 27, 2010 2:51 PM
A possible solution?
http://ricochet.com/conversations/Manmade-Global-Warming-The-Solution
Posted by: Brett Smith | July 27, 2010 4:00 PM
I am tired of these nay saying do nothing Republicans holding my children and grand children hostage for their own political agendas. They have been saying that Global warming was a fraud trumped up by Liberals bent on destroying the Oil industry which is a way of saying taking money from their benefactors. But now that the evidence has smartly slapped them in their faces they say lets do nothing and see if the trends will be self correcting. Sort of like the Officers of the Titanic telling passengers that everything will be ok because the Titanic is unsinkable.
All we have to do is look to the second planet of the solar system to see what could be the ultimate out come of Global warming
Posted by: Lee | July 31, 2010 11:38 AM