In ten or twenty or thirty years – Los Angeles, New York, and Miami safely above sea level, hurricane and tornado activity having unfolded at about the level it normally does, and the polar bears safe on their ice floes – one would hope that the editorialists of 2008 would have the good grace to look back in wonder at their adolescent obsession with various apocalyptic scenarios associated with climate change.  But their attention span is short and they probably will have forgotten it all by then, having turned to admiring other professional finger waggers whose raison d'etre is scolding mankind for having the temerity to populate the planet and live off of its resources.  It is as if they have all been grabbed up by some religious cult, brainwashed, and then unleashed on the population to spread their gospel, smiling knowingly-but-sadly at anyone who, arguing with them, demonstrates their lamentable failure to see the true path.  (It could be the same cult that gathered them up in the seventies and sent them forth to warn of the calamities of a coming ice age.  “There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth.”  That’s from a Newsweek article of that era.)

In keeping with the Talibanesque nature of their approach to this issue, the true believers have taken to rising up, like angry wasps defending the nest, to sting to death any threat to their orthodoxy, having concluded – so certain are they of its truth and overriding importance – that anything which challenges it must be snuffed without delay. Thus, they never challenge the message; they simply kill the messenger, either by declaring him or her to be some kind of wing nut operating from the far, far right, or in the employ of Big Oil.  Anyone who has any question or concern about any part of what this group characterizes as settled science is immediately marginalized and consigned to the lunatic fringe.  With perfect circular reasoning, they then say that any questions and/or doubts that come from this lunatic fringe are necessarily cracked, so there’s no reason to even listen to them, much less answer them; which means, in essence that they remain totally and blissfully unaware of any contrarian arguments.  They don’t know what’s being said – they just know they disagree with it.  

By some distance the most objectionable tactic in this marginalization process is one that defies all reason, logic, and decency:  comparing climate change questioners to holocaust deniers.  The most obvious objection to this tack is that the holocaust actually happened.  The climate change apocalypse they speak of has not.  The holocaust is not, unlike the predicted results of global warming, a product of “computer modeling.” No matter how convinced this group is of the horrific consequences they speak of, those consequences remain – unless these folks have a crystal ball -- in the realm of conjecture.  They are a prediction, not a historical fact.  Big difference.  And, of course, the toxic subtext of this view – inasmuch as holocaust denial is generally associated, and with good reason, with anti-semitism – is that skeptics are, like holocaust deniers, crazed anti-semites.  To question global warming is to hate Jews.  Good heavens.

Another method of avoiding the questions of the skeptics and attacking the skeptics themselves is to assail their motives, most notably by accusing them of doing the bidding of big energy interests.  But to believe that, you have to believe this:  Those interests, and the unrepentant evil-doers who head them, are fully aware of the consequences of global warming – including, but not limited to, the demise of major metropolitan areas on the eastern and western seaboards – but are intent upon keeping that news from the public, lest it cut into their revenues and profits.  To accept this, you must have – as many global warming enthusiasts apparently do – a remarkably childish and very generalized view of not just big energy companies but big business in toto as being populated by comic-book-like predators.  In fact, in the case of the energy companies, in accusing them of being willing to basically destroy the world to feed their greed for profit, you would have to assume they are populated by insane people.  Absolutely, these companies see it as being in their best interest to refute global warming hysteria.  But that’s some distance from accepting as true a set of truly awful consequences and trying to cover them up by paying off some scientists to spread “disinformation.”  The question is simple and direct:  What could oil companies hope to gain by doing that?

Turning now to a major cause celebre in this ongoing contretemps, the January, 2007 report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): What are we to make of the fact that the group warns of catastrophic flooding, famine, and extreme weather, and, in the same breath, says there is nothing we can do about it? The IPCC says that between 1.1 billion and 3.2 billion people will suffer water scarcity as a result of climate change. Also, between 200 million and 600 million could suffer from food shortages and 7 million could be affected by coastal flooding. Leaving aside for the moment all these “woulds” and “coulds” in a report that is being characterized as proof positive of the scientific and therefore factual basis of climate change and its consequences, the group’s report also says even if concentrations of all the various greenhouse gases could be held at their current levels – that is, if all economic activity essentially ceased and we gave up automobiles and electricity the world over, thus basically reverting to the Stone Age -- the effects of global warming would continue for centuries.

Well, hell.  What now?  Famine and flood are coming and there’s nothing we can do to stop them.  At least, that’s what the IPCC reports says.  Does it not?  If it doesn’t say that, what the heck does it say?

There is no question that there is wide acceptance of the theory of global warming that the IPCC subscribes to.  But it’s also true that people who have the requisite credentials to question that theory and all of its component parts are doing so, and not because they're being "paid off."  But you will never find out what their questions are by reading the mainstream media, which, by and large, have taken sides in this in a puzzlingly angry and dismissive way, accusing anyone who questions the version to which they have apparently irretrievably hitched their wagon, of acting in bad faith. Questions having to do with climate change, its consequences, and the role of human activities in it – questions that seem not unreasonable -- ought to be answered, not guffawed at. But that never, ever happens.