Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Global warming deniers

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Mr. Gore says the overwhelming scientific opinion is that humans are causing climate warming. Mr. Jacoby finds one scientist who thinks the jury is still out on that. Mr. Gore says that in a random sample of over 900 scientific papers about climate change, not one said humans aren’t the cause. But of more than 600 reports in the popular press, 53 percent cast doubt on a human cause to global warming. The only “debate” he says, comes from a vocal minority who perhaps have a vested interest in keeping us in the dark. Mr. Jacoby would seem to be one of them.

Jeff Jacoby also says:

Jonathan Schell and Carl Sagan forecast a devastating “nuclear winter” unless atomic arsenals were frozen, or better still, abolished. Those doomsday prophesies never came to pass.

Of course nuclear winter hasn’t come to pass. No one has exploded the nuclear arsenal that is very capable of producing it. It doesn’t mean it wouldn’t happen if someone did.

Mr. Jacoby found only 36 percent of people in a Gallup poll worry a “great deal” about global warming, but 73 percent in an LA Times/Bloomberg poll from last summer said it’s a “serious problem.”

Likewise, a CBS News/New York Times Poll (same site) from last May found 66 percent think global warming is having a serious impact now, up from 59 percent in 2003.

Mr. Jacoby’s 36 percent of people who worry a “great deal” about global warming came from a list of 10 environmental problems. And that 36 percent figure is up from 26 percent just two years ago. Topping the list of fears for people is polluted drinking water, of which more than half those polled worry about a “great deal.”

Maybe we should be worrying more about global warming, but we’re not, thanks in part to deniers like Mr. Jacoby.

Here are some other numbers to make the eyes glaze from that same Gallup poll?

58 percent think the effects of global warming are already happening. So they may not be thinking about it much, but they know it’s here.

Only 30 percent think the media exaggerates the seriousness of global warming.

And 58 percent think humans are causing global warming.

Global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it is NOT a political issue. It’s been used by politicians, notably George W. Bush, as a way to debunk science and give a leg up to polluting industries. Unfortunately, we’re beholden to politicians to act and set this nation on a course of change. That’s not happening at the federal level, but is happening more locally, by state and by city. Mitt Romney pulled us out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, but maybe Gov. Patrick will get us back in.

You can wrap statistics around to fit any form, but I’ll take the consensus of scientists and Mr. Gore over Mr. Jacoby any day.

But if you haven’t seen An Inconvenient Truth, rent it now! I’m tempted to buy it an send it to Mr. Jacoby.

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Comments

  2. I no longer get worked up by Jacoby’s columns.  If you have been reading them (and/or ignoring them) as long as I have, you understand how patently transparent and ridiculous his arguments are.

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    This is a man who once lectured Pope John Paul II on the morality of capital punishment.

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    I have been of the opinion for years that the Globe keeps him around as a token conservative to maintain the appearance of editorial balance, because it satisfies the people who already agree with him (because nothing would sound too preposterous for them), but without the danger of changing even a single mind on the other side through his…uh…powers of persuasion.

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    The global warming deniers are quickly dwindling until they are approaching flat-earth numbers; this is one battle for the truth that is well on its way to being won.  There will always be someone for whom 2 + 2 = 5, no matter the weight of the argument against.  In that respect, Jacoby’s your man.

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    Thank you for taking up the challenge, and for making the case so well.  I’m totally empathetic to your reaction, because it took me a while to get to this point, and during that time I used to get really angry.  However, I hate to see good arguments wasted on such as this buffoon, because doing anything but ignoring him lends him credibility, and he’s apparently not going away.

    • It may seem easy to dismiss him because he certainly is nuts (allegedly)–and on so many issues, not just the environment. But he writes for the Boston Globe, for whatever reason, and that gives him, if not credibility, at least an audience.

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      Here’s how the Globe describes him:

      Jeff Jacoby became an op-ed columnist for The Boston Globe in February 1994. Seeking a conservative voice to balance its famously liberal roster of commentators, the Globe hired him away from the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987.

      The Boston Phoenix has dubbed his twice-weekly essays a “a must-read,” describing Jacoby as “the region’s preeminent spokesman for Conservative Nation.”

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      I’m not sure stealing writers away from the Herald is something to boast about.

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      Ignoring him is what gives him credibility, so I don’t intend to stop getting worked up over him.

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