I came to the conclusion, some years ago, that I don’t quote Jeff Jacoby [1] nearly as much as I should. This morning, comes yet another example of this:
INTRODUCING Newsweek’s Aug. 13 cover story on global warming “denial,” editor Jon Meacham brings up an embarrassing blast from his magazine’s past: an April 1975 story about global cooling, and the coming ice age that scientists then were predicting. Meacham concedes that “those who doubt that greenhouse gases are causing significant climate change have long pointed to the 1975 Newsweek piece as an example of how wrong journalists and researchers can be.” But rather than acknowledge that the skeptics may have a point, Meacham dismisses it.
“On global cooling,” he writes, “there was never anything even remotely approaching the current scientific consensus that the world is growing warmer because of the emission of greenhouse gases.”
Really? Newsweek took rather a different line in 1975. Then, the magazine reported that scientists were “almost unanimous” in believing that the looming Big Chill would mean a decline in food production, with some warning that “the resulting famines could be catastrophic.” Moreover, it said, “the evidence in support of these predictions” — everything from shrinking growing seasons to increased North American snow cover — had “begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.”
Yet Meacham, quoting none of this, simply brushes aside the 1975 report as “alarmist” and “discredited.” Today, he assures his readers, Newsweek’s climate-change anxieties rest “on the safest of scientific ground.”
Indeed…. and of course that’s exactly the argument we’re hearing now… We have a consensus, it’s on the safest of scientific ground possible, etc. etc. etc. and you’ll forgive me but I’ve heard it all before. Meadow muffins. You have, I presume, heard the story about the chicken who figured the sky was falling ?
You see, ladies and gentlemen, unlike about half of you, I actually lived through that experience back in 75. I attended the seminars, I attended the fund raisers, I bought into the idea, young as I was, that man actually could damage the earth, and that of course the whole thing was because of the automobile and the greed of corporate America. I walked miles at the rate of pennies per mile to raise funds for these organizations, funds that eventually ended up in someone’s pocket as opposed to actually “saving the world”.
Then, of course, I grew up.
So, you can understand me clearly when I tell you that being lied to by people who are trying to get me to change my culture and my lifestyle and what I do for recreation and what I do for a living, is not a new experience. Control, as someone else noted to me earlier this morning, is the most addictive drug known to man.
“Global warming” is simply more of the same. Indeed, this time they don’t even have the imagination to dress it a little differently than they did back in ’75. Given the short memories of most people anymore, they must have figured it wasn’t necessary.
Or… come to think of it, perhaps they can’t dress it differently. Scaring the crap out of people with end of the world scenarios proved rather effective back then. They managed to get the entire world to believe them… for a while. People who want to control your lives, after all, are nothing if not pragmatic.
Addendum: (David L) I’d like to think of myself as quick and witty. Today, I am neither. Bit beat me to the article. Alas. However, Sister Toldjah, as the witty headline, “Newsweek: Forget about our past climate change mistakes – this time we’re right [2]”
Maybe, maybe not.