The new apocalypse

Rich Lowry:

Sophisticated people in Western societies don't stand in public and shout, "The end is near!" the way a nutty preacher does. They don't cut their scalps the way Shia Muslims do in a rite of self-flagellation to mark the Day of Ashura. They do none of these things, because they have the issue of global warming instead.

The planet is indeed getting warmer (by about .7 degrees Celsius during the 20th century), and carbon emissions are contributing to it. This is a problem that deserves study and debate about what realistically can be done about it. But it doesn't justify the bizarre panic that suggests the issue has become a trendy vehicle for traditional fears of the apocalypse and for rituals of guilt and expiation.

The latest assessment of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the Vatican of the Church of Climate Panic -- prompted apocalyptic headlines worldwide. The New York Times dubbed it "a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet." Actually, the summary report was less grim than prior reports, but grimness is the only acceptable mood when it comes to climate change.

...

Shock tactics inevitably mean simplifying in an area of unimaginable complexity. No one knows how to create a reliable model of the planet's climate, and inconvenient anomalies muddy the story line of the warming zealots. From 1940 to 1975, the global temperature fell even as CO2 emission rose. Since 2001, global temperatures have only gone up a statistically insignificant 0.03 degrees Celsius. And in recent years, the oceans have actually gotten cooler.

None of this, obviously, is to deny global warming, but to introduce a note of caution about the calls for individual and collective self-denial that accompany the warming panic. If people feel better about using compact fluorescent light bulbs, so be it, but schemes to mandate drastic reductions in carbon emissions based on avoiding an entirely speculative calamity are folly.

Even the Kyoto Treaty, which would have only a slight effect on global climate even if fully implemented, is unrealistic. Earnest, well-meaning Canada would have to reduce its emissions by a whooping (and impossible) one third to meet its Kyoto target by 2012. That great climate scold, Europe, has been increasing its CO(2) emissions at a rate faster than ours, according to Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. We can crack-down on our emissions as much as we like, but China will soon pass the U.S. as the world's greatest polluter and is robustly unrepentant about it.

The sensible ways to try to mitigate global warming and counteract its effects in the long run are the development of new energy technologies in the West, as well as economic development and aid programs for those third-world countries that are most vulnerable to disease and sea-level rises. These solutions won't, however, satiate the deeper atavistic urges behind the global-warming panic. For that, people will have to head to their nearest place of worship.

And it want be a church. Chicken Little science and panic appear to be the persuasive techniques of the watermelon control freaks. They always have a socialist response to any perceived problem. I think 1975 is when pollution controls on automobiles started cleaning up the air making it easer for sunlight to penetrate the earths atmosphere.