The Momentum of Climate Change
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.22.07
We long ago gave up covering the skeptical antics of the Wall Street Journal or Canada's National Post; it just got boring and repetitive. Now Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics does the numbers and asks: " Does big business care about climate change as much as everyone else?
Judging from the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the answer is yes. Here are some of the headlines appearing in yesterday’s edition:
-While Housing Withers, ‘Green’ Materials Bloom
-Arctic Melting May Clear Path to Vast Deposits of Oil and Gas
-Biodiesel Powers Up on Financing
-Emissions Caps Could Be Ruinous
-Biodiesel Powers Up on Financing
-Group Seeks Greenhouse-Gas Cuts
-EU Sets 20% Reduction in Emissions by 2020
and that is just the Marketplace section- a lot of coverage for an issue that they say does not exist. Dubner says "It is stunning to me how the threat of climate change has moved so swiftly from a big, simmering news story to a gigantic, omnipresent news story."
Meanwhile, over at the National Post, a third of the editorial page is given over to columnist Barbara Kay, who comes out with a list of "actual concerns from climate skeptics" that she learned from Michael Crichton's four year old fictional potboiler "State of Fear." I suppose basing an article on fiction passes for journalism somewhere but I did not think at reputable newspapers. She justifies it by saying:
Nor should readers be put off by Crichton's status as a "mere" novelist. Crichton's scientific research on environmental issues is so impressive he was invited to address the U.S. Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works. Even Crichton's most frenzied critics (the Los Angeles Times called State of Fear "the first neocon novel") did not repudiate his peer reviewed, impeccably sourced data.
Amongst the hundreds of books, journal articles and scientific reports in his bibliography, (no mention of Suzuki, strangely), Crichton lists every publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its formation. He has read them all, and in the end humbly "guesses" -- the most one can do -- that we are experiencing mild warming, possibly more beneficial than harmful. ::National Post
We would cancel our subscription again but we have done it so many times that they ignore us now.
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Much of the global warming denial is smokescreen. There are potentials for huge disasters, and social upheaval, so there is also potential for business disruption, and opportunities to make money, and re-form the social order.
Since global warming came on the scene (in the 70s, really) large corporate and private interests have gone heavily into the farmland business. Most farmland used to be owned by individuals, no longer.The interests which control large chunks of land away from the coast will see their political and economic clout greatly increased if the littorals are innundated. It's plain, commonsense risk-management, and tacit concession by the largest interests in our society that the ship is sinking, they're gonna do nothing to save it, and they're gonna own the lifeboats.
So it's not that they deny it, it's that they distract people while they pre-position.
It's a politically unsophisticated strategy, of course. It will only lead to a resurgence in populism, and all the farmland in the world is worthless without any water.