This piece in The Boston Globe is packed with hilarity, mostly of the unintended variety. It’s about how the debate over global warming is shifting, and by "shifting" we’re talking about the public finally coming to accept what the vast majority of climate scientists have known for decades: the climate is warming.
Maybe I’ve been doing this for too long, but when I read this I hear hack alarms:
… many besieged global warming skeptics are starting to tone down their rhetoric.
Some, though, are sticking to aggressive tactics, even contending they are gaining momentum.
Who is advancing the manifestly absurd proposition that global warming denialism is “gaining momentum”? As far as I can tell, exactly one person: Marc Morano, Inhofe’s house propagandist. But why would a reporter take what he says seriously?
Here’s a helpful hint: if a propagandist can list every one of his position’s supporters across the globe in a single blog post, his side is probably not "gaining momentum."
This is also funny:
Global warming skeptics say they believe the media and Congress aren’t interested in hearing their side of the debate.
"The size of the megaphones for the other side is very large," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the leading doubters of the issue. "On our side we are using bare voices without amplification."
Kind of reminds me of when Pat Michaels complained to CNN that they didn’t give enough time to skeptics … and it turned out that Michaels was the most quoted climate scientist on the network. For 15 years the media has been giving the denialists equal time, despite the fact that the scientific community had long ago settled on a consensus. Fifteen years of positive media coverage, and still today 87% of Republicans in Congress are denialists. What larger megaphone could a scientifically discredited group of fringe fruitcakes possibly want?
The conservative victim complex: literally nothing can dislodge it.
