The Global Warming Blog Smackdown!
Wizbang
linked an article on a
new report on global warming, together with some dismissively skeptical comments.
Policy makers will not pass the draconian legislation the environmental movement wants because there is no pressing need to ruin the lives of millions of people on the whacky theory of the week. So the environmentalists have now created an artificial deadline to motivate policy makers. The news report even says that is why this paper was written!
Bill at InDC Journal (who voted for Bush and has always seemed reasonably conservative to me)
nuked Wizbang.
Righties often complain about or snidely mock the dire proclamations of environmentalists as "junk science" trotted out for political purposes. And sometimes, they're right. But I have a problem with right-wing commentators that immediately lurch to attack stories like this in absolutist terms....
Now the odd part there is the "righties" and "right-wing commentators" part. I mean, Bill has done some great posts that certainly led me to believe that if not right-wing himself, he was at least right-wing friendly, in a "not that there's anything wrong with that" kind of way.
But back to the subject, I can absolutely see somebody being a Republican (as Bill has always appeared to me) and yet believing in global warming. I probably did back in the 1980s (although I don't remember GW being quite the
bete noir that it is today). I remember looking at an almanac of Phoenix back then and noticing that almost half the hottest days in history had come in the prior 10 years, while only one of the coldest days had come in that period. However, this was before I knew about the "heat island" effect of cities, which absorb heat during the day and release it at night, preventing it from cooling off as much as it would naturally in the desert.
After reading about the heat island effect, I made a small effort to become more educated about the subject of global warming, but I always found as many contrary pieces of evidence as those that backed the theory. And it was pretty apparent that lines were forming on the dispute based on politics, with people I trust very little (Al Gore) pushing it the hardest
The other thing that was interesting is that the prescriptions sounded suspiciously familiar. An increase in taxes on gas has been a holy grail for the Left since the
John Anderson campaign of 1980. For the younger set, John Anderson was one of those McCain-type Republicans who becomes enamored of denouncing the "extremists" in his party (in this case Ronald Reagan). Anderson decided to run one of those quixotic campaigns for President
a la Ross Perot, and he took up as his signature issue, the idea of a 50-cent per gallon increase in gas taxes.
He rode that platform to 7% in the national electorate (and zero in the electoral college). It was not enough to help Jimmy Carter, and indeed, it is quite likely that he hurt Carter by attracting ultralibs with his gas tax. Anderson did quite well in Democrat states like Massachusetts (15.1%, ironically handing the Bay State to Reagan), Rhode Island (14.3%) and Vermont (14.9%) and not so well in Republican states like South Carolina (1.6%), Georgia (2.2%) and Mississippi (1.3%).
And since then, the gas tax has been a hot item on the left's agenda. Not surprising since it combines two things that liberals love: raising taxes and discouraging un-PC behavior. It's like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of politics.
As I commented over at InDC, I'll believe in GW when the libs start prescribing another solution that seems quite obvious to me. If you really believe in global warming, you have to be in favor of nuclear power, which creates no greenhouse gases as compared to gas or coal-fired power plants.
