We're Through the Looking Glass Here, People

This brief blog post by Andrew Sullivan may be the most gobsmackingly stupid thing I have read in 2006.

It occurs to me that the global warming debate is not unlike the WMD-terrorist debate, except the sides are reversed. Accrding to Ron Suskind, Dick Cheney's "one percent doctrine" means that if there's a one percent chance that a terrorist could have access to a WMD, we must act as if it were a certainty - because the outcome, however unlikely, would be too disastrous to risk. On global warming, Gore expresses a not-too-dissimilar equation: if there's a small chance that human behavior could lead to environmental catastrophe, we should act as if it were a certainty - because waiting too long is too big a risk to take. Cheney wins because 9/11 provided stark evidence of the real risk we now face. Gore needs images of catastrophe to ramp up public demands for action. Hence the movie and Vanity Fair pictorials.

Um, what? Al Gore is attempting to warn people about a potentially devastating environmental disaster, one that is agreed upon in general terms by scientists studying these sorts of natural phenomenon. Dick Cheney made up some lies about weapons of mass destruction in order to fool Americans into prosecuting a war he'd been planning in secret since the 90's. These two things have very, very little to do with one another, aside from being campaigns instigated by politicians in order to influence public opinion in some way.

Let's take away the fact that Gore's case is most likely accurate whereas we all know Dick Cheney was completely 100% full of shit. Even if we assume they are both liars, all Gore is trying to do is encourage conservation, alternative sources of energy and serious discussion about the potential for severe, cataclysmic fallout from global warming. If he's wrong, we'd have made some sacrificies unneccessarily. Oh well.

Dick Cheney's error led directly to the deaths of thousands of Americans.

So we're not talking about an equitable scenario in any way, here. THEN, after you've considered that point, consider again that we already know Dick Cheney's full of shit whereas Gore's claim could be described, at worst, as still open for debate.

Yet Andrew claims "Dick Cheney wins." Wins? Wins what? A fucking goldfish in a plastic bag? He wins because "9/11 provided stark evidence of the real risk we now face." Um, 9/11 did not prove anything relating to Dick Cheney's claims about WMD in Iraq. It proved that a Saudi Arabian death cult was capable of hijacking some of our planes. That's it.

I mean, where does he even come up with this stuff? He implies that Gore's case rests on the fact that there's a 1% chance global warming may occur. ("If there's even a small chance...") That's not remotely accurate. He doesn't cite a single source for this assumption. I don't mind if Andrew Sullivan personally wants to reject the idea of global warming, but to imply in print that there's only a small chance it will occur with no evidence to support this claim is beyond irresponsible. It's simply dishonest.

Regrettably, the post continues...

In both cases, however, the evidence is complicated and hard to pin down with absolute certainty.

Well, almost nothing in life can be pinnned down with absolute certainty. But I've read very little reliable information implying that global warming is an out-and-out myth. There's clearly some truth to the notion that we're rapidly heating up the planet, implying that some kind of inevtiable ecological consequences.

Notice that Andrew doesn't even refute the notion of global warming here. He just says that it's complicated. Yes, environmental science would be kind of complicated if you get down to details. That's why lay persons, such as journalists, often rely on information provided by Ph.D.'s and experts in the subject before making declarative statements in print about the merits of a particular theory. Andrew's only provided evidence is an Op-Ed from the Wall Street Journal. A Wall Street Journal editorial about global warming. Hardly a fair and impartial source. That's like asking the Big Bad Wolf for safety tips when travelling through the woods at night.

We know we are at much greater risk now from Islamist terror than we were a decade ago - but measuring how much, and where from specifically, is very hard.

Without a doubt, our soldiers are at greater risk of being shot at by Muslims now than they were a decade ago. (If only because our previous 90's Gulf War was so much quicker.) But are we here in the homeland definitely at greater risk from terrorism now? Why? Didn't another group of Middle Eastern cult members try to attack the World Trade Center way back in the early 90's? Does the simple fact that they initially failed and then later succeeded really imply that the threat is so much greater now? That's a pretty simplistic, unconvincing line of reasoning...

Equally, we know that global warming is real, but whether it has reached or will soon reach a dangerous tipping point is not a given.

No, of course it's not a given. But that's not the same as saying there's only a small chance Gore's scenario will come true. He keeps shifting around, as if he's afraid of actually having to specifically lay out his thoughts on the global warming issue. Maybe if he parses it down enough, making it into a semantic argument, he can get away with muddying up the waters sufficiently to pass this ridiculous WMD comparison off. I doubt it, though.