I just watched the focus group testing of John McCain’s new global warming ad. In it he assures somebody, most likely not his own team, that he believes in global warming.
I’ll take a different tact on this just for a change. Believing in climate change is like believing in sunrises and sunsets. They all happen, have happened, and will continue to happen. It’s not all that daring just because the time frame is different. As I’ve posted elsewhere, even if true, the effects of global warming will be the slowest moving catastrophe in recent history. In one of the breathlessly panicked forecasts I’ve read we’re told that sea level will soon rise by a fraction of an inch a year. This would allow more than enough time for a responsible government led by grownups (read that ‘not liberals’) to respond. The people could evacuate entirely, move to a higher elevation, or (far more likely) postpone the inevitable by a massive spending project on a system of dikes and levees.
Even if none of this works and coastal cities are destroyed, don’t cry! Celebrate! You’re environmentalists for Gaia’s sake! You hate cities anyway. This also has the additional benefit of making the land you bought out in the boondocks, to get away from the human blight, into highly desirable beach property. You can sell it on the sly, and become filthy rich, all while hypocritically condemning the capitalist system. You know! Just like all of those people you slavishly vote for.
More seriously, few people I know seriously deny climate change. The climate has always changed, and will always continue to do so. The question is whether humans caused it. The, answer of course not. It’s an ongoing process. Well then, do humans make it worse? Probably, but only to an insignificant level. About the same way that coupling one extra boxcar to a 100-car train makes the wreck worse if it jumps the tracks. In other words, it only matters if you addicted to shame.
I think maybe Obama and McCain should share a campaign slogan this cycle: We’re screwed in ‘08.
