Monday, April 02, 2007

I Wanna Know: Who'll Stop the Rain?   [Jonah Goldberg]

Some, including your humble correspondent, may find Ben Adler's attitude toward NR's blog Planet Gore and Michael Crichton pitch-perfect in its youthful liberal smugness. He writes:

PLANET GORE. I know that to be considered a respectable independent thinker, and not a partisan hack, I'm supposed to take conservatives seriously. And I try, really I do. But then sometimes they go and do something so ridiculous that makes it just too hard for me.

Case in point: National Review has started a special blog called "Planet Gore" (how clever!) devoted entirely to stopping any reasonable movement to prevent climate change. Sample post title: "The Admirable Crichton." Yes, they are seriously touting the novelist Michael Crichton as a global warming expert. This struck me as hilarious until I remembered that President Bush does too.

Personally, I'm not an enormous fan of Crichton's either, but let us stipulate that he knows a hell of a lot more, and has done a lot more homework, than the scores of Hollywood airhead environmentalists Adler & Co. never seem to have a problem with. Leonardo DiCaprio, I suppose, has a better grasp of the data? Moreover, Adler might have heard that Crichton and two full-fledged scientists recently beat some leading global warming scientists in a debate.

But here's the most relevant point. Adler says Planet Gore is "devoted entirely to stopping any reasonable movement to prevent climate change."

I'm sorry, but there is no such thing as a "reasonable" movement to prevent climate change because climate changes by definition. Saying we can prevent climate change is like saying we can prevent tides, tectonic drift, or rain. And no one would say any movement to stop rain is "reasonable." (I'm harping on rain because I'm a big CCR fan and I need to justify this post's headline).

Of course, Adler probably (hopefully?) means something else when he says "climate change" — like "catastrophic climate change" or those super-freezing lightning fast hurricanes in The Day After Tomorrow. But that's not quite the same thing, now is it? Adler, like many, seems determined to portray any deviation from the Gore-line to sound inherently unreasonable. When, in fact, the core assumption driving so much of global warming alarmism — Stop Climate Change! — is itself deeply unreasonable, if not outright crazy.

I can't speak for anybody over at Planet Gore, but I'd bet that all those guys are all in favor of preventing catastrophes and otherwise mitigating the worse effects of climate change. But the first step toward doing that is to have a reasonable discussion, not scare people out of their pants and call anyone who cries foul "unreasonable."

Update: Yes, I know. It was intentional. From a reader:

You’re conflating (intentionally?) two CCR classics:

I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?

And I wonder, still I wonder: who’ll stop the rain?

Your CCR Cover band guy,

Me: Are there other competitors for the title of CCR Cover Band Guy?

04/02 09:25 AMShare