Every now and then, the editors of The Wall Street Journal take flight to remind us of the meaning of the word casuistry. One such day was Oct. 1, the lead editorial jumped all over the latest IPCC report (a massive consensus document on climate change compiled from the work of more than a thousand scientists and policymakers from around the globe) because the report seemed to modulate its expectations of future warming. Here’s a couple of my favorite sentences from the editorial: “If emitting CO2 into the atmosphere causes global warming, why hasn’t the globe been warming?” and then, “Translation: Temperatures have been flat for 15 years…”
Except that they haven’t. The World Meteorological Association documents that the first decade of the new millennium was the warmest on record, breaking the record established by the previous decade, which in turn broke the record that was established during the one prior. The trend continues as every year seems to be in the top ten warmest.
Most sophistry builds upon something that looks factual, and denialists have seized on distortions introduced by the extremely hot year of 1998, where warming was supercharged by one of the strongest El Ninos in 200,000 years. The 1998 record skewed subsequent trend lines. It was so warm that 1998 wasn’t bumped from the number one spot until 2005 (which in turn was displaced by 2010). Some flattening!
Focusing on temperature obscures the derivative impacts of global warming. For instance, the editors neglect to mention that the same report significantly revised upwards its estimates of sea level rise. They also might have asked themselves: why, if the report implies global warming has halted, its assessment would be raising estimates of sea level rise.
There’s barely a sentence in the editorial that holds up under scrutiny. In the Orwellian world of the editorial it’s the climate scientists who are “bullies,” which is stammer-inducing when one thinks of the vitriol visited on Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist who has been hounded and even physically threatened by deniers for sticking to his assertion that recent temperatures have risen so fast recently that a graph of the record looks like a hockey stick. As attorney general of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli (now candidate for governor) pursued a Joe McCarthy-like campaign of intimidation of Mann that basically drove the distinguished scientist out of the state.
Of course, none of this is news to anyone who knows anything the role of the deniers in forestalling action on climate change. The enduring question is why? I’ve no doubt the editors are smart. They know that cherry-picking is a bogus form of argument. I’m sure they can see the economic damage of out-of-season extreme storms, droughts, wildfires, floods, and other byproducts of changing climate. My guess is that this obstinate blindness is something visceral rather than intellectual: with an acute dislike of the other side feeding on a combination of ideology and economic self-interest.
