SAN FRANCISCO - So-called “global warming” has shrunk from problem to punch line. And now, leftists are laughing, too. It’s hard not to chuckle at the idea of Earth boiling in a carbon cauldron when the news won’t cooperate:
Nearly four inches of snow blanketed the United Arab Emirates’ Jebel Jais region for just the second time in recorded history on Jan. 24. Citizens were speechless. The local dialect has no word for snowfall.
Dutchmen on ice skates sped past windmills as canals in Holland froze in mid-January for the first time since 1997. Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop, who inhabits a renovated 17th-century windmill, stumbled on the ice and fractured his wrist.
January saw northern Minnesota’s temperatures plunge to 38 below zero, forcing ski-resort closures. A Frazee, Minn., dog-sled race was cancelled, due to excessive snow. Snow whitened beaches in Surf City, N.C. Days ago, ice glazed Florida’s citrus groves.
As Earth faces global cooling, both troglodyte right-wingers and lachrymose left-wingers find Albert Gore’s simmering-planet hypothesis increasingly hilarious:
“In terms of (global warming’s) capacity to cause the human species harm, I don’t think it makes it into the top 10,” Dr. Robert Giegengack, former chairman of University of Pennsylvania’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, told the Pennsylvania Gazette. Giegengack voted for Gore in 2000, and says he likely would again.
Commentator Harold Ambler declared Jan. 3 on HuffingtonPost.com that he voted for Barack Obama “for a thousand times a thousand reasons.” He added that Gore “owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming.” He called Gore’s assertion that “the science is in” on this issue “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of mankind.”
“It is a tribute to the scientific ignorance of politicians and journalists that they keep regurgitating the nonsense about human-caused global warming,” veteran left-wing commentator and Nation magazine columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote.
“The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind’s sinful contribution - and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.”
Some leftists believe the collective hallucination of warmism distracts from what they consider urgent progressive priorities:
“The most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might,” University of
Ottawa physics professor Dr. Denis Rancourt has written. “The global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth.”
“The so-called ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is not holding up,” Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) told his colleagues Jan. 8. “It is becoming increasingly clear that skepticism about man-made global warming fear is not a partisan left vs. right issue.”
So-called “global warming” has accomplished the impossible: It has united liberals and conservatives in laughter.