The End of the World, part 4, is coming to us next year, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues its 4th Assessment. It's new and improved with newly discovered positive feedback forcings and other surprises to let us know they really, really mean it that the world is heating up and people's carbon dioxide output is the cause. What I like about the AFP article is that, in its own way, the writers are admitting that tales of epic disaster and catastrophe are necessary to spur action. Look at the first three sentences:
Nothing beats a whiff of Apocalypse for focussing minds and, next year, climate change will be the big issue that will send an icy shiver down spines followed by a clamour for action.
On February 1, the world's top scientists will issue their first instalment of a massive three-part update on global warming.
It will be the first knowledge review by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2001 -- and the phone-book-sized report will convey an unvarnished message that will be bleak and quite possibly terrifying.
Oh my, anthropogenic warming has got to be true: we got a pile of papers as thick as a phone book! I can't wait for my helping of "bleak" with a side dish of "quite possibly terrifying." I'm surprised every sentence in this story doesn't end with an exclamation point. Read the whole thing, because I'm not sure if the "hard news" story is supposed to be an editorial or not. There's crowing about Democrats' "crushing victory," describing power plants as "dirty carbon-spewing" (um, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, unless you count your nose and mouth as also a dirty spewer), and called the recent UN climate conference "dreary." Sure, no bias there, AFP.
"It's...the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine"
ReplyDeleteEvery time they use a dishonest argument, I feel just that much more disdainful of their positions. They do themselves no favors with this.