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Climate Change itself, however, is as bad as ever

The National Post’s Denier-in-Chief [7] Lawrence Solomon has weighed in again [8] with an irrelevant and inaccurate celebration that, in the U.S. at least, people are becoming LESS concerned about climate change.

Of course, Solomon didn’t offer any actual evidence for this contention, other than vague references to unspecified public opinion polls. His strongest source was this: “Andrew Revkin, The New York Times reporter entrusted with the global warming scare beat, has for months lamented “the public’s waning interest in global warming.”

As for actual climate change science - apparently of little interest to Solomon or his readers - he offered no sources whatever. Instead, he repeated the denier talking points (“Not only has the globe not warmed over the last decade but the Arctic ice is returning, the Antarctic isn’t shrinking, polar bear populations aren’t diminishing, hurricanes aren’t becoming more extreme.”), ignoring such actual evidence as the new Nature article warning that Antarctic ice is, in fact, declining at historic rates [9], or the latest warning [10] from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

This kind of detail doesn’t traditionally appeal to Solomon, who wrote a whole book, called The Deniers, even though he admitted on page 45 of that tract that [11]he had not found a single scientist - anywhere - who actually denied that humans are warming the earth in a dangerous way.

Now he would like us to cheer that the climate change denial campaign is (apparently - still no actual evidence here) having its desired effect and that people are worrying less.

Let’s imagine, just this once, that Solomon might actually be correct. People are worrying less. They are less enthusiastic about government taking action on an historic environmental threat. Government, irresponsible governments at least, might therefore be less inclined to take action. That’s great, for the oil industry flaks who likely sponsored Solomon’s book. What about the rest of us?

Let’s imagine, too, that someone came along and said: Great news! People are no longer afraid of AIDS.

Fabulous! One less thing to get anxious about. Unless, of course, AIDS is still a risk. (And the last time I checked ….)

What Solomon is really saying is: Live dangerously. That’s stupid advice when it comes from a drunk 17-year-old. It’s hard to imagine how a grown (and presumably sober) man could find it otherwise.