Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

Pretty much eveyone, including the Washington Post, was cheering the departure this past week of Sen. James Inhofe, who in keeping with the Republican tradition of putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse, was a climate change denier in charge of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. At least we have Maryland's own David Wissing to sing his praises:

That's right, the same media organs that are breathlessly reporting about the threat of "global warming" were, thirty years ago, talking about the coming "ice age". This is a reason it is hard for me to take a lot of what I hear in the media about "global warming" seriously. This doesn't even take into the account the rank hypocrisy you get from those politicians that scream about global warming in speeches, but do absolutely nothing about it in their private life. Whether it is Al Gore taking private jets around the world, or John Kerry's numerous SUVs (oh wait, those are his family's SUVs, not his ... my apologies), or Ted Kennedy refusing to allow a wind farm near his compound ... and on and on. Never mind the fact that Global Warming hero Al Gore was Vice President for eight years (two of which he had a Democratic Congress) and despite this being the "most important issue in the world", he did not do damn thing about it. To people like Gore, Kerry and Kennedy, it is all political rhetoric more than anything....

Oh, David, can't you even come up with an original line of phony argument and crocodile tears? Yes, some in the popular press in the 1970s predicted global cooling, but the scientific consensus for that was nowhere near what it is with respect to global warming now. Indeed, as the links above indicate, the popular press has, if anything, been too deferential toward the self-appointed "skeptics" of global warming, most of whom have little or no scientific training.

And while Ted Kennedy should justly be criticized for opposing a wind farm near his property, Al Gore at least takes the trouble to buy carbon offsets for his travels, which is only one of the many things Gore is now doing to combat global warming, from starting an environmentally-friendly investment firm to switching to green power options for his home (David Roberts has more). Also, Gore, along with President Clinton, did try to do something about climate change in the 1990s: it was called the Kyoto Protocols, and regrettably was opposed by the Republican Senate and the Democratic minority.

At least, however, they tried. By contrast, President Bush and the Republican Congress have been in a continual state of denial, even while so many others, from British Petroleum to the insurance industry, have come to acknowledge that global warming poses grave problems for the future of mankind. This kind of willful denial of facts would be laughable, if it weren't so dangerous. Roberts' post above has an appropriate rejoinder to the likes of Wissing (emphasis added):

Nobody is perfect on climate issues. Why? Because our political and cultural system makes it extraordinarily difficult. That's the issue: changing the system to make it easier to act in environmentally benign ways, and harder not to.

[snip]

As I've argued again and again and again and again and again and again, the lifestyle choices of any given individual are beside the point. Those who try and fail to be righteous are better than those who are unapologetically wicked. Those who speak the truth and fail to fully live by it are better than those who speak lies. Those who advocate societal changes and fail to make individual changes are better than those who do the reverse, and better twice over than those who seek no change at all.

We need to change our laws, regulations, tax codes, and business practices. We need to change our minds about what is and isn't acceptable in a 21st century society.

Meanwhile, Blog Arundel points us to a Chesapeake Quarterly report on the effects of climate change on the Bay.

Tags: global warming climate change chesapeake al gore