The New York Times' John Tierney is at it again.
As NewsBusters reported last September, the science columnist published a surprisingly skeptical piece concerning man's role in the liberal bogeyman known as global warming.
On Wednesday, Tierney followed suit with a marvelous article entitled "Global-Warming Jujitsu" (emphasis added):
Suppose that the pessimistic forecasts of global warming are accurate. Suppose that the planet’s temperature rises according to the high-end scenario of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that we experience the economic and social impacts (like hunger, malaria and coastal flooding) projected by the much-publicized Stern Review sponsored by the British government.
Does that mean our best course of action is to quickly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases?
Great question, to be sure. But from the New York Times?
Maybe even more shocking, Tierney answered it by quoting from a new report just published by Indur Goklany of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute:
“The surprising conclusion using the Stern Review’s own estimates,” Dr. Goklany writes, “is that future generations will be better off in the richest but warmest” of the I.P.C.C.’s scenarios. He concludes that cutting emissions will do much less good than encouraging sustainable development in poor countries and policies of “focused adaptation” to deal with disease and environmental problems like coastal flooding. For a fifth the cost of the Kyoto Protocol, he calculates, these adaptation policies could yield more immediate and also long-term benefits than would a policy that entirely halted global warming (which would cost far, far more than Kyoto). He argues that this path isn’t merely an economic but also a moral imperative.
Shocking. Tierney was actually writing derisively about the Kyoto Protocol, and sounding quite like folks his paper normally accuse of being deniers:
I think he points to a real risk in making large sacrifices today to address problems that will be easier to address when people are richer and more technologically advanced. If anything, Dr. Goklany writes, his calculations underestimate the capacity of future generations to deal with these problems because they’ll have technologies we can’t imagine today (just as the advocates of draconian population-control policies during the 1960s didn’t envision that future famines would be averted thanks to improvements in agriculture).
Bravo, John. Keep up the good work.
—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.















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Comments Policy
Fagetaboutit!
February 6, 2008 - 17:22 ET by iveseenitallA new idea?--A diffferent point of view? Fagetaboutit! The issue is already "settled".
NEVER,NEVER trust a "liberal"
Nobel Recount
February 6, 2008 - 17:47 ET by LionKingIs this where the Nobel committee demands a recount?
Who voted for Al Bore and WHY?
[I guess AGW will not be the HOT issue for this Election season.]
Man Bites Dog, Eh?
February 6, 2008 - 18:14 ET by Junk Science SkepticSo after 5-6 years, the NYT finally opens up to reality. I guess they figured out that the leftist audience they thought they had doesn't spend a whole lot of money on things like newspapers or ads, so they're finally going to have to grow up and start writing for an audience that includes the productive members of society.
ABC 2008 (Anybody But Clinton)
Term 'Global Warming' has sort of fallen out of vogue...
February 6, 2008 - 19:02 ET by krendlerThe term 'Global Warming' has sort of fallen out of vogue during the past couple of years or so (for obvious reasons). The pc term these days is "Climate Change" - ensures that all bases are covered regardless of whatever weather catastrophes occur (e.g., record breaking cold spell in China right now).
If you want a real eye opener, google "co2 lags temperature" sometime. This is in reference to the centerpiece of Gore's movie and his call for reduced CO2 emissions. In Inconvenient Truth, he showed a giant graph covering thousands of years that showed a correlation between CO2 levels and the earth's average temperature. As it turns out, there IS a correlation but Gore got it exactly backwards. The Ice core data indicates that increased CO2 levels only started increasing 800-1200 years AFTER temperatures rose, which makes perfect sense as CO2's solubility in water (the oceans) decreases with rising temperature, causing more CO2 to be released from the oceans into the atmosphere. Same thing is seen to happen on the backend of every warming cycle. Temperatures fall and CO2 levels begin to fall 8 centuries later.
The most damning thing is that Gore and the Climate Change Cultists don't have a coherent explanation/excuse for the very, very inconvenient "CO2 lags temperature" whoopsie, and they don't argue with the data.
I've never heard this little factoid brought up even once on any of the networks.
Bass Ackwards
February 6, 2008 - 20:14 ET by dboThe most damning thing is that Gore and the Climate Change Cultists don't have a coherent explanation/excuse for the very, very inconvenient "CO2 lags temperature" whoopsie, and they don't argue with the data.
Actually they do and you can't even believe how stupid Gavin Schmidt and the boys at Realclimate's explanation is. They claim that warming follows CO2 levels which in turn creates higher CO2 levels which in turn creates more warming so the real culprit is CO2. To quote Noel "you can't make this stuff up".
I have read it...
February 6, 2008 - 23:12 ET by krendlerActually, I have read Realclimate's attempt to explain the CO2 lag. It's completely nonsensical. They basically describe a positive feedback mechanism (CO2->temps->more CO2->greater temps...) that would result in a runaway greenhouse process.
The available data indicates that CO2 had ZERO impact on past warming/cooling cycles. Realclimate even admits that some "currently unknown" cause started warming cycles in the past (you know, things like the sun....).
800 year lag. The centerpiece of Gore's entire MMGW argument completely shot to hell. Never reported in the msm.
RC on CO2
February 7, 2008 - 00:15 ET by masslibertarianIt sure is nonsensical. In the RC narrative, for eons some mysterious process has started a CO2 increase which then feeds on itself like a nuclear chain reaction until some other mysterious process makes it reverse course. But, according to Gavin and his boss, in the last 130 years the industrial revolution somehow turned this on its head such that the miniscule percentage of atmospheric CO2 produced by man not only kicks the chain reaction into overdrive but also overwhelms the natural process that brings it back to equilibrium.
Yeah, right. Only in PlayStation Climatology. Of course if you try to point this out to them, Gavin won't let the post through. At Realclimate, the debate truly is over - because they're afraid to have one.
In the not too distant future, the climate modelers are going to have to admit that the sum of climate feedbacks has to be net negative. If it were net positive, the system (the real system - Earth, not the PlayStation) would have spun out of control a long time ago. Net negative feedbacks are the only way you can add energy to the system (from the sun) and maintain relative equilibrium. Duh!
masslibertarian
February 7, 2008 - 00:24 ET by RESTLESS 1"PlayStation Climatology"
I like that one. :)
PlayStation
February 7, 2008 - 10:34 ET by masslibertarianWish I could take credit for it. I think I got that from one of the commenters over at Steve McIntyre's blog (climateaudit.org).
It was definitely an ROTFLMAO moment. Of course the funniest things are often the closest to the truth.
I'll never hear the words "climate model" again without picturing James Hansen with a PS3 controller in has hands:-)
How the news is going to change
February 6, 2008 - 19:14 ET by needleI suspect that this is kind of a warm-up for how the news, as reported by the NYT, is going to change following the anticipated November win by the Democrats.
Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat.
Global Warming is a Scam
February 6, 2008 - 20:44 ET by SupermanSooner or later, all of you will discover that this entire "Global Warming" hysteria is a big scam.
What Mr. Tierney
February 6, 2008 - 20:49 ET by MidAmericaWhat Mr. Tierney is acknowledging is that the path to CO2 reduction is going to cause more death and destuction than the 'climate change' itself. The cure is worse than the disease. He still wants money from the wealthy nations to help the poor nations and that might be acceptible if it produced lasting results. But to play games with CO2 emissions which will allow the greenies to become fabulously rich is a scam and the prospect that the human-loathing environmentalists will have access to potential billions to further harrass modernity and future business growth will be a nightmare. Imagine scores of soros clones.
Well, more and more
February 6, 2008 - 23:25 ET by liberal_bug_zapperWell, more and more scientists are speaking up about the lie of Global Warming, and are subsequently being ignored by the Drive By Media. Typical leftists ignore anything that challenges their dogma.
____________________________________________________
"We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities." ~ Thomas Paine
I might take what the globull warming crowd wants us to believe,
February 6, 2008 - 23:45 ET by JoggerNotAS FACT, If they can show me why the temps are rising on mars, and what we can do to prevent that. Give us a brake. Give me a brake. And, not to mention, would a little warming.. perhaps be benificial, in any way, besides the doom and gloom presented as the only outcome?
welcome to the year 2004
February 6, 2008 - 23:47 ET by 89CanesWelcome to the year 2004, NYT.
The conclusion they reached has been one skpetics have embraced since before Gore produced his "documentary".
Head over to Micheal Crichton's website http://www.michaelcr... for a list of words that didn't exist 100 years ago.
Reality Check
February 7, 2008 - 02:02 ET by jaywlAs the NYTimes goes, so will the WaPo. The only question is which
will be first. In point is an article in the Viewpoints section of
1-13-08 about India's latest contribution to Climate Change, the
ultra small car, Tata Nano. The author, and assuming normal diligence
on the editor's part, the Washington Post, has admitted the utter
falsity of the "Carbon Saviors" promising every sort of
carbon based reduction/storage/trade/buyout/payoff imaginable. These
people twist the English language with carbon based phrases that have
no real meaning but sound really green. Obama has "low-carbon
coal technologies". Google that and, on the first page, one gets
three circular hits back to barrackobama.com, with the balance
referring to "low carbon technologies" or "clean
coal ...". So instead of saying he would promote the use of
"clean coal" his team of writers merge phrases into
Mucklish only lawyers and politicians could be proud of.
So it was refreshing to see the Post report
with some clarity on some basic truths about real problems. An
except: " No magic bullet can reconcile mass ownership of
automobiles with global warming. More diesel-driven cars mean more
greenhouse gases, and ultra-cheap cars mean cutting corners on
emissions standards. Some environmentalists have high hopes
about filling car tanks with biofuels, which in the United States
means corn-based ethanol. But corn requires more carbon to produce
than it saves as a fuel source. Others tout plug-in-and-go
electric cars. True, they produce no carbon, but if the source of the
electricity used to power the car is coal -- the most common source
of electricity in the United States and the preferred fuel for the
scores of new plants being built in China and India -- then the
electric car won't save us. Hydrogen-powered cars still lie years in
the future, leaving plenty of time for India and China to put
millions of new diesel cars on the road."
The truth about corn and other food
sources as a solution to all carbon based problems is emerging with
every price increase at the grocery. Now we must sort through
switchgrass and cellulosic and ( when we run out of farmland)
seaweed. Eventually we will open Yucca Mountain, drill in
ANWR, and disappoint Bill Clinton's benefactors in the Riady
family by allowing the low sulfur coal in the Escalante to be mined.
Until then, give thanks for some measure of honesty from these
newspapers.