You can’t entirely dismiss this point — it’s possible climate change could produce more earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic activity as ice mass on the continental crust shifts. But even the scientists speculating about this admit that these are low-probability outcomes, compared with others that we can predict with more confidence — more high-impact weather events, floods and droughts, for example. So it’s jarring to see warnings about global warming as the disaster in Japan is still developing on its own terms. Ultimately, issuing these warnings so quickly after the earthquake makes environmentalists appear knee-jerk and alarmist.
This enables conservatives to do just what they’ve done since these commentaries emerged this week — use examples of environmentalists’ over-exuberance for the climate cause to undermine the whole argument in favor of action to curb global warming. So this week — one in which that new NASA study showing ice caps disappearing much faster than we had thought should have gotten more attention — Ace of Spades was able to unload this load of unhelpful, dismissive snark on enviros: “This is not the first time earthquakes have been blamed by the Shamanistic, Magical-Thinking Left on the all-purpose Zeus-substitute of global warming.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/a-link-between-japans-earthquake-and-global-warming/2011/03/04/ABA2fGS_blog.html
No comments:
Post a Comment