For years I've wondered whether the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world truly believe the patently ridiculous things they say every day, in which case they must be utterly daft, stupid beyond belief, or if they're merely pandering to their audience and are therefore only media whores. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
This to me is a more interesting question than to ask how anyone could believe that a blizzard on the East Coast disproves or is evidence against global warming. I mean, does anyone really believe that "global warming" means that it's warmer everywhere all the time? Come on, people!
So, do we have reason, independent of what we see on TV and hear on the radio, to believe that Limbaugh and Beck are not morons? Did either of them attend university? Yes, I know, that's a rather poor criterion given that our 43rd president is both a Yale and a Harvard man, but just for the record let's take a look....
Limbaugh is a high school graduate who either quit or flunked out of Southeast Missouri State. According to Free Republic, his SAT score was 1530.
Beck is a high school graduate who at the age of 32 took one class at Yale and then dropped out.
Well, this is hardly conclusive. Both men managed to earn a high school diploma, but seem to have been more interested in a media career than in college.
Last night I heard one of the talk radio hosts (Jason Lewis) putting forth the party line on global warming, which in a nutshell states that it's all political agenda and otherwise nothing to be alarmed about. So what about this guy - idiot, Corporatist stooge, or what? According to his syndicated show's web site, he's got two college degrees!
The anti-warming arguments he and his callers were making went something like this:
- Global warming is, to the extent that it actually exists, a part of the natural climate cycle of the planet, which has been cooler than it is now as well as warmer than it is now. It is not a man-made phenomenon.
There's actually some truth to this, in that there have indeed been cooler periods (Ice Age) and warmer periods (Waterworld) in our history. It's also been established that this cooling and warming - global average temperatures - are well-correlated with the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and it's been proven conclusively that man's contribution to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is significant and growing. Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that the next Ice Age or Waterworld is an inevitability. Does that mean we should be unconcerned that we are hastening its arrival?
- Consensus is not science.
They're referring here to the argument that the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that global warming is very real and highly problematic, requiring our immediate attention. This doesn't mean that a bunch of scientists got together and voted on it, as the deniers want to imply. It means that the vast majority of the peer-reviewed studies done in the area of climate change have concluded that global warming is very real and highly problematic.
- The last IPCC report contained an error - therefore all global warming proponents are prevaricators.
This is like saying that if one Republican in Congress tells a lie, they're all liars. Okay, bad example. The circumstances around the error in the IPCC report are well-known, and the fact that there was one mistake in a 3000 page report is hardly surprising. Nor has it been shown that this error in any way invalidates the conclusions of the report. Shit happens.
- Glaciers have been melting for thousands of years.
Have they? Okay fine. See #1.
- The global temperature has been cooling for the last ten years - why didn't the global warming models predict this?
The premise is false. The global average temperature has been relatively flat in recent years.. It has not dropped. Ten years does not a trend make, at any rate. And the global warming models have successfully predicted all sorts of measurable effects, such as sub-tropical drought (just ask anyone who's lived on the Gulf Coast for the last twenty years), increases in severe weather, the melting at the North Pole, etc.
- There were two blizzards on the East Coast in the last week.
And again I ask, does anyone really believe that "global warming" means that it has to be warmer everywhere all the time? I mean other than Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma?
No, no, even Sen. Inhofe isn't as stupid as he seems, my friends. That's right, I'm more than willing to give him credit for being a Corporatist stooge. The Corporatist stance on global warming is to deny it, because dealing with it might have a negative impact on corporate profits, and nothing, not even the long-term survival of the human race, is worth that.
As for the talk show hosts, I'm also willing to assume that they can't really be that stupid either - but in doing so I cannot escape the conclusion that they think you (their audience) are that stupid. You keep watching and listening to them - what the hell?