In Denial about Denial

In current parlance, a "denier" is someone who derides a reality, as in a Holocaust-denier. Until recently, in the context of global warming/climate change, a "denier" was one who refused to accept the settled science that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that man was having a catastophic effect on the planet, and that our only shot at survival involved setting up a vast UN bureacracy to preside over a global wealth redistribution scheme--environmental Marxism, if you will. Now that some of the key data on which the hysteria was based has been exposed as half-baked and/or completely worthless, it is time to ask who's really in "denial"--the eco-hysterics, or the folks the eco-hysterics deride as deniers? That's a question one might pose to Ceeb "deep thinker" Richard Handler. Handler cops to the idea that some eco-freaks have a tendency to luxuriate in the hysteria, and even admits that it's part of its appeal. Nonetheless, while revelations about falsified climate data gave him pause for, oh, maybe a minute or two, he's right back to where he was before--freaked out, worshipping the Goracle and waiting for the end:

...Too bad my attempt to reap good news from global warming was so short-lived. How nice it would be to think that global warming, hockey stick and all, was an overblown problem.

Al understands


It turns out that Al Gore, the former vice-president and America's most famous global warming advocate (ours is David Suzuki) understands the attractions of wishful thinking.

In a New York Times article on Feb. 28, entitled "You Can't Wish Away Climate Change," Gore tells us, "It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicates that we do not have an unimaginable calamity.

"What a burden would be lifted," he says.

Yesss! Al Gore understands me! He knows people ache not to believe in disaster scenarios. He is filled with careful empathy for the global warming deniers.

Then, of course, he spent the rest of the article going through the evidence that we are on the brink of a catastrophe and that the world needs to take action.

Alas, except for that brief moment last summer when I heard Lawrence Solomon [author of The Deniers], I cannot wave away the sullen news and replace it with wishful thinking. But I promise to keep an open mind — along with the winter tires on my car and a snow shovel close at hand.

You do that, Dick, you old falsified data-denier.