Ezra should go back to discussing Sarah Palin’s clothes, and leave the big boy issues alone: Wonkbook: The disaster we refuse to see coming
There are disasters we can’t see coming, and then there are disasters we refuse to see coming. That an earthquake (and tsunami) of biblical proportions would crack open nuclear power plants along the coast of Japan is the sort of catastrophe that’s very difficult to predict. On the other hand, the consequences of a large increase in the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are not hard to predict. The precise effects of climate change may be uncertain — though that does not make them any less dire — but we know, in a rough way, what will happen: the earth will warm. In fact, it’s already warming. Has been for decades. You can see it clear as day on any graph of global temperatures. You can see it in the record books, too: Of the 10 hottest years on record, nine were in the Aughts, and the last was in 1998.
After awhile, it gets tiring rebutting the same old talking points. But, good news, the effects of climate change (hot, cold, wet, dry) are unknown, so, let’s spend lots of money, raise taxes, and control people’s lives for a hoax. If he truly believed that the Earth will warm, he’d call it global warming. Seriously, we’re talking a few degrees uptick in the global temps since the end of the last cold period 160 years ago, and chicken littles like Ezra freak out. Then they go home and use lots of power. Say, how much energy does the Washington Post use? How many trees do they kill to produce their paper?
Remember, though, even though no one knows what will happen, the effects could be dire. Though, apparently, these uncertain effects are easy to predict.
Steven Goddard gets the hat tip, and has a simple graph that destroys Excitable Ezra.
