The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
The Address Is IRS.gov
“Web Site Created to Accept Donations for Octuplets’ Mom”–headline, FoxNews.com, Feb. 11
Four More Years
The BBC brings us a humdrum bit of dire news:
The planet will be in “huge trouble” unless Barack Obama makes strides in tackling climate change, says a leading scientist.
Prof James McCarthy spoke on the eve of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which he heads.
The US president has just four years to save the planet, said Prof McCarthy.
Just four years to save the planet! And McCarthy’s is not the only such “scientific” prediction. Just before President Obama’s inauguration, London’s Guardian weighed in with this report:
Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama’s first administration, he added.
Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns in the near future. “We cannot afford to put off change any longer,” said Hansen. “We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.”
Let’s see, four years: That would mean that we are all doomed if nothing changes by January or February 2013. And we have at least two prominent scientists saying the same thing, and as we’ve all learned “scientific consensus” is always right.
Or is it? We have some questions: From what data did McCarthy and Hansen derive this deadline? How long have scientists “known” that the beginning of 2013 was the point of no return? Can anyone find an example of a scientist in, say, 2007 saying we have six years to act, or in 2002 saying we have 11 years? Is it a mere coincidence that the deadline is almost exactly the same as the end of the term of a new president who gives indications that he may be both gullible enough to swallow global warmism and egomaniacal enough to believe he can save the world?
It looks to us as if these predictions are no more than political punditry pretending to be science.
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