The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Out on a Limb
“U.N. Doubts Fairness of Election in Myanmar”–headline, New York Times, Oct. 22
What Would We Do Without Experts?
“Bullet, Gun Are Critical Clues to Banker’s Death, Experts Say”–headline, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 22
Doubt as ‘Faith’
Another defense of a closed ideological system appears in the New York Times, under the headline “Climate Change Doubt Is a Tea Party Article of Faith.” This is oxymoronic: Whereas an article of faith is a set of beliefs, doubt–skepticism–is the opposite, the basis of science.
Times reporter John Broder, writing from Jasper, Ind., does open by quoting a politician who cites scripture in scoffing at “climate change”:
At a candidate forum here last week, Representative Baron P. Hill, a threatened Democratic incumbent in a largely conservative southern Indiana district, was endeavoring to explain his unpopular vote for the House cap-and-trade energy bill. . . .
“Climate change is real, and man is causing it,” Mr. Hill said, echoing most climate scientists. “That is indisputable. And we have to do something about it.”
A rain of boos showered Mr. Hill, including a hearty growl from Norman Dennison, a 50-year-old electrician and founder of the Corydon Tea Party.
“It’s a flat-out lie,” Mr. Dennison said in an interview after the debate, adding that he had based his view on the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and the teaching of Scripture. “I read my Bible,” Mr. Dennison said. “He made this earth for us to utilize.”
Broder no doubt thinks he’s made Dennison look foolish and Hill smart. But in fact, the Times’s argument on behalf of Hill, that he is “echoing most climate scientists,” is, like Dennison’s, merely an appeal to authority. After the “Climategate” email scandal, the authority of climate scientists is, to say the least, somewhat short of biblical. Further, Hill’s claim that global warmism is “indisputable” is no less dogmatic than Dennison’s that it is “a flat-out lie.”
Broder notes that Tea Partiers “all are wary of the Obama administration’s plans to regulate carbon dioxide, a ubiquitous gas,” which Broder himself acknowledges would “require the expansion of government authority into nearly every corner of the economy.” That’s not an article of faith, it’s a reasonable suspicion of the politically powerful.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
