The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Unappealing Authorities Crumble
“Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions,” Reuters reports:
Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.
Getting this right is essential for the short and long-term planning of governments and businesses ranging from energy to construction, from agriculture to insurance. Many scientists say they expect a revival of warming in coming years.
On a related note, today’s New York Times features an op-ed titled “The False Alarm Over U.S. Fertility.” Its author, Derek Hoff, serves up warmed over zero-population-growth propaganda:
There is a population crisis–not in America, but on a planet that is rapidly losing its ecological integrity and facing a new age of human-caused extinction. Neither the elderly nor the world’s rising middle class, who rationally choose to have fewer children as their economies become less labor-intensive and as women gain more control over their bodies and reproductive choices, are to blame.
Hoff’s piece is a response to two new books: one by Shannon O’Neil, which urges more immigration to the U.S.; the other by Jonathan Last, who warns of the perils of declining fertility.
What’s interesting is that not long ago, both ZPG and global warmist nonsense would have been treated as authoritative. Now both are on the defensive. That’s a sign of progress, if only intellectually.
Note: The excerpt above is from the April 17 BOTW archives.
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.
