Seth Borenstein, a science writer for the Associated Press, authored a piece of slanted, unreadable crime against the English language that explains how right-wingers are able to get so much traction making arguments of liberal media bias and should be enough to condemn the author to remedial j-school classes. It’s time to break out my vaunted blow-by-blow mockery approach, inspired by the spectacular (but now, sadly, defunct) sports-writing blog Fire Joe Morgan and previously implemented by your humble blogger here and here. Away we go:
WASHINGTON – When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can’t avoid.
You just started a news article with a statement of opinion. That’s an inauspicious start.
Since Clinton’s inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton’s second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.
And he doesn’t know whether to cut the blue wire or the red wire to stop it! Seriously … somebody’s watched The Day After Tomorrow a few times too many. Are there significant negative impacts of global warming? Almost certainly (though there are likely some small positives too). Are they apocalyptic? Not even close. And you’ll want to keep track of this — that’s two statements of opinion in two paragraphs. Also, keep that “accelerating” bit in mind.
“The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over,” he said on Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. “We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way.”
But there are powerful political and economic realities that must be quickly overcome for Obama to succeed. Despite the urgency he expresses, it’s not at all clear that he and Congress will agree on an approach during a worldwide financial crisis in time to meet some of the more crucial deadlines.
This could be said of any public policy issue ever. Our government is supposed to work slowly. It takes people saying “the terrorists will kill us all if you don’t pass this” or “there’s going to be a second Great Depression if you don’t pass this” to legislate quickly. And goodness, haven’t the Patriot Act and the TARP bill been just spectacular pieces of legislation?
Obama is pushing changes in the way Americans use energy, and produce greenhouse gases, as part of what will be a massive economic stimulus. He called it an opportunity “to re-power America.”
Does he really? Because that sounds totally lame. And also, implementing a renewable energy structure will be costly in the short run to both businesses and the general public, which is … y’know, the opposite of stimulus. Just sayin’.
After years of inaction on global warming, 2009 might be different. Obama replaces a president who opposed mandatory cuts of greenhouse gas pollution and it appears he will have a willing Congress. Also, next year, diplomats will try to agree on a major new international treaty to curb the gases that promote global warming.
So wait … it might be impossible to get something done this year, but this might be the year we finally do something? That’s either contradictory or you are hedging your bets to the point of writing a non-entity of a column.
“We need to start in January making significant changes,” Gore said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. “This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis.”
So you asked Al Gore about we should do vis-à-vis global warming? I know that I always turn to the most vocal lobbyist for or against a cause as a source of unbiased opinion on a subject. So when I want to know more about gun control, I invariably ask somebody who works for the National Rifle Association. Moving on.
Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding “tipping points.”
Fuck you, Malcolm Gladwell. Now everyone says that phrase to try and sound intellectual.
“We’re out of time,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. “Things are going extinct.”
Things, hm? I mean, goodness, we could wake up tomorrow and it could be a world without cats! Or chairs!
U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists’ worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost.
I thought we just established that the worst-case scenario was extinction. Also, carbon dioxide isn’t a pollutant. If it was, we’d have EPA scrubber boxes slapped over our mouths.
The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.
But I thought this was something that everyone agreed was an epic crisis!
In the early 1990s, many scientists figured that the world was about a century away from a truly dangerous amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, said Mike MacCracken, who was a top climate scientist in the Clinton administration. But as they studied the greenhouse effect further, scientists realized that harmful changes kick in at far lower levels of carbon dioxide than they thought. Now some scientists, but not all, say the safe carbon dioxide level for Earth is about 10 percent below what it is now.
Gore called the situation “the equivalent of a five-alarm fire that has to be addressed immediately.”
So wait … are we already doomed? Or still about to be doomed? Would it kill you to have a clear thesis?
Scientists fear that what’s happening with Arctic ice melt will be amplified so that ominous sea level rise will occur sooner than they expected. They predict Arctic waters could be ice-free in summers, perhaps by 2013, decades earlier than they thought only a few years ago.
Ominous? Are the oceans stalking us with a dramatic soundtrack? And can you amplify melting? This article could be written without the scare-mongering vocabulary.
In December 2009, diplomats are charged with forging a new treaty replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set limits on greenhouse gases, and which the United States didn’t ratify. This time European officials have high expectations for the U.S. to take the lead. But many experts don’t see Congress passing a climate bill in time because of pressing economic and war issues.
“The reality is, it may take more than the first year to get it all done,” Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said recently.
So … we have to pass it before December, or after? Are we supposed to pass something before the rest of the world? Isn’t that wrongly unilateral? But if we wait, isn’t global warming going to destroy us all?
Complicating everything is the worldwide financial meltdown. Frank Maisano, a Washington energy specialist and spokesman who represents coal-fired utilities and refineries, sees the poor economy as “a huge factor” that could stop everything. That’s because global warming efforts are aimed at restricting coal power, which is cheap. That would likely mean higher utility bills and more damage to ailing economies that depend on coal production, he said.
Well that would be the case in any economy. And once again, you ask a completely non-objective person. A coal industry lobbyist? What the hell did you think he was going to say?
Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner circle with advocates who have pushed for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and even with government officials who have achieved results at the local level.
Like who? And how the hell can you achieve results on GLOBAL warming at a LOCAL level?? Also, “stacking” has a pretty negative connotation, i.e. “stacking the deck” (y’know, cheating) or “stacking the court” (see FDR, 1937).
The President-elect has said that one of the first things he will do when he gets to Washington is grant California and other states permission to control car tailpipe emissions, something the Bush administration denied.
Obama now has at least 613 first things he will do when he gets to Washington. Just sayin’.
And though congressional action may take time, the incoming Congress will be more inclined to act on global warming. In the House, liberal California Democrat Henry Waxman’s unseating of Michigan Rep. John Dingell — a staunch defender of Detroit automakers — as head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was a sign that global warming will be on the fast track.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed to push two global warming bills starting in January: one to promote energy efficiency as an economic stimulus and the other to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from utilities. “The time is now,” she wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to Obama.
Once again: Energy efficiency is not an economic stimulus in the short run. This isn’t that hard. But we in this country have an ever-growing history of calling something the exact opposite of what it is to get it passed through Congress. Hooray democracy! Now here’s the paragraph that made me write this post:
Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government’s machinations.
You don’t say.
Ironically,
Odds are that what follows will not be ironic in the slightest. It’s a word that is thrown around without any regard to accuracy. Watch:
2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it’s thanks to a La Nina weather variation.
See? Not ironic. At all. Not verbal irony. Not situational irony. Not dramatic irony. Moving on …
While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.
NO. NO NO NO NO NO. Okay, let me try and explain something. First off, you’re doing that whole “opinion stated as fact” thing. Second, you are certainly free to suggest that a one-year cooling is an aberration from the long-term trend, but you cannot say that said cooling IS EVIDENCE OF the long run trend. Something cannot be evidence of the opposite of itself. This is like saying that, because a hitter struck out once, he must be a great hitter. He may be a great hitter, but your case sucks. Apparently the AP doesn’t hire writers or editors with critical thinking expertise.
The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have been the warmest year on record. Now, that temperature would qualify as the ninth warmest year.
That probably sounded more dramatic in your head, pal. *sigh* Okay. Seth Borenstein, you have earned yourself an anti-Pulitzer. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
