Back to Nature

George Will weighs in on the climate change debate and observes that it is passing strange that there is such terror about the threat to our environment posed by a warming earth when, in fact, the earth's mean temperature hasn't changed in over eleven years. Such details, however, are mere nuisances to climate change true believers who, when they rise in the morning and go to bed at night, reverently recite their mantra: "Al Gore said it, I believe it, that settles it."

Will, however, holds to the peculiar view that our policy should be based on data and there simply is no data to support the eco-alarmists. To get a sense of the sheer weirdness of the Democrats' determination to save us from an environmental catastrophe for which there is scarcely any unambiguous evidence think about what Will says here:

[Unfortunately], the crusade against warming will brook no interference from information. With the Waxman-Markey bill, the House of Representatives has endorsed reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 83 per-cent below 2005 levels by 2050. This is surely the most preposterous legislation ever hatched in the House. Using Energy Department historical statistics, Kenneth P. Green and Steven F. Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute have calculated this:

Waxman-Markey's goal is just slightly more than 1 billion tons of greenhouse-gas emissions in 2050. The last time this nation had that small an amount was 1910, when there were only 92 million Americans, 328 million fewer than the 420 million projected for 2050. To meet the 83 percent reduction target in a nation of 420 million, per capita carbon-dioxide emissions would have to be no more than 2.4 tons per person, which is one quarter the per capita emissions of 1910, a level probably last seen when the population was 45 million-in 1875.

If you're young it might be a good idea to buy stock in bicycle manufacturers. It's hard to imagine how we could meet such draconian emission standards and still maintain anything approximating a modern life-style. This is not to say that we couldn't use energy more efficiently, but to reduce our carbon footprint to the level Waxman-Markey requires would require us to abandon most of modern technology and become a third-world nation.

Who votes for these people?

RLC

How to Win an Argument

I wonder if this guy is any relation to Louis "Skip" Gates. He certainly needs a lesson in how to dialogue with people with whom he disagrees, and he also needs a lesson on how to treat women:

Police busted Lionel McIntyre, 59, for assault yesterday after his bruised victim, Camille Davis, filed charges. McIntyre and Davis, who works as a production manager in the school's theater department, are both regulars at Toast, a popular university bar on Broadway and 125th Street, sources said.

The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about "white privilege" with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white, Friday night at 10:30 when fists started flying, patrons said.

McIntyre, who is known as "Mac" at the bar, shoved Davis, and when the other patron and a bar employee tried to break it up, the prof slugged Davis in the face, witnesses said. "The punch was so loud, the kitchen workers in the back heard it over all the noise," bar back Richie Velez, 28, told The Post. "I was on my way over when he punched Camille and she fell on top of me."

The other patron involved in the dispute said McIntyre then took a swing at him after he yelled, "You don't hit a woman!"

"He knocked the glasses right off my face," said the man, who would only give his first name as "Shannon." "The punch came out of nowhere. Mac was talking to us about white privilege and what I was doing about it -- apparently I wasn't doing enough."

I guess Mr. McIntyre had exhausted all of his best arguments and felt the need to press his case in a more robust and convincing fashion. I wonder if he'll keep his job. I'm fairly sure that were the races of the people involved in this ugly episode reversed he would not, but I could be wrong. If he does avoid being dismissed, though, perhaps he can claim to have been the beneficiary of black privilege.

Anyway, do you think the media will ask President Obama to comment on this altercation? If they do, do you think he'll dare venture his opinion after the mess he made of the Skip Gates affair? Do you think it's time for another beer summit at the White House?

RLC