Bill Lueders is the quintessential Madison journalist. In a brief essay this week titled Wanted: Global-warming zealots, he admits to being “fascinated with obsessed, push-it-to-the-limits but-still-stay-in-bounds activists." Being a writer he wants a new topic for a book and is apparently seeking role models with absolute certainty in their cause.
It may be, however, that Bill finds himself lacking the pure internal conviction that the modern economy is in fact something bad for the planet. He is a writer and perfectly capable of stringing together the approved words of the global warming advocates.
Certainly, this is an issue of unparalleled urgency. Near-certain ecological catastrophe. Predicted deaths in the hundreds of thousands -- annually. Rising sea levels that will submerge heavily populated areas, including much of Florida, California and Manhattan. More frequent heat waves, hurricanes and droughts. A million species extinct in less than 50 years.
Lueders is a also a good editor and must sense in himself that this is mostly dry rhetoric artificially hyped. Is it a "million species" because saying a million doesn’t require an actual count? Furthermore, what exactly differentiates an ecological catastrophe from ecological collapse? He calls around town looking for the enlightened and finds only the indoctrinated.
From the Isthmus you can see the lakes of Madison and Bill Lueders knows they were not always there. There was a time when ice covered Wisconsin was a frigid wasteland and moraines litter our landscape from the great melting. Lueders knows our forests were clear cut to build Chicago, and that Horicon Marsh was for decades a drained dirt pancake. He knows the current problem is an abundance of wild bear in the woods and huge numbers of geese in the wetlands.
Bill should look out the window and decide if the ice caps should happen to melt off Antarctica, would the terrain remain barren rock or bloom into life. The problem is the human doom hypothesis does not explain all of the evidence, and more importantly, does not rule out all other explanations. Each year the weather warms to the hot nights of summer then cools again. Change is normal and even the sane liberals do not dispute that fact.
In the cynical history of journalism, newspaper writers have always understood that words serve a purpose. Good liberal Bill should be honest with himself about the purpose of the global warming advocates, and as he searches for zealots with driving emotional attachment to the cause he needs to focus on one central question. What are they afraid of?
Are they afraid of change? Change happens constantly. Are they afraid of ecosystems collapsing? All evidence is that mother earth springs back to life after each tragedy. No, the motivating fear is that the warming won’t stop until it burns everything. It’s the primordial fear of fire fanned by Nintendo PlayStation prophecy.
From the Isthmus you can see the lakes of Madison and Bill Lueders knows they were not always there. There was a time when ice covered Wisconsin was a frigid wasteland and moraines litter our landscape from the great melting. Lueders knows our forests were clear cut to build Chicago, and that Horicon Marsh was for decades a drained dirt pancake. He knows the current problem is an abundance of wild bear in the woods and huge numbers of geese in the wetlands.
Bill should look out the window and decide if the ice caps should happen to melt off Antarctica, would the terrain remain barren rock or bloom into life. The problem is the human doom hypothesis does not explain all of the evidence, and more importantly, does not rule out all other explanations. Each year the weather warms to the hot nights of summer then cools again. Change is normal and even the sane liberals do not dispute that fact.
In the cynical history of journalism, newspaper writers have always understood that words serve a purpose. Good liberal Bill should be honest with himself about the purpose of the global warming advocates, and as he searches for zealots with driving emotional attachment to the cause he needs to focus on one central question. What are they afraid of?
Are they afraid of change? Change happens constantly. Are they afraid of ecosystems collapsing? All evidence is that mother earth springs back to life after each tragedy. No, the motivating fear is that the warming won’t stop until it burns everything. It’s the primordial fear of fire fanned by Nintendo PlayStation prophecy.
