Mark Steyn‘s latest “Happy Warrior” column in National Review challenges the assertion that he and other critics of climate alarmism should be labeled “deniers.”
For the record, I’m not a “climate denier.” Obvisouly, the climate changes, and, obviously, some of those changes could be potentially catastrophic. But I’m more of a climate insouciant: I’m relatively relaxed about “change,” and I figure that the climate’s going to do what it wants no matter how many carbon credits I buy — and that a chump who can’t set up a health-insurance website that can process payments or correct simple errors is unlikely to be able (campaign speeches notwithstanding) to “heal the planet.” Indeed, I find it far scarier than any “climate change” that leaders of advanced Western nations now go around sounding like the apocalyptic loons who used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and passing out homemade leaflets.
Then there’s the awkward fact that there has been no “global warming” since 1998. If you’re the Prince of Wales and the ruddy glow of late middle age is beginning to fade from your cheeks, then 1998 isn’t so long ago. Nevertheless: There has been no “global warming” since Monica was dropping to the Oval Office broadloom. If you’re one of Dr. [Michael E.] Mann’s Penn State meteorology students, there has been no warming since before you entered kindergarten. Climate scientists have struggled to account for what, a decade and a half in, they began discreetly to acknowledge as a “pause” in warming. There are theories that the heating may have continued during this period but that its being stored somewhere in the deepest depths of the ocean.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
