June 04, 2004
Warming Followed By Cooling. Repeat.
As the weather warms with spring, global warming returns to the media. So we are bombarded with not just news stories, but turkeys ("As God is my witness, I thought they could fly!") as well, like The Day After Tomorrow. I don't mind a silly movie - I thoroughly enjoyed Independence Day by the same crew, but at least then they didn't think they were making a documentary about the hazards of global despoiling aliens. As to its scientific accuracy, the fact that the book it was based on was co-written by Art Bell is all I need to say. As a movie, try the fifteen minute review, or if you want something shorter, here's my academic review:
See Dick Cheney. See Dick oppress. See W. See W. die off camera. See a lot of people die. See Dick Cheney again. See Dick Cheney apologize for being a white male oppressor and for all other white male oppressors. And they lived happily ever after abandoning their wicked oppressive ways and living in peace and harmony with the land and the historically oppressed peoples on it.
Or for the biblically minded: "pride goeth before the fall."
The InstaReview would be "feh."
I have every confidence that with the cooling that fall and winter brings, the spectre of global warming will disappear from the media conciousness, except for the pelting of Al Gore with snowballs when he makes dire predictions about how hot it's getting in a speech delivered during a blizzard. I have every confidence that vagaries of the weather, unpredictable as it has always been and as it remains despite our best models and computers, will continue to be blamed on global warming by its true believers. Last week we had spring weather in St. Louis - hail, strong winds, torrential downpours, tornado warnings. This was the indication of spring beginning to give way to summer for most of us; to others, a dire warning of global warming.
Posted by Kevin Murphy at June 4, 2004 12:24 PM | Science