The big story came in The Economist, a British magazine that, like most all press outlets, has long been sold on the theory and provided a voice for its most vigorous backers. The magazine noted it turns out temperatures haven't been rising on the planet for the past 15 years.
Now, The Economist was quick to add, that doesn't mean temperatures haven't gone up in the 20th century or that they won't go up again. What it does demonstrate, and what some high shamans of the global warming movement admitted, is that the science on all this remains fluid and complex. Less acknowledged, but clearly true, too, is the notion perhaps global warming isn't the apocalyptic event so many have claimed. Rich Lowry made those points nicely in a New York Post column.
The latest news that perhaps the planet isn't on the eve of destruction from humans comes at a time when the green movement is apparently going through some growing pains. That was the point of a fascinating essay in Prospect magazine, linked on Real Clear Politics, that basically said the fact environmental groups are now taken seriously has led to
rifts within the movement
. There are some remarkable tidbits in the essay: my favorite is when a left-wing thinker imagines a world with, "perfect income redistribution and everybody makes $15,000 a year." That's progress?
Still, the global warming warriors are strapping on the armor again to fight the XL Keystone pipeline. The tube is designed to bring oil from the tar sands of Canada through the United States to refineries in the South. President Obama, in a transparent sop to left-wing greenies before the election, nixed the pipeline even though federal studies showed it wasn't the environmental calamity opponents claimed. Obama ordered another big study.
Well, that study came back and concluded once again that the pipeline is OK. These are dangerous times. The threat is Obama may use his electoral freedom, all these green-light environmental studies, the fact the pipeline would create thousands of jobs and provide us with a very solid, affordable source of energy and bind us even tighter with our one of our best allies, Canada - in other words, all those awful developments - and approve the pipeline's construction.
That would be a disaster, according to James Hansen, the global warming Cardinal who is retiring as the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen is among the most vociferous activists in the global warming theater - even the Prospect magazine piece noted he has twice been arrested for protesting the XL Pipeline
A file photo of TransCanada edifice. TransCanada hopes to construct pn construction on the pipeline's southern tier from Cushing, Okla., to Texas by late spring or early summer. Matt Strasen, The Oklahoman, via The Associated Press archive
- but at the same time he was one of the people who reacted quite reasonably to The Economist piece.
Hansen's piece is a gem in many ways. But perhaps the biggest is his own acknowledgement the Canadian oil is coming out, Canada isn't going to just sit on it. So does it go across the Canadian Rockies to Pacific ports and hence on giant tankers to Asia, or will it come to us?
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