Cause du Jour

Do you wonder why there's so much talk about global warming all the sudden (such as the panicked cover story on Time this week)? There's a lot of money waiting to be made on warming-related movies, books and such:

In the din and clamor of issues competing for public attention, there's an inner circle of causes that virtually define good citizenship. Who would argue that a mind isn't a terrible thing to waste? The quasi-official gatekeeper to this pantheon is the Ad Council, which deploys more than $1 billion in donated media time and space each year for a few dozen carefully vetted, slickly produced messages. Last week a new issue got the Ad Council's blessing, a potential catastrophe that could make college dropouts the least of our worries: global warming.

The council's two new TV spots were released on the same day as the première of a lavishly produced documentary, "The Great Warming," and in the same month as two major books on the subject: "The Weather Makers" by Australian biologist Tim Flannery and "Field Notes From a Catastrophe" by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert. May will also see the release of "An Inconvenient Truth," a film and book about Al Gore's one-man crusade against warming. Both the Ad Council campaign and the Gore film are linked to Web sites (fightglobalwarming.com, climatecrisis.net) that emphasize citizen action to reduce production of greenhouse gases—a departure from how the issue is usually framed, in terms of contentious political decisions about gas mileage and international treaties. "There's a moment when we move from fear to action, and I think we're there on global warming," says Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense, the Ad Council's partner on the campaign.

What's interesting about the prevailing "wisdom" of the global warming activists is that the effects of warming will be disastrous, and they're not accepting any other possibly results. Just look at this section in the Newsweek article - which by the way is not listed as an opinion piece or commentary:

But what's significant is that the issue now has the high-minded imprimatur of the Ad Council, which gave the world Smokey Bear. This has not escaped the notice of people on the other side of this issue, such as James M. Taylor, the spokesperson for climate issues at the Heartland Institute, a conservative Chicago-based think tank. The Ad Council is supposed to be nonpartisan, Taylor wrote in an e-mail, but "global warming alarmism is markedly controversial ... This Ad Council campaign amounts to nothing more than an end run around a skeptical Congress, a skeptical president and a sharply split scientific community." Like the groups promoting "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution, Taylor's outfit is fighting to convince the public that there's even a debate going on. But in a statement earlier this month he actually went further, asserting, preposterously, that the only remaining scientific debate is over how much "marginal" harm—or benefit—global warming will bring to humanity.

Does that last sentence sound like a balanced presention of both sides of the issue? Not hardly. The Newsweek writer has already decided that those who don't agree with the global warming scare tactics are "preposterous", as is the possibility that warming could bring some benefits. Nice objectivity.

The Newsweek piece does point out some problems with the latest Hollywood attempt to influence the subject:

To be fair, neither side has a monopoly on hot air in this debate. While the Gore film is affecting and low-key as it follows him on his travels, "The Great Warming" shows exactly what's wrong with turning complex issues over to Hollywood: it's manipulative (it travels to Peru to report on the death of two boys from cholera contracted during a flood—implying a causal connection that serious scientists invariably warn against) and muddled in its use of scientific terms.

It looks like this will be another Day After Tomorrow which sank like a melting glacier at the box office. Meanwhile the activists will continue to churn out apocalyptic versions of the future...at least as long as they can make money at it.