There’s a similar suspension of disbelief in the media about another controversial topic: Global Warming. Whatever the weather, you can always find a story blaming global warming.
For example, here’s columnist Bob Herbert in the New York Times last June: “Mosquitoes in northernmost Alaska. Much of the West and Southwest ablaze. Extended droughts. Extreme heat waves. Can you say global warming?”
Fast forward to this spring, when a Tom Toles political cartoon in the Washington Post declared, “These superpowerful tornadoes [across the Midwest] are the kind of storm we’re likely to see more of with global climate change.”
But in most of the country, this spring has been unusually cool and wet, not hot and dry. It’s really the opposite of last year. So, are we to believe that global warming caused both these opposite events, just one year apart?
It seems more likely that these journalists are simply fitting their pre-conceived ideas into today’s weather. Whatever’s happening outside, Herbert and Toles -- and plenty of other journalists -- will always know the cause: Global Warming.
Herbert went on in his Times piece, “The year 2001 was, globally, the second hottest on record. The hottest was 1998.” Well, that “record” only goes back a hundred years or so. Depending on who you ask, the earth is somewhere between 300,000 and 4.5 billion years old. For most of that time, our ancestors were too busy with other things to bother recording surface temperatures. So let’s be humble enough to admit what we don’t know about global temperature change far outweighs what we do know.
So what should East Coast residents do? Well, it makes sense to prepare for a big storm. Hurricane Awareness Week is a good idea. And if the three-day forecast shows a hurricane heading your way, by all means evacuate.
But let’s not be too afraid. There’s no need to panic over hurricanes, or global warming.
Remember that, even if the media believes them completely, the “experts” are usually wrong. And that’s one prediction you can count on coming true.