Just to quickly follow up on yesterday's Green Angel Gore post, I present to you the left's undying magniloquence. I don't even feel compelled to comment on this one. They are parodies of themselves (but check out James Delingpole's latest for even more laughs).
Eric Bates, Rolling Stone: We talked to him about doing this... Gore has made clear what the science says, that climate change is real, that the planet faces a grave risk. The question is, why hasn't more been done to stop it? And we thought he was in a real position to give us an analysis of that.
Joan Walsh: I did read the whole 7,000 words, it's really inspiring, it's a little bit depressiong, but most of it is really spent on us [the media]. Not the three of us, of course, because we're doing the right thing.
I only laugh to keep from weeping.
In related news, in addition to Wal-Mart's victory earlier this week, the Supreme Court issued a somewhat intriguing opinion on another case:
The justices of the United States Supreme Court this week became the world’s most august global warming sceptics. Not by virtue of their legal reasoning – the global warming case they decided turned on a technical legal issue — but in their surprising commentary. Global warming is by no means a settled issue, they made clear, suggesting it would be foolhardy to assume it was.
“The court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon-dioxide emissions and climate change,” reads the 8-0 decision, delivered by the court’s acclaimed liberal, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The court decision noted that the Environmental Protection Agency itself had “Acknowledg[ed] that not all scientists agreed on the causes and consequences of the rise in global temperatures,” before suggesting readers consult “views opposing” the conventional wisdom. Specifically, the justices’ recommended reading was a superb profile of Princeton’s Freeman Dyson, perhaps America’s most respected scientist, written in the New York Times Magazine, March 29, 2009.
Freeman, an unabashed skeptic, believes that carbon dioxide, rather than being harmful, is both necessary and desirable, arguing that “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
The good news: the Supreme Court does not have blind faith in the environmental lobby and unanimously agreed that states cannot invoke federal courts to force companies to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The bad news: the justices agreed that the Environmental Protection Agency is better equipped than federal judges to assess the costs/benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as they are the 'expert' body appointed by Congress to make such decisions. Yikes.
