Mendacious Weather

Two years ago I editorialized on the subject of global warming. I argued that by centering the debate on human causes we were missing the point almost completely. With the atmosphere heating up, and the effects almost certain to be catastrophic, it seemed to me that to sit around pointing fingers trying to assign blame ran the risk of arguing the threat away. The claim may or may not have been true that CO2 emissions from autos and factories were contributing to the problem, but the fact should never have been in doubt that the atmosphere was indeed warming up. If the case were finally made -- by clever manipulation of numbers or by legitimate deduction -- that human causes were insignificant, the victorious politicians might have made the mistake of believing they had solved the problem.

Hmmm. Maybe they've already made that mistake. Just this morning I read that the glaciers of Greenland are melting twice as fast as was originally believed. This will dump trillions of gallons of fresh, cold water into the Atlantic conveyor that carries the warm waters of the Gulf Stream to northern Europe. The fresh water, less dense than the saltier ocean water, will be forced to the surface, the conveyor will submerge, and the people in the countries currently warmed by the Gulf Stream will freeze their asses off. (Did you know that Rome, Italy is farther north than Rome, New York?)

There must be a name for the logical error exemplified by the way we have "debated" the global warming issue. If we want to be fancy, we can call it the "error of the deflected cause," but by any name, it's the sort of error that produces consequences of the severest sort. Bundle up Queenie, cold weather is on the way.