Dave Lemen

From the willful ignorance department...

Peggy Noonan, meet Al Gore.

Noonan said this today:

During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not?

...

If global warming is real, and if it is new, and if it is caused not by nature and her cycles but man and his rapacity, and if it in fact endangers mankind, scientists will probably one day blame The People for doing nothing.

But I think The People will have a greater claim to blame the scientists, for refusing to be honest, for operating in cliques and holding to ideologies. For failing to be trustworthy.

Ummm, yeah, Peggy, the scientists held that meeting, and ummm, they came to a conclusion. The reason you didn't catch what they were saying is because you were too busy demonizing them, remember? From your article on the 2004 tsunami, for example:

What to say of those who've latched on to the tragedy to promote their political agendas, from the U.N. official who raced to call the U.S. "stingy," to the global-warming crowd, to administration critics who jumped at the chance to call the president insensitive because he was vacationing in Texas and didn't voice his sympathy quickly enough? Such people are slyly asserting their own, higher sensitivity and getting credit for it, which is odd because what they're actually doing is using dead people to make cheap points.

I'll bet you already knew, Peggy, that tsunamis don't actually have anything to do with climate! But that wouldn't stop you from making your own cheap points, would it? No, if The People fail to act in the face of a clear warning from climate scientists, the paid political obfuscators -- like you -- who duped them, should bear much of the blame.