Why The Climate Skeptics Are Winning

That’s the headline for my account of the Peter Gleick affair in the Weekly Standard, just out online this morning.  I make some comparisons of Gleick’s weak cover story to the Hiss case, noting that about the only thing missing is an old Woodstock typewriter.  My conclusion:

The Gleick episode exposes again a movement that disdains arguing with its critics, choosing demonization over persuasion and debate. A confident movement would face and crush its critics if its case were unassailable, as it claims. The climate change fight doesn’t even rise to the level of David and Goliath.  Heartland is more like a David fighting a hundred Goliaths. Yet the serial ineptitude of the climate campaign shows that a tiny David doesn’t need to throw a rock against a Goliath who swings his mighty club and only hits himself square in the forehead.

I’ll add that Walter Russell Mead has been arguing for a long time now that the environmental movement as a whole is the most incompetently led social movement ever.  I’d put it shorter and simpler: what a bunch of losers.  Only problem is, even losers can drag the rest of us down, if they gather and keep enough power.  $6 gasoline anyone?

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