By Jonah Goldberg
Monday, May 01, 2017
The last weekend of April delivered one of the more
enjoyable spectacles of 2017. It wasn’t Donald Trump’s tent-revival rally in
Pennsylvania. Nor was it the cotillion of self-congratulation known as the
White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It wasn’t even the People’s Climate March,
which begged for some Monty Pythonesque splinter factions – the March for
People’s Climate, Climate Marchers for People, whatever.
No, the most amusing show over the weekend was the
collective case of the vapors across the liberal left establishment over Bret
Stephens’ first column at the New York Times on the perils of certainty,
particularly on the topic of climate change.
Until recently, Stephens was a columnist for the Wall
Street Journal. But as that august opinion page made peace with the reality of
a Trump administration, Stephens held out like one of those Japanese soldiers
who didn’t get word that World War II was over (a position I can sympathize
with somewhat). The scuttlebutt is that’s why he jumped ship – or was pushed –
to the New York Times.
So what was so funny?
First, there was the substantive reaction.
Stephens wrote that the “warming of the earth since 1880
is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming.” The work of
climate scientists is “scrupulous,” Stephens insisted, and went on to clarify
that he does not “deny” climate change.
The reaction? A Slate headline captured it well: “Bret
Stephens’ First Column for the New York Times Is Classic Climate Change
Denialism.”
When someone says that he is not denying climate change
and concedes that it is real, that is “classic climate change denialism”? Huh.
What words do we have left for people who call the whole thing a “hoax”? In
civil debates, when someone concedes much of your premise, the proper reaction
is not to scream “liar!” or “heretic!”
And that brings me to the second, and more amusing, thing
about all of this. You’ve been trolled, people.
Recall that Stephens left the Journal because he was
swimming against the currents of the Trumpified right. What better way to inaugurate
his new column than with a splash, earning back some populist street cred by
making liberals set their hair on fire and cause an (alleged) wave of cancelled
subscriptions? All the while, he invited hordes of conservatives to defend him
and mock his critics.
As a fellow columnist, I doff my cap to you, sir.
It wasn’t hard to trick liberals into going off-sides. In
the past, Stephens was a more acid-tongued critic of climate change research.
But the column in question was a model of restraint that, when read by
non-ideologues and non-combatants, must seem utterly reasonable, even a tad
banal. Stefan Rahmstorf, a prominent German climate scientist, wrote a lengthy,
sanctimonious letter explaining why he was cancelling his subscription to the
New York Times. Nothing in the letter addressed anything Stephens wrote in his
column.
The Washington Post’s Eric Wemple found it hard to
constrain his dismay. “May it suffice to say, however, that the many, many
people who care passionately for the planet found it an exercise in
climate-change denialism.” He badgered New York Times editorial page editor
James Bennet, demanding to know, in effect, why Stephens didn’t write the
column Wemple thought he should.
I particularly enjoyed Wemple’s first question: “Please
condense the argument that Stephens makes in the piece.”
Wemple’s a clever fellow. I’m sure he understands
Stephens’ point about the dangers of certainty, particularly based on
sophisticated mathematical models that have been proven wrong in the past.
What I think sailed past Wemple and so “many, many
people” was Stephens’ subtler point about the sanctimonious condescension of
people who claim to be motivated solely by their passionate care for the
planet.
Stephens’ heresy here isn’t in denying climate change;
it’s in refusing to concede that one group of people has a total monopoly on
defining not just the problem but the acceptable responses to it. Such dissent
is not a crime against science; it’s a threat to a guild. And the guild took
the bait.
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