Echo Chamber: It Doesn't Have to be True to Start Sounding Familiar

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Here comes Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe again, this time on the blogsite Human Events.

(It is, of course, untoward to accuse a particular site of being “right-wing,” but HR telegraphs its politics with a very funny ad for a dating service that will spare you the irritation of ever sharing your spaghetti with another liberal.)

Inhofe’s “new” HR article is the same old material that he trotted out in a speech on the Senate floor in September – full of breathless claims that the current scientific concern about climate change is no different than any number of other newspaper scares in the last century.

The difference, of course, is that all of the previous stories rested on one or two fringe scientists hollering from the sidelines. This time, the concern is being voiced by every science academy in every major country in the world. Aside from Inhofe’s ExxonMobil sponsors – and the “scientists” and think tanks in their employ – no one is offering a contrary opinion.

(Inhofe’s imagined alternative papers cannot be found to exist outside the realm of his wishful thinking – or inside a single peer-reviewed journal. If he can prove otherwise, we’ll be only too pleased to apologize.)

The single credible thing that he puts forth is his admission that the Kyoto targets will not be sufficient to save us from ourselves. But Kyoto is a step – a positive step – and the good senator must be familiar with the old aphorism that the first thing to do when you’re trying to get out of a hole is to stop digging.

Please.

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