It's Definitely Not Rocket Science

A member of the Free Republic Internet forum asks,  “Will ClimateGate Make ANY ‘Top Stories of 2009’ List?”

If this isn’t proof of media bias, I don’t know what is.

Here we have the equivalent of finding out the moon landing was faked and I don’t see any reports of this being a story of interest.

That last sentence dovetails nicely into an anecdote from Roger Simon, who’s just back from a Hollywood Christmas party. As Roger notes, for at least one denizen of Tinseltown, the pseudoscience of AGW is “settled”, until NASA tells him otherwise:

Yesterday evening I was at a friend’s house for a Christmas Eve party. Most of the people there were Hollywood types with a sprinkling of what is known locally as “civilians,” plus a few journos. But it wasn’t a business party. Everyone was in a friendly mood, drinking champagne, eating the generous spread and singing Christmas Carols.

Still, there was casual conversation. What have you been up to, etc. etc.? I, as readers of this blog know, had just been to Copenhagen for the UN climate conference. People asked about it, but I didn’t go into my thoughts heavily because I knew I was in conventionally liberal territory and why cause dissension on Xmas Eve? Changing minds isn’t an easy thing to accomplish in any situation. Changing minds at an event like that would be nearly impossible and the attempt to do so rude. Also people tend to conflate skepticism about AGW with being pro-pollution, as if they were the same thing. Incredibly, I heard James Carville make that very accusation on television, even though the reverse may be true. (Focusing on a bogus or inflated CO2 correlation with global warming takes attention away from legitimate problems like clean water.) I didn’t want to have to explain myself on that score.

Nevertheless… ill-mannered fellow that I am… I did get into it with one gentleman – a man from a background encompassing Hollywood, high lit and politics – who insisted that anthropogenic global warming is a problem because “NASA says it is.” Until the respected NASA tells him otherwise, AGW is a major, perhaps catastrophic concern. Well, I love NASA too, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right or that all it’s many divisions are of equal merit. NASA has “interests” too, as we all do.

I’ll bet Jim “We have only four years left to act on climate change” Hansen is already preparing his dissembling, as he’s promoting his new book, on the off chance that a legacy media reporter actually deigns to ask him about ClimateGate.

Related: “Merry Carbonmass!”