21 Jan 2006 Some Global Warming Scare Tactics are So Dumb, They’re Funny

Tim Graham picks apart “Countdown to Doomsday,” a Matt Lauer special on the environment.

This is an above-average read, because Tim contrasts the nonsense in this 2006 special with another too-typical burst of econutism, a special NBC three-part series on the environment in 1990 that made, as Tim puts it, “wild predictions of doom.” Sixteen years later, as Tim notes, the doom has yet to appear…

…which brings me to nonsense from another network, the jaw-droppingly dumb attempt by ABC to illustrate the impacts of global warming by asking strangers operating without fact-checkers (for, as we know, real journalists use fact-checkers. ahem.) to email them anecdotes about “the impact of global warming in your life.”

Anyone smart enough to take in O and emit CO2 knows you can’t prove planetary warming (or planetary cooling, or planetary astonishment at ABC) from regional fluctuations, even IF ABC’s “correspondents” get their facts right.

(Imaginary conversation: Sam: “Gee, Mabel, the tomaters ain’t so big as last year’s. It must be global warming.” Mabel: “You planted them three weeks later this year, Sam, cuz you wuz glued to the telly.” Sam: “Jus’ waitin’ fer the Matt Lauer special, Mabel. Ever since NBC tole me in 1990 I could soon tie my boat to the Washington Monument cuz of global warming, I bin waitin’ for my chance to catch fish on the Mall. ‘Bout time we got somethin’ useful outa Washington.”)

Rush Limbaugh had fun with this today, speculating that ABC isn’t really expecting global warming anecdotes but instead is collecting the email addresses of the world’s most gullible people, so ABC can send them spam.

If so, David Almasi will be getting a lot of spam, because he sent this message to ABC:

I lost all my bets at Preakness because Barbaro jumped the gate and could not compete. I blame global warming. It was a hot day.

When I was in Cape Cod a few weeks ago, it was too cold to go to the beach. It was also raining and we couldn’t fully utilize the convertible we rented. I blame global warming.

Global warming caused Katrina. We gave money to charity that could have been spent on booze for me. I am adversely affected due to this reallocation of funds.

Poor David. Next, he’ll probably be afflicted by poison ivy.

P.S. David Almasi tells me he sent ABC a second email telling them about the time he was was trapped in the NYC library after a tidal wave hit the city.