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Media 
Warmed-Over TruthAlmost nobody is undecided about global warming (or, if you prefer, alleged global warming) by William Powers ..... The greatest canard of all is that people want the truth. Actually, what we want is to confirm conclusions we've already reached, based on speculation, fashion, group identity, emotion, and raw self-interest. We tell ourselves we're out to discover the truth, but mostly we're just pushing the story line toward the conclusion we desire. Truth isn't even in the game. The supreme modern instance is the global-warming question, just revived by the President's reversal on limiting carbon dioxide emissions. The essential point about global warming is, no one knows for sure what is happening. There is evidence that human activities are causing temperatures to rise, that the ice caps are melting, and that global disaster is around the corner. And there is evidence that temperatures have been rising and falling for eons, that any warming has nothing to do with humankind, and that we have little to worry about. There's a camp for each version, and—let's face it—we each belong to one or the other. Here, from this week's issue of Time magazine, is a pamphlet from the first camp, by Karen Tumulty: "Shaky though his rationale may be, the question of whether to act now on global warming may go down as the most important long-term decision Bush makes. While melting glaciers on faraway mountains may seem like a remote problem to most Americans, the vast majority of climatologists are convinced that global warming is a real problem that could have catastrophic consequences by the end of the century." And here, from The Wall Street Journal's editorial page last week, is a pamphlet from the second camp, by Brian O'Connell: "Global warming remains, at best, an unproved hypothesis. Although the highly politicized reports seem to support the global-warming theory, there is a growing body of evidence that indicates the problem is either negligible or the result of a natural warming cycle whose effects have been greatly exaggerated." That the camps exist is not surprising. On a question this big, competing schools of thought are not just inevitable, they're healthy. What's stunning—and a complete rebuke to the notion that we are a race of truth seekers—is how little migration occurs between the camps. Indeed, "camp" is the wrong word here, for it suggests something temporary, a city of tents that might be folded at any moment upon, say, the arrival of compelling new evidence for the other side. These are not camps at all, but reinforced concrete bunkers built to last forever, surrounded by moats full of famished piranhas. Once you're inside one fortress, there's little chance you'll ever visit the other, even for an hour, just to look at this totally unresolved question in a different—or, God forbid, opposite—way. On its face, global warming seems the last question that would divide the thinking public in such a binary fashion. The weather is not an especially ideological topic. Liberals and conservatives, who feel heat and cold pretty equally, have an equal interest in figuring out if the planet is sick or well. In a world of truth seekers, we'd be looking at the currently thin evidence from countless angles, arriving at a wealth of idiosyncratic conclusions. We'd be all over the map. This is not that world. The way almost all of us (including those of us paid to seek the truth) react to the question of the hour is to fall in line with a pre-chosen side, even when the evidence for both sides is as thin as it is on this issue. Why does it go without saying that the smart people at The Wall Street Journal editorial page will always come down on the highly skeptical side of global warming? Why it is just as certain that the sharp souls at The Washington Post's editorial page will always land on exactly the opposite side? Why do we know with perfect certainty that Molly Ivins will never write a column saying she's changed her mind on global warning, the data are terribly shaky and she's stopped worrying about it? Why will we never live to see the day when George Will reveals that he's looked at the question in a new way, and we really must save the Earth before it burns to a crisp? Naive questions, I know. People subscribe to philosophies that yield predictable conclusions. And perfect certainty is a highly effective act, especially in this business, where it can make you rich. One night last year, global warming came up on Larry King Live, in a discussion between King and guest Bill Maher, the host of Politically Incorrect. It went as follows: Maher: We had on Jerry Falwell the other night and Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. Both of them believed that global warming was a myth. They thought it was just crazy, a rumor, and they were very upset about oral sex. And to me, this is the country: Either you think that global warming is the big threat, or you think that kids getting hummers in grade school is the biggest threat, and I just— King: Values are interesting. Maher: Values are interesting. And what you choose to be scared of. What you think is a threat. In a culture dominated by Jerry Falwells or Bill Mahers, sometimes it takes a Larry King to get to the heart of things. "Values are interesting." Especially when the truth isn't.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
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