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Climate Cliche Watch, Chapter 1


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climate-cliche-watch-chapter-1.phpPower Line:

Steven Hayward

January 26, 2015

 

It’s about time someone—why not Power Line?—developed a Climate Change Cliché Counter: a checklist and score sheet for the number of mindless clichés that appear in articles or statements about climate change. The idea occurred to me when I noted “A Clear and Present Danger to Planet Earth: Climate Change” in the pages of the National Interest, a normally sober-minded foreign policy journal nowadays published by the Nixon Center. It was co-founded by Irving Kristol back in the 1980s but is now edited by someone (Jacob Heilbrunn) who wrote a whole book a few years ago devoted chiefly to attacking Irving Kristol. (Another cautionary tale of how institutions go wrong over time.)

 

Anyway, this short thumb-sucker of an article (just under 650 words long) offers neither new facts nor any fresh suggestions for how to deal with climate change. It’s just a regurgitation of the usual clichés attached to a panicky conclusion that we have to hand over massive new power to governments to control people and resources.

 

Our Climate Cliché Counter will need an extensive period of Beta testing, and refinements of the weights assigned to various clichés (mentions of 97 percent! will get extra credit always) so as to yield a score and ranking, which will be used to award the coveted Power Line Green Weenie. So here’s our first shakedown:

 

(Snip)

 

 


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