R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
I assume all readers of this column are aware of polite society's theory of global warming. According to the theory, anthropogenic (once known as "man-made") gases waft into the atmosphere, causing worldwide temperatures to soar and our imminent doom. Yet, how many of you are familiar with my theory of Kultursmog? According to it, our culture is polluted by political ideas, prejudices, and false pieties advocated by the soi-disant liberals or progressives or people of conscience or whatever they are calling themselves nowadays. They keep changing their designations, and every designation they opt for becomes an honorific, at least for them. Liberal, indeed - they actually favor government coercion and regimentation. Progressive, indeed - they are for a political system that was recognized as archaic late in the last century when socialism was found to be obsolete even by the Indians and the Chinese.
At any rate, my theory of Kultursmog has just been buttressed by some 3,000 e-mails of cold probative evidence that Kultursmog is real. That the e-mails come from the Global Warmists is most gratifying. I have always suspected that they are leading contributors to the smog. That is to say, they are leading polluters of our culture. The Environmental Protection Agency should take note.
The way the Kultursmog works, liberal elites through their undemocratic dominance of cultural institutions - the media, the universities, government bureaucracies - create beliefs, problems and bugaboos, by studiously ignoring disagreement and by ceaselessly repeating deceits and distortions. Last week hackers - I think of them as selfless public-spirited hackers - broke into the electronic files of one of the leading Global Warmist research centers, the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, and posted some 3,000 of the Warmists' conspiratorial e-mails for all the world to see. To my ineffable gratification, the e-mails displayed the Global Warmists sedulously engaging in just what you would expect in the Kultursmog: deceits, distortions and the suppression of dissenting points of view. Here we have a comprehensive view of Kultursmog in the making.
Our friends in the editorial sanctum sanctorum of the Wall Street Journal pored over all the damning e-mails. They found dissenting scientists (global warming skeptics, as they are called) being black-listed and suppressed. For instance, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, e-mailed like-minded Global Warmists advising them to isolate and ignore scientists and scientific journals that publish the views of the skeptics. "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," he wrote, going on to urge the encouragement of "our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal." Now that is how Kultursmog taints the debate.
Then there was Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia project. He e-mailed Mr. Mann and others to "delete any emails you may have had with Keith" regarding indelicate references to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report. Another e-mail from Mr. Jones to a co-conspirator asked that he "change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with." The Journal also quotes an unnamed scientist e-mailing "hide the decline" of temperatures in data that might cast doubt on global warming.
Well, I can understand. The fact is that for almost a decade there has been no global warming, contrary to the Global Warmists' computer predictions. In fact, since 2005 there has been global cooling.
Well, as I say, thanks to the work of these patriotic hackers we now have plenty of evidence that the Global Warmists are dishonest bullies. Moreover, I now have a perfect educational model to demonstrate how Kultursmog works. But this discovery is not without its melancholy aspects too. There once was a day when scientists were empiricists believing in reason and fair play. Those who have been exposed in the global warming hoax are mere propagandists.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute.
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