Climate Change Hysteria

Noah Rothman writes a phenomenal article at Commentary concerning the climate change hysteria overtaking the media. He focuses on the media’s outrage over recent comments from American Enterprise Institute scholar Danielle Pletka. Rothman summarizes Pletka’s concern:

Pletka went on to note mitigating phenomena that, in her view, don’t receive due attention. The last two years were typified by the “biggest drop in global temperatures that we have had since the 1980s,” she said. Pletka added that carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. are declining even after America pulled out of the Paris accords, and American industry has shifted away from burning so-called “dirty coal,” unlike its European counterparts.

She also added that “we shouldn’t be hysterical.” It was that latter comment that led to visceral reactions from the media. Rothman notes the outrage over that simple statement from Helene Cooper who noted:

“I actually think we should be hysterical,” she said. “I think anybody who has children or anybody who can imagine having children and grandchildren, how can you look at them and think this is the kind of world that through our own inaction and our inability to do something, that we’re going to leave them?”

Pletka’s great sin was her “refusal to accept a straight-line projection at face value.” Rothman concludes:

You might see now why some advocates prefer hysteria to caution and skepticism, and why those who shatter the serenity of the echo chamber are so valuable.