Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Climategate and Obama's Radio Silence
If President Barack Obama was thinking straight, he would regard Climategate, especially its timing, not as a great setback for his global warming agenda—but a great godsend.
Why? As Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia explains in her latest Forbes column:
If Bush had been lucky, perhaps fate would have contrived a WMDgate for him before he launched the Iraq invasion and saved him from the worst mistake of his presidency…..
It is worth recalling that Bush too was relying on an international consensus—especially reports by U.N. arms inspectors—that Saddam Hussein was sitting atop stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as a justification for war. 'Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,' Bush said in a 2003 prewar declaration calculated to escalate the hysteria level against Saddam. After a two-year-long wild goose chase through the deserts of Iraq, Bush was finally forced to admit that Saddam no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction. But at least the phony consensus on which he based his decision was intact at the eve of the war.
However, Climategate is fast shattering the global warming consensus…."
So where will Obama look for the missing temperature increase if he wages a war against global warming? The most sensible thing he can do right now, says Dalmia, is:
Ask eco-warriors at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit next week to declare an immediate cease-fire in their war against global warming pending a complete review of the science."
