Mr. Wolverine Goes to Washington, Part 2

Part 2: "The ground has shifted beneath them"

Monday, January 19, 2009

Two panels Monday morning. A lot of our group skipped both of them, but the foreign policy one sounded interesting to me, and I wanted to get my money's worth.

"If I knew there was going to be a podium, I wouldn't have worn pants."   ~Jonah Goldberg

I knew Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg from Bloggingheads. It was odd because Goldberg was the conservative but a much better and funnier speaker. In his opening, Beinart droned on and on and talked about whatever popped into his mind. He was much better in the Q & A. The Q & A did a fairly good job of covering the hot spots: Iran, China, Russia.

Then, Mike wanted to go to the poetry panel with former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. He gave a very Ralph Williams-esque lecture, and it was interesting because it was not about politics.

"'If you dyed your hair black, you'd look just like Al Gore.'"   ~Al Gore

We grabbed our box lunches, ate at the Marriott, then headed back to U-Maryland to hear Al Gore. He gave the expected become-involved and global-warming shticks. They only allowed two questions. I wish, like the guy behind me, that someone had asked him about nuclear power, but no.

As the director of UPIC came onstage to brief us about tomorrow, the audience booed and yelled. The conference, evident from day 1, had been horribly disorganized. The faculty advisors didn't know what was going on, and it seemed like they were making it up as they went along. I guess they were unprepared for the enthusiasm for Obama.

Some of the students were circulating a letter expressing their dissatisfaction. I guess some had been promised a smaller conference or reserved seats on the Mall. I was under no such illusions and tried to enjoy it as well as I could.

The group dynamic was interesting from a political/philosophical perspective. You sacrifice some of your freedom for the security and sociability of the group. I think everyone was frustrated with this at some time or another and the group started to splinter that night.

The first breakaway republic was Teddy. We were heading to this Italian restaurant (Again, a chain. I don't understand it. If you're visiting a city, why not go to a place they don't have anywhere else? We actually ate at a local chain but only because it was much closer to the Metro stop.) when Tedward got a call from one of the girls we had met on the bus ride after Gore. He went to have dinner with them.

Then, Christine, Mike and I left early and headed back to the hotel. I particularly did not want to keep window shopping. We explored the lower floors of the hotel, pretending that we were going where we shouldn't. We went back to my room to play cards. I called Mrs. Wolverine, they left, I went to bed.

Smooth, Grand Hyatt. Really smooth. Stay tuned for the third and final installment.

An Inconvenient Smear

CBS is set to air an interview this Sunday with former vice president and presidential candidate Al Gore, touching on those darn naysayers who still refuse to believe global warming (or global climate change, whichever fits your paradigm) is caused by man.

I mean, come on, how can anybody believe it's not, right? But how did we ever get out of any Ice Ages, which we know dominated our planet throughout its history, if man wasn't there to begin the process? How is Mars experiencing global warming? Surely, Sojourner and the other rovers don't release a substantial amount of greenhouse gases! One answer to both questions lies in understanding Milankovitch cycles, which cause planets to wobble in their orbits. This wobbling, in turn, causes variations in temperature (enough to change the course of an ice age). It's a cosmic coincidence that both Mars and Earth are at a point in which Milankovitch cycles have brought both planets out of ice ages.

To be frank, I don't care that Al Gore says this. What really gets my goat is that he compares people who doubt humankind's involvement in whatever is going on to "the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat...That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off." (On a side note, does he include 9/11 or JFK conspiracy theorists in this group?) I personally take offense to that! Why is it acceptable that he may slander and insult me and others who share my viewpoint on the sole basis that we disagree with him? If we are akin to the camp who believes the world is flat (and does anybody really believe that anymore?), I will go so far as to compare the erroneous Nobel Peace Prize-winner to the Church authorities who gagged Galileo when the astronomer so boldly declared the heliocentric theory of the solar system. The motives between the two groups are strikingly similar, when it comes down to it; both entities, specifically Mr. Gore and the myopic Church authorities of their time, are threatened by any dissenting argument. Such debate has the power to remove the pedestal from under their feet, and it appears Mr. Gore has recognized this and has resorted to alarmism.

So where does that leave us? Well, for starters, the founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman, has said he would like to see Al Gore and other providers of "carbon credits" (or contemporary indulgences, forgiving ecological transgressions) sued for fraud. This is especially crucial after Heidi Cullen, a Weather Channel big-wig, said in 2006 that meteorologists who debate mankind's contributions to global warming ought to stripped of their American Meteorological Association licenses. Have those meteorologists and climatologists become the Galileos of our time?

Only time will tell whether any lawyer has sufficient cojones to take on the task of calling out Mr. Gore.