There are words that are like bombs -- words like capitalism, communism, fascism, Islam. They have perfectly good meanings, but are so loaded they can blow up reasonable discourse. As word-bombs, they all have the same meaning: Be Scared, Don't Think (BSDT).
"Socialism" is one you hear a lot. A pundit who enjoys the benefits of Social Security and Medicare will lob this bomb at any hint of health care reform with a "public option." It's not necessarily hypocrisy or a weak mind that blinds him to the contradiction. BSDT can disrupt the neural circuits of even the smartest people.
Smart person Pat Buchanan recently lobbed another word-bomb, "world government," in a critique of global efforts to deal with global warming (Oct. 19 Record-Eagle). Predictably, the detonation scrambled his argument.
For example, he cites as evidence that "the hottest year of modern times, 1998, came and went a decade ago."
What he doesn't mention is that, according to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, every single year of our current century has been hotter than any year on record before 1998. Ignorance? Dishonesty? I don't think so. It's BSDT, a fear of "world government" so great it disables his thinking.
Citing the authority of Republican ex-senator John Sununu, Buchanan asserts that throughout the 20th century global average temperatures periodically fluctuated. What he doesn't acknowledge is that there is not a climatologist on earth who would deny this. It's simply not relevant.
What is relevant are longer "linear warming trends" and unprecedented extremes -- as for example that the oceans' monthly surface temperature this summer was the highest ever recorded. If Buchanan knew this, BSDT drove it from his brain. He does acknowledge that the Arctic icecap is rapidly melting but asserts that the Antarctic icecap is actually "expanding."
His uncited source is probably an Australian study of Western Antarctica, recently covered by Fox News. But he must also have known the results, reported in Nature, of "highly precise ... ultra-high resolution" measurements of the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps taken with NASA's Geoscience Laser Altimeter System.
They show both icecaps are melting "far faster than scientists had previously thought." In the words of U.C. Berkeley's Dr. Hamish Pritchard, the results are "ominous and distressing."
There's more, but suffice to say that Buchanan fails to make a serious case because he's a victim of his own word-bomb. He allows it to blind him to any reasonable concern that might support solving global problems through global agreements.
So he recklessly claims there's "mounting evidence that global warming has halted and man is not responsible for climate change" while knowing somewhere in his mind that the great majority of scientists see mounting evidence pointing in the opposite direction -- reinforced in a recent letter to congress from 18 scientific organizations.
Can "global warming" also be a word-bomb? Yes, if we let it. But in this case the danger, to quote the head of the NOAA, "is very real." So let's stop throwing word-bombs and start working together.
About the author: Porter Abbott taught English literature for 40 years at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before retiring to Northport. He is a specialist in the fields of narrative and rhetoric.
About the forum: The forum is a periodic column of opinion written by Record-Eagle readers in their areas of interest or expertise. Submissions of 500 words or less may be made by e-mailing letters@record-eagle.com. Please include biographical information and a photo.
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