Lessons Learned

It's getting hot in here

I was recently alerted to a front page news item that broke while I was in Belize (and which is now buried deeply under Michael Jackson's acquittal coverage). With the headline "Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming," the New York Times detailed how an oil-industry lawyer inserted strategically misleading adjectives to blur the science of global climate change. Environmental leaders have decried this as more Bush administration chicanery intended to stifle science and aid polluters (a.k.a. "The Base"). They have responded to the report by pointing to what they, the left-wing intellectual elite, call "facts."

However, I must respectfully disagree with those Sierra Club granola munchers. Bush is truly a tree-hugger at heart, and his administration has truly taken one aspect of environmentalism to heart. Hear me out. Back in the run-up to the Iraq War (Operation Enduring Infinite Revenge or whatever it's called), the Bushies were producing lots of reports about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Though dead set on war, they were still mindful of the environment. They saved innumerable trees by deleting the many caveats in the reports, resulting in lean, Hemingway-esque prose. This "Reduced" the amount of paper needed.

The Bushies could have just tossed those caveats in the trash, but that would be wasteful. Instead, they "Reused" them, inserting words like "possible" and "maybe" into this global warming report. It turns out that doubt and circumspection can be useful! Now watch them "Recycle" the same old smear tactics to discredit those who disagree with them about climate change.

{Update: Obfuscation as career move}