The terrible risk management of climate change 'moderates'

Against "lukewarmism"

Greenland ice melting.
(Image credit: Murat Tellioglu / Alamy Stock Photo)

Can conservative intellectuals think straight about climate change? Back in 2014, I argued that their fixation with the so-called global warming "pause" demonstrated most of them could not. After 2014, 2015, and 2016 all came in as the hottest years ever recorded, each one breaking the previous record (and the last by a huge margin), I checked back in to see whether such people — like The New York Times' Ross Douthat — had recanted and admitted their previous error. As of a few weeks ago, he had not.

Finally, Douthat has returned to the subject and admitted fault on the since-vanished pause. But he has made no change to his underlying view on climate change, still subscribing to what he calls "lukewarmism," a belief that climate change is real, humans are causing it, but it won't be as bad as the greens say. He's still wrong — and he unintentionally offers a good demonstration of why this sort of fake moderation on climate is untenable.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.