29 Feb 16
My favorite hometown newspaper runs a website. An article appeared on it that originated with the Toronto Star, and was one of those intellectually lazy efforts that connect something bad with global warming, or climate change. Little effort is made to make the far-fetched connection "near-fetched". (to borrow an invention of deceased comedian George Carlin.) Any effort to do so will demonstrate the large holes in the argument. The piece was headlined on the effect of climate change on our collective mental health.
I saw this piece before it hit the print edition, and immediately sent this missive. I did not find it later in the print edition, so perhaps this rejoinder caused the editors to pull the piece - its foolishness having been made manifest, even to them.
A while ago the Spectator published a short piece of mine in
which I said that anyone who speaks seriously of climate change is either a
fool or has no respect for the intelligence of his interlocutor. The
story at reference is yet another case in point.
The purport of the story is that we have to ruin advanced,
western economies because people like Dr. David Ouchterlony are suffering
depression from global warming, or more particularly from its mere prospect.
The headline of the story suggests that the connection
between deteriorating mental health and climate change has been made by more
than one expert. However, after reading the story I found no one who was
an expert both on climate change and on psychiatry, and expertise in both
disciplines is necessary to make an “expert” connection between climate change
and mental health. Never mind two or more, not one was
offered. The connection was, and is, far-fetched.
How can anything this ridiculous be offered as a serious
news story? Where was Dr. Ouchterlony when the world was at real risk of
thermonuclear war between 1962 and 1991? Did he tell the Soviet embassy
that they should stand down their nuclear forces because he was suffering
headaches?
People who worry about climate change should take a Valium,
and I will see them in the morning.
-30-
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