Cooler heads prevail against climate panic

The Boston Globe
"By now, of course, few things are more familiar than predictions of the environmental catastrophe to which the use of carbon-based energy has supposedly condemned us. In 1992, Al Gore claimed that “evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin;’’ nearly 20 years later he is still warning of “an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.’’ Like Camping, Gore and other climate alarmists keep forecasting a Day of Doom that never arrives. And like Camping — who now says the world will end on Oct. 21 — they continue to be sure that disaster is just around the corner.

But hyperbolic climate rhetoric doesn’t scare as many people as it used to. Gallup reported in March that of nine leading environmental issues, global warming is the one Americans worry about least. In Britain too, as The New York Times noted last spring, fear of climate change has receded, as more and more people conclude that the dangers have been over-hyped."