Dana Milbank tempers the climate change debate

Says Milbank on "argument by anecdote":

...there's some rough justice in the conservatives' cheap shots.

In Washington's blizzards, the greens were hoist by their own petard.

For years, climate-change activists have argued by anecdote to make their case.

Milbank forgets to mention Al Gore's anecdotal evidence of mantees on the run... truly my favorite show of anecdotal lunacy.

But he continues with a sobering, honest analysis of the scientific evidence:

The science is overwhelming -- but not definitive. Romm's claim was inadvertently shot down by his partner on the call, the Weather Underground's Jeff Masters, who confessed that "there's a huge amount of natural variability in the climate system" and not enough years of measurements to know exactly what's going on. "Unfortunately we don't have that data so we are forced to make decisions based on inadequate data."


The scientific case has been further undermined by high-profile screw-ups. First there were the hacked e-mails of a British research center that suggested the scientists were stacking the deck to overstate the threat. Now comes word of numerous errors in a 2007 report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear in 25 years.

So, instead of arguing over the scientific evidence, why not find common cause in freeing ourselves of our addiction to foreign oil -- especially from the Middle East?  That's exactly where Milbank turns the discussion:

For those concerned about warming, it's time for a shift in emphasis. Fortunately, one has already been provided to them by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has done more than any Democrat to keep climate legislation alive this year. His solution: skip the hurricanes and Himalayan glaciers and keep the argument on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on foreign oil, some of that going to terrorists rather than to domestic job creation.
Al Gore, for one, seems to realize it's time for a new tactic. New TV ads released during last week's blizzards by Gore's climate advocacy group say nothing about climate science. They show workers asking their senators for more jobs from clean energy.

Read the whole story here.

Bingo.  This has been a major source of frustration for myself and other independently minded Americans.  As T. Boone Pickens has endlessly promoted, this nation's trade deficit is largely a result of our addiction to foreign oil.  In 2009, $204 billion of the $380.7 billion trade deficit was due to importing petroleum related products - mostly crude oil.  Worse yet, with a possible war with Iran that could trigger the shutdown of oil through the Strait of Hormuz (which 40% of the world's crude flows through), the supply shocks of the 1970s and the price shock of 2008 could seem like child's play.
 
During the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration built many hydroelectric dams that put people to work and still generate cheap, plentiful electricity today.  So far, Americans have little to show for all the Obama administration's stimulus spending.  You would think that Congress could find common cause on infrastructure spending and energy security.  Now is the time to invest in alternative energy to provide America with more domestically produced energy. 
 
One of the big differences between the 1930s and today is that America was an energy exporter (Japan attacked us largely because we ceased exporting to them) whereas today we import more than half of the oil that keeps our economy moving.  We have never been more vulnerable than we are today.
 
I've written about this a few times before but I'm glad to see that people like Lindsey Graham are waking up to the sobering energy reality in this country.  Whatever your views on climate change, we're all going to have to wake up and confront our energy insecurity sooner or later.  Fossil fuels are not endless and for decades America has been dependent on foreign sources to provide the crude we currently burn.  This is not sustainable any way you look at.