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The church of global warming: Jane S. Shaw is hot on the trail of environmental piety.

Article Excerpt
ALEXANDER COCKBURN--always the contrarian--is in hot water again, this time over global warming. Cockburn had the temerity to suggest that global warming is not caused by human activity. Adding fuel to the fire, the iconoclastic New York Press and Nation columnist mischievously opined that in some quarters belief in global warming is "a matter of theological conviction."

Although Cockburn has impeccable environmentalist credentials--he's eager to save the redwoods--he was anathematized as "seriously warped" for holding such heretical notions. Says Cockburn: "Dispute the thesis and they want to burn you at the stake."

Nobody, not even those who drive SUVs, wants to swelter to death on an overheated planet. Still, one wonders: Why did sparks fly over Cockburn's relatively tepid remarks? Was the gadfly columnist hot on the trail of some uncomfortable truth?

A lot of people may not recall that only thirty years ago, scientists were worried about global cooling, not warming. Writing in Science, two scientists suggested that increasing dust in the atmosphere could cool temperatures by 3.5[degrees] C. "If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age," they said. One of those authors, Stephen H. Schneider, promoted "massive, worldwide actions to hedge against that threat."

But those who foresaw a new ice age were forced to chill out. What we really have to fear, it turns out, is global warming. Today Stephen H. Schneider is foremost among those who have warmed to the idea and are urging a massive, worldwide effort to stave off global warming's lethal effects.

Now, it is true that most scientists acknowledge an increase in average temperatures over the past century and expect at least a slight increase in the future. But whether this is going...

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