The Right Can’t Handle the Truth, Climate Edition

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In the Wall Street Journal today, Robert Bryce offers up five “obvious truths” about climate change. His first four are mostly practical observations, and it so happens that I actually agree with most of them. We carbon taxers have lost the war for now, we are going to need more energy in the future, greenhouse gas control is a global issue, and we do need to get more efficient at generating energy. I might not like it, but these things are all mostly true.

But then there’s his fifth “obvious truth”:

5) The science is not settled, not by a long shot. Last month, scientists at CERN, the prestigious high-energy physics lab in Switzerland, reported that neutrinos might—repeat, might—travel faster than the speed of light. If serious scientists can question Einstein’s theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Well, there you go. The fact that a neutrino might — unconfirmed but still possibly might! — travel faster than light means that climate change models are crap. This is what passes for serious scientific thinking on the right.

The practical issues surrounding climate change are gargantuan. I myself am pessimistic that the human race will collectively decide to address them, which is why I support research into geoengineering as a possible last resort and, in the meantime, hope and pray that we figure out a way to generate lots of clean energy in the fairly near future.

But that has nothing to do with whether or not climate change is real. It is. Our current models might turn out to be off by 10% or 20% or 50% — in either direction, mind you — but they’re not wrong. When you dump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, more heat is trapped and the planet warms up very quickly (on geological scales). And when the planet warms up, lots of very bad stuff happens. It’s just head-in-the-sand foolish to pretend otherwise. Even after Einstein came along, you’d still kill yourself just as badly if you jumped out of an airplane. Newton wasn’t very wrong, after all.

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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