Conservatives Waking Up to Global Warming?
There are signs that some right wing climate change deniers are finally waking up.
Science editor of the Daily Mail, Michael Hanlon, announced last week that he is changing his stance on global warming due to recent events in Greenland and his trip to this country (which he now refers to as “Global Warming Ground Zero”). Hanlon wrote: “I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic” (emphasis added). Joss Garman of Left Foot Forward said Hanlon “could previously be seen as the UK’s most influential ‘sceptic’” and has a good story on this and other recent changes in conservative media as concerns global warming.
And, on the other side of the Atlantic, a little over a week ago, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers made a breakthrough statement on one key issue of global warming, finally admitting that global warming IS caused (at least partly) by humans. Covering this story in more depth, Brad Johnson of The Wonk Room wrote: “One of America’s most influential global warming skeptics, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers, has finally admitted that global warming is “caused by man.’”
Now, most recently, oil-funded Pat Michaels, “a scientist who now works for the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank that strongly opposes caps to carbon dioxide,” and who has promoted global warming denial for decades, has acknowledged that addressing global warming is an issue of “political acceptability.”