Good Times, Bad Times

A story on the front page of the Globe today reports: “Greenhouse gas emissions from Northeast power plants were about 10 percent lower than predicted during the last two years…But the decrease may have some unanticipated consequences for efforts to combat global warming.”

Imagine the headlines if emissions had risen 10 percent.

In The God that Failed Arthur Koestler describes how his Communist Party leaders taught him to think dialectically, a useful strategy that allowed him to ignore obvious facts by placing them in the context of revolutionary class struggle. Once you have convinced yourself that you are on the right side of history, no mere fact can intrude. More emissions are bad for global warming. Less emissions are bad for global warming. Warmer weather is proof of global warming. Colder weather is proof of…climate change.