Forbes and Doublethink

Forbes magazine is one of the institutions that are part of the effort to attack climate scientists and the work that they do. Along with their attacks on scientists, the magazine also disparages conservation, green energy, and just about anything else favored by the Sierra Club and Al Gore.

            So it is one of those weird doublethink moments when Forbes publishes a piece with the title Wind Farms Cause Global Warming! Going from the text to a subtext, here is what Forbes is saying in this headline: “Here is something we dislike causing something we don’t acknowledge.” What is peculiar as well is the credulity with which they announce the findings of a single study, not to mention that they get the science of the study wrong. The study found localized warming by as much as 0.72C around large wind harvesting complexes. The change is local, how that temperature change affects a larger area is unknown. In essence, the warming may only be local, not global.

            In defending the status quo for fossil fuel companies, Forbes, the Heartland Institute, and the other organizations like them chose an easy tack, to attack the scientists researching global warming. Everybody is human and everybody is flawed. Attacking anybody, even scientists doing very good work, is easy. As the science of climate change becomes more certain, however, expect to find more head spinning headlines and twists of pretzel logic from these folks.