FoxNews.com, Fox Nation, and Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft have cited a Mail on Sunday article suggesting that climate scientist Mojib Latif predicted a “mini ice age” over the next 20 or 30 years, with Hoft asserting that global warming is “junk science.” But Latif has since challenged the Mail article’s use of his research, and at the U.N. climate conference the Mail article references, Latif stated that while temperatures could “cool” temporarily “relative to the present level” due to natural climate variability, there is a clear “long-term warming trend” that is “manmade.”
If you have right-wing friends and family – not the thoughtful kind, but the folks who think things really started going horribly wrong around or about the Enlightenment and have just steadily deteriorated since then – chances aren’t bad that you’ll get a gloating email or message soon with a link to that Mail on Sunday article or Gateway Pundit’s blog post.
And you, clever person, having read the Media Matters article I’ve linked to above, will already know that the scientist in question has completely refuted the article. Depending on how smug your friend’s message is, you may be tempted to really rub their noses in just how wrong they are.
How about, for the sake of a more peaceful world and your own good karma, you resist that temptation?
Here’s one way to respond to your friend instead:
“It sounds like you’re very pleased by this article. It must have made you feel validated and affirmed to think an actual respected climate scientist would say something that supports your position. It doesn’t happen very often, does it? Really, not at all. So I imagine this is a really, really special moment.
“Everyone deserves to feel those really special moments sometimes, and you probably feel you’ve been cheated out of more than your share, don’t you? Those leaked emails that turned out to not mean quite what you’d hoped they meant? Those humiliating corrections Fox News keeps having to make? It must seem like every time you finally have the proof you need that your worldview isn’t built on a tissue of distortions, lies and manipulated resentments, some bastard comes along with an ugly fact and tears it all down again.
“No, don’t apologize – there’s no shame in crying. Just let it all out – therrrrre you go. Have a tissue. No, don’t worry, it’s not recycled – it’s from a virgin old-growth rainforest. Sure, take two.
“You okay? Feeling better? Good.
“Um, now, listen. About this article…”
