"Climate change is real and not a hoax."
Serious adults in the US Senate think they scored intellectual points by attaching an amendment making this assertion to legislation supporting the Keystone XL pipeline. Their sense of achievement underscores problems with the political discussion about what used to be known as global warming.
Of course climate change is real. Who says otherwise? The climate changes naturally. It always has and always will.
Symbolic phrase
The politics of climate change, though, has rendered the phrase symbolic. In politics, "climate change" means something to this effect: "dangerous heating of the atmosphere caused by human activity, especially the combustion of fossil fuels, which warrants policies forcing people to incur painfully high energy costs and make behavior changes for which they never would volunteer." Political expediency makes this codification necessary. The underlying message can't win support outside the political fringe.
The same process replaced "global warming" with "climate change" several years ago when temperature observations began straying from ominous trends predicted by computer models. Winning support for drastic remedies is difficult when postulated problems begin not to seem drastic. Similar propagandizing produced the subtly misanthropic locution "carbon pollution" now sprinkling communication from the White House.
Code phrases are for political slogans. Legislative language is-or should be-literal. The real-not-hoax amendment proposed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) therefore received endorsement that surprised some observers. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works and an opponent of climate alarmism, volunteered to be a cosponsor. "Well, it's true," Inhofe is reported by The Hill to have said about the statement. "I can vote for that."
He's right. The amendment just states the obvious. Anyone should be able to vote for it. Yet Whitehouse hailed its acceptance as "a very good first step" and the 98-1 vote as evidence "that we have rid ourselves forever [of] the argument that there is not climate change."
News flash: No one makes that argument. No grand step has been taken. And Inhofe conceded nothing in the real argument, which Whitehouse and others on his side of it won't address.
The real argument is whether people should be forced to change behavior sacrificially in response to observed warming for which their changes might mean little. Contrary to insipid claims about "settled science," serious disagreement exists among climate specialists over the extent to which people contribute to warming. Even if science ultimately determines with reasonable certainty that people can influence globally averaged temperature if they'll suffer enough, will they?
A clear answer comes from countries that have enacted early, token requirements to use expensive energy in place of the cheaper kind: No, they will not. What people will do in response to climate change, however troublesome it proves to be and however much they are or are not responsible for it, is what people do best: They'll adapt. Policies aimed at helping them do so have prospects for success much greater than those demanding precautionary, possibly ineffective deprivation.
Under current political conditions, arguments such as these receive little notice, dismissed on sight as the self-serving emanations of lesser beings who deny climate change is real. Self-righteous posturing thus forecloses what should be a difficult debate over scientifically complex and still poorly understood phenomena. And problem-solving gives way to name-calling.
Contrived subtext
Inhofe snared Whitehouse in his own trap. By sponsoring the Whitehouse amendment, Inhofe disengaged "climate change" from a maliciously contrived subtext. Yes, he as much as said, climate change happens. Everyone knows that. The question is how much people can do about the part of climate change that might or might not involve dangerous warming. Let's have an adult conversation about that for a change. To this Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) responded by saying she didn't find the amendment vote surprising because Republicans "are losing the public-relations battle by being so Neanderthal on the issue."
So much for adult conversation.