Monday, October 18, 2010

Bring Back Bob Beaver!

Back on December 10, 2009, the editorial board of the Newport Daily News decided to commemorate the 2009 Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen by inviting Robert A. Beaver, an amusingly-named right-wing conspiracy theorist, to pen a guest editorial explaining to their readers that there was no such thing as global warming, and that the whole thing was a hoax cooked up by a bunch of greedy climate scientists.

Well, you can imagine my astonishment when I opened up today's copy of the Daily Snooze to find an AP article titled "Coast Guard pushes to guard U.S. claims in remote Arctic sea" with the following opening graf:

The ice-choked reaches of the northern Arctic Ocean aren't widely perceived as an international shipping route. But global warming is bringing vast change, and Russia, for one, is making an aggressive push to establish top of the world sea lanes.

The gist of the article is that the Russians are taking advantage of receding Arctic sea ice to send cargo ships straight across the Arctic Ocean, and that the U.S. Coast Guard is gearing up to "secure U.S. claims and prepare for increased human activity." But what I want to know is, where is Bob Beaver?

I think that, in their quest for fairness and balance, and their desire to present all points of view, it is incumbent on the editors of the NDN to invite Bob Beaver back to their editorial page to explain to the paper's readers that, no, the Russians aren't really sending shipping across the Arctic Ocean, the Coast Guard isn't asking for more resources to deal with the increased activity, and that this is all just part of the hoax being perpetrated by those greedy scientists.

Bring back Bob Beaver!

No comments: