Flood, Famine, Fear and Environmental Porn: Newsweek Devotes 'Special Edition' to Global Warming Hysteria

If Newsweek is right, we won’t have to worry about corrupt Chicago politics much longer because, according to the magazine’s recent, rather hysterical tribute to global warming hysteria, the Windy City won’t be around much longer. Entitled “100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear,” the limited edition, “special feature” issue of the magazine is Newsweek‘s latest and greatest venture into what I like to think of as environmental porn; stories and pictures designed to make tree-huggers quiver over the righteousness of their cause.

Global-warming is responsible for this supposed disappearing act of course, for a variety of contradictory reasons. In Chicago’s case, heat waves and flooding will destroy my hometown, which is pretty remarkable considering that the city is over 650 feet above sea level. When the deluge comes, perhaps we could move from the Windy City to a picturesque Italian village like, say – Principato di Lucedio? Let me check…

Rats! Seems that Priciparto di Lucedio is going to run out of water because of global warming. And, it further seems that we can’t escape to the tropics either, for, in the case of the lush Hawaiian island of Kauai, it might get wetter and it might get drier, but it really doesn’t matter, because any change at all seems to be bad. Thus sayeth Newsweek of Kauai’s fate:

Large parts of the mountainous island are swathed in cloud. These lush and mossy forests are home to the colorful Hawaiian honeycreeper, an endangered bird species. Even small shifts in rainfall patterns could cause major local changes, putting the islands’ distinct ecosystem under severe stress.

It’s all pretty much like that, with words like “may” and “could” tossed about so liberally by writer Fareed Zakaria that you get the impression the editors employed a Magic 8-Ball as their primary editing tool. All these disasters “could” happen, and they “may” happen entirely naturally, but environmentalists live out a fantasy in which nature is, or can be made to be, stuck eternally on hold, circa 1850.

The more interesting “could” associated with increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is that of a more fertile, vibrant earth. Dr. Craig Idso is rather adamant on that point, having done a great deal of research that suggests we don’t have nearly enough of the stuff in the atmosphere compared to the demands of plant life. But, that particular “could” hardly makes for a sexy enviro-disaster piece, so you rarely hear about it outside of global-warming skeptic circles.

As a vacation planner that includes some pretty exotic locales, Newsweek‘s special global meltdown edition is kind of interesting. As another doomsday prophecy however, it falls flat for all but the most ardent of the alarmist crowd. Overall, one gets the feeling that if Newsweek continues to churn out leftist pap of this sort, the publication will move high up on the list of the “Top 100 Old Media Outlets to Remember Before They (Finally!) Disappear.”

And that just might be a thing devoutly to be wished.