‘Get Over It’: Climate Change Is Happening

By Eric Roston

What is anyone to make of American public figures who even in 2012 dismiss the risks posed by manmade climate change?

After a week of record heat and wildfires, Terry Moran of ABC News posed a question to guests on July 8, on the Sunday political talk show, “This Week With George Stephanopoulos”: Why should climate change be any more controversial than, say, neuroscience or brain surgery? Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, answered that climate change has much broader applicability than brain surgery and therefore draws a greater crowd of critics. E.J. Dionne, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, expressed incredulity about “why my conservative friends are so resistant in taking out an insurance policy… Because if we go wrong on this, we’re making an awfully big mistake.”

Political commentator George Will answered thusly: “You asked us -- how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. I grew up in central Illinois in a house without air conditioning. What is so unusual about this? Now, come the winter, there will be a cold snap, lots of snow, and the same guys, like E.J., will start lecturing us. There's a difference between the weather and the climate. I agree with that. We're having some hot weather. Get over it.”