The Houston Chronicle editorial board has been churning out some (unintentionally) funny stuff this week.
On Wednesday, the editorialists examined “challenges” facing the City of Houston. They note that long-range pensions remain problematic for many cities, but then move on to the real challenges:
Among the more pressing issues are climate change and extreme weather.
The Faith of Global Warmism lives on among the true believers! For the rest of us, it’s not really a pressing issue.
Of course, it is true that the threat of hurricanes requires the area to remain vigilant in our safety preparations (and perhaps one day to build the so-called Ike Dike).
The City’s fiscal affairs probably deserved a little more attention from the editorial board, though, given what was effectively deficit spending over the last decade or so.
On Thursday, the editorialists offered up one of their funnier lines in a while (celebrating the new professional women’s soccer team):
Whether in our minds or marketplace, men-only sports leagues crush any competition with monopolistic self-promotion, jingoistic appeals to patriarchal gender roles and tax breaks galore.
Recall that the fellow who heads the editorial board these days, one Jeff Cohen, was the editor in chief of the Chronicle when it laid off all of the women who were then on the editorial board, and did so on the same day that the newspaper ran an editorial praising the President’s creation of a White House Council on Women and Girls.
Matt Bramanti offered a fitting twitter response to this exercise in self-parody.
You have some valid criticism here, but please stop with the climate change denial. It’s embarrassing. The article you link to basically says “if we cherry-pick the data (i.e. look at a 17-year timeframe) you can show the earth is cooling.” It ignores that fact that if heat is moving deeper into the ocean, then sea level rises will be worse than if the heat stayed trapped in the atmosphere. This means worse news for us coast-dwellers, especially in Galveston and Texas City.
** You have some valid criticism here, but please stop with the climate change denial. It’s embarrassing. **
Wow, we appreciate the feedback, but there is a bit to unpack here, and a shortcoming with the blog relaunch that I’ve now addressed.
First, there’s no denying “climate change.” The climate has always changed, and will continue to change, despite human hubris. I do, however, have my doubts about Mayor Parker’s ability to affect the same in a non-trivial manner. Still, I’ve always viewed conservation as a conservative principle, and have no problem with such efforts. So how about we work at re-timing all the mis-timed traffic signals in Houston to cut down on fuel use and emissions? There’s a worthy local conservation project, yet I have not seen the mayor discussing this when she goes to visit D.C.
As far as being embarrassed…. I guess I missed your deep personal/financial investment in the little blog that would produce such feelings? 🙂
But that language does highlight a shortcoming in the blog relaunch. I overlooked the addition of a comment policy page, which is now done. We required registration on the old blog comment system (I don’t believe you were a participant, at least not under this name), but we’re going to opt instead for moderation here. We did a pretty good job on the old system over the years encouraging a polite conversation among adults and heading off flame wars, and that’s still the goal here.