My Page: Dan Whipple
Due West
Sweetheart, Get Me a ClimatologistI was about to mail the $300,000 check for our membership in the Yellowstone Club, which would get us access to our own private ski mountain, a Tom Weiskopf golf course and lord knows what all, when I stopped to think: I’d better check with a climatologist about this.
It seems pretty clear that global warming is going to change snowfall patterns in the West. In fact, it will change the snowfall patterns around the world. This is something the ski industry is keenly aware of. Shelling out three hundred grand for a ski hill without snow seems a little profligate. Much as I like Tom Weiskopf, I can buy a lot of golf for 300 Gs.
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Global Warming Politics
Climate Change and Barbara Cubin: Chasing the Conservative Hobby HorseIn the spring of 1994, Wyoming Republican Congressman Craig Thomas decided he was going to run for the U.S. Senate. This set off a scramble among the state’s Republicans to secure the party’s nomination to Congress, and the accompanying right to trounce whichever Democrat that hapless party produced as election fodder.
At the time, I was city editor for the Casper Star-Tribune. Barbara Cubin, a state representative whose chief legislative distinction up to that point had been distributing cookies shaped like penises to some male legislators, came into the paper on one media errand or another. Our chief political writer, Hugh Jackson, called out across to her across the cavernous newsroom, “Hey, Barbara, are you going to run for Craig’s seat?”
In the 12 years since she swept into Congress, Cubin has lived up to every expectation. Her career as a congresswoman has been, if anything, less distinguished than her service in the state legislature. An incident as creative as penis cookies would be a welcome sign of independence from a legislator who has trailed along in the back of the nattering pack. Cubin has loyally supported, then reliably abandoned, every paleoconservative hobby horse from the Contract with America to term limits to the balanced budget amendment to WMDs.
I’d like to examine Cubin’s misguided dedication to received wisdom by deconstructing her position on a single issue -- global climate change. I have covered climate change science for the last five years. A constituent recently wrote to Cubin urging action on this issue. Cubin responded in a letter full of misinformation and error.
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