Bin Laden on climate change

We have failed to find Osama bin Laden after eight years, and now he is opining on our climate-change policies and calling for an economic boycott. I’m waiting for the right wing to go ballistic.

For one, bin Laden is claiming that global warming exists. We’ve been trying to beat down this kind of nonsense here at home with some solid progress. Four in ten Americans now say they place “little or no trust in what scientists say about the environment,” and now bin Laden is trying to give renewed credibility to scientific research. Let’s just hope this kind of misinformation doesn’t take root in the Arab street.

For another, every time I have seen bin Laden on television, he looks cold. If the world was really getting warmer, would he wrap himself in a scarf all the time? If al-Jazeera won’t call him out, I certainly hope Fox News will.



The Post quoted one expert saying that bin Laden’s use of global warming as a wedge issue fits a pattern because he "looks to see the issues that are the most cogent and more likely to get popular support." We can’t find the guy, and yet he’s focus-grouping environmental issues? I can just see bin Laden in a cave right now listening to political consultants and examining giant pie charts on an easel.

But I suppose there is some good news for climate change deniers in all this: there is now yet another way to associate bin Laden and Democratic politicians, with the elections right around the corner. I’m sure those ads will be fun.