Margaret Wente - tell us what you know!

Today Margaret Wente's legend grew just a little bit larger. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a vast network of scientists from around the world, released its landmark report. It predicts dire consequences if we don't take our green responsibilities seriously.

Why am I left so impressed with Margaret Wente? If she can stare down such an impressive array of scientists, then she must know something spectatcular. Just a couple days ago, via an online Globe and Mail conversation, she tantalized us with this:

"The scientific consensus certainly says that human activity contributes to climate change. But my own reading (and interviews with scientists and other experts) has led me to conclude that there is great uncertainty about what impact climate change may have, how serious it might be and what we can do about it. I think that climate alarmists have had a terrible influence on what should be a rational debate.
So chalk me up as a climate realist. Do we need to take climate change seriously? Yes. Is it a planetary emergency? In my view, no."

What is it that she reads? Who does she talk to? What does she know that all those world-renowned scientists in Paris do not? It's a fascinating thought. Firstly, she must have attended some impressive journalism school, if it equipped with the tools necessary to evaluate critically a complex scientific consensus. Most of them just teach you how to write.

I'm particularly fascinated with this secret panel of experts she seems to chair. Perhaps they meet underground, laughing at our deluded public and smoking their cigarettes (which they know actually cure cancer). Perhaps they meet on the ocean's floor. After all, they can tell you what the Confederacy of Dunces at the WHO will not - that humans are perfectly capable of living and breathing under water.

Or maybe she just fits squarely into the lineage of the "world is flat", "Darwin has lost his mind" types. The most difficult aspect of a conservative existence must be that as sure as you are about this one, you have to live with the fact that your kind has been on the wrong side of every debate in human history.