Year 3, Month 2, Day 3: Take That, You Bow-Tied Carp-Faced Twerp.

The Washington Post wonders why people don’t use the words they used to use:

What happened to “climate change” and “global warming”?

The Earth is still getting hotter, but those terms have nearly disappeared from political vocabulary. Instead, they have been replaced by less charged and more consumer-friendly expressions for the warming planet.

President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday was a prime example of this shift. The president said “climate change” just once — compared with zero mentions in the 2011 address and two in 2010. When he did utter the phrase, it was merely to acknowledge the polarized atmosphere in Washington, saying, “The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.” By contrast, Obama used the terms “energy” and “clean energy” nearly two dozen times.

It’s pretty rich, coming from the paper that’s given George Will a podium for fatuous bloviation for decades. Sent January 28:

“Climate change” was a fortuitous choice of words for Republican strategist Frank Luntz. While he was primarily attempting to dilute public concern about global warming (and the concomitant policy changes that would have endangered the profit margins of Big Oil and Big Coal), his term’s a better descriptor. In the face of mountains of evidence, the reality of climate change is irrefutable. Even “denialists” have shifted their arguments; they now assert that while the climate is indeed changing, human beings have nothing to do with it.

It’s obvious: our politicians and media outlets have failed to address a long-term existential threat. After exploiting virulent American anti-intellectualism for years, there is now no way Republican lawmakers can engage in science-based policy-making without risking electoral reprisals. But in the face of the planetary transformations wrought by the burgeoning greenhouse effect, ignorance is a costly and immoral luxury we can no longer afford.

Warren Senders