The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal’s “Best of the Web” at WSJ written by the editor, James Taranto.

You Would Even Say It Glows
“Radioactivity in Norway’s Reindeers [sic] Hits High”–headline, TheLocal .no, Oct. 6

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • “Small Kitchen Fire Causes Slight Disruption at MSP Airport”–headline, Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.), Oct. 6
  • “Overturned Semi on I-40 Isn’t Affecting Traffic”–headline, WBIR-TV website (Knoxville, Tenn.), Oct. 7

When in Doubt, Change the Subject
A piece in Nature from David Victor and Charles Kennel urges global warm-mongers to “Ditch the 2 °C Warming Goal.” Here’s how they put the argument:

For nearly a decade, international diplomacy has focused on stopping global warming at 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. This goal–bold and easy to grasp–has been accepted uncritically and has proved influential. . . .

Bold simplicity must now face reality. Politically and scientifically, the 2 °C goal is wrong-headed. Politically, it has allowed some governments to pretend that they are taking serious action to mitigate global warming, when in reality they have achieved almost nothing. Scientifically, there are better ways to measure the stress that humans are placing on the climate system than the growth of average global surface temperature–which has stalled since 1998 and is poorly coupled to entities that governments and companies can control directly.

Failure to set scientifically meaningful goals makes it hard for scientists and politicians to explain how big investments in climate protection will deliver tangible results. Some of the backlash from ‘denialists’ is partly rooted in policy-makers’ obsession with global temperatures that do not actually move in lockstep with the real dangers of climate change.

To put it more concisely: Those predictions of global warming turned out to be wrong, so now we need to predict some other alarming outcome that’s too vague to falsify, but trust us, it’s alarming.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”