Letters to the Editor
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So she doesn't like Global Warming because... it's well-accepted?
I am a graduate student in geology and geophysics at the University of Hawai'i. I have some education about the scientific global warming research that has been done, and in watching Al Gore's movie I found it to be an effective and accurate Climatology 101 lecture.
Paglia goes on and on about having an appreciation for geologic processes, but after re-reading her paragraphs the only criticism I think she's making is that she dislikes "dogma", so if all the scientists tell her one thing then she wants to believe the opposite. That's terrifically logical.
In February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report stating that, with ~90% confidence, human carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for the observed global warming of the past century and beyond, and that human influence since AD 1750 has pushed CO2 levels higher than they've been in the last 650,000 years. This is not your typical 20,000-year ice age cycle, and it is the consensus view of the world's climate scientists. Al Gore was right to report such findings to Congress.
It is as if Camille Paglia likes to have opinions for the sake of having opinions, and making any kind of factual inquiry before forming an opinion is too much to ask. Her digression about a mercury-contaminated factory at the end seems like a total non sequitur, but maybe she's alleviating a guilty conscience. She seems like the kind of administrator who would be skeptical about the dangers of mercury fumes so she would do nothing to fix the problem. If the kids hadn't been poisoned by mercury, they would have been poisoned by something else. Too bad for the kids, and for New York City too.