Nick Kristof, the man responsible for the crappiest New York Times column ever, has produced one of the crappiest tweets in recent memory.
He implies that the shrinkage of Lake Chad, once the eighth-largest lake in the world, constitutes clear-cut evidence of “climate change,” by which he means global warming caused by rising man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
According to this report by Worldlakes.org, however, Lake Chad “completely dried up four times between 1400 and 1910″ a period of time that largely preceded increases in industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
The Lake started to dry up again by the end of the 1960s, due to drought: “Within a decade the lake had shrunk to about one-tenth of its normal area.” This was in the 1970s, when some people were more worried about global cooling than global warming.
As Twitter user @VictorB123 notes, inefficient irrigation projects contributed to the lake’s shrinkage:
http://twitter.com/#!/VictorB123/status/354870197821251584Even Kristof had to admit “all that’s true” but he continued to blame changes in the local climate:
http://twitter.com/#!/NickKristof/status/354870502122201088Of course, climate changes. Always has, always will.
http://twitter.com/#!/VictorB123/status/354870816053264385 http://twitter.com/#!/VictorB123/status/354871058811191296 http://twitter.com/#!/VictorB123/status/354871269054877696Kristof’s got two Pulitzer prizes, but @VictorB123 has got facts and logic on his side. It was no contest.
(Hat tip: Sooper Mexican.)
