Stoopid Stuff

Global Warming - Teaching old Dogma New Tricks

Look, I'm not a climate scientist. I don't play one on TV. My scientific interests run more to high energy physics, astrophysics and cosmology. But I remember very clearly, decades ago in high school science class, learning about the "Greenhouse Effect". That is, gasses in a planet's atmosphere would trap and reflect solar heat, making the planet warmer than it might otherwise have been. Back then, nobody was talking about Global Warming, let alone the causes of it. But it is clearly reasonable science that it could happen, given what we know about the heat-trapping properties of greenhouse gasses.

And yet, we have these people, all of them clearly with an agenda, taking a page out of the Discovery Institute's playbook and trying to create some kind of contraversy around global climate change. So maybe we need to rephrase the position in order to give these trogolodytes a little less firm ground to stand on.

We know the science is sound - greenhouse gasses trap heat and raise temperatures. We know that, given the records and information available to us, this SEEMS to be happening. The people arguing agains have only two positions. One, that it's part of a natural cycle and not the inexorable march up the thermometer's scale it appears to be, and two, global temperatures are rising, but human activities have nothing to do with it. These positions lead to the same conclusion - If it's a natural cycle, there's no need to do anything, it will reverse itself, and if temperatures are rising but it's not due to human activity, anything we would do would be futile, so why sacrifice? These are dangerous, short-sighted positions, but I think we should ask a different question.

If we can begin to reduce carbon output, through conservation, technology and economics, why shouldn't we? Everywhere people are working to reduce greenhouse gasses, through offsets and cleaner technology and conservation, it has economic advantages. From communities using LEDs in stoplights to Toyota scoring a hit with the Prius to people buying offsets for their personal air travel, movement toward a more energy secure future with lower greenhouse gas emissions seems to contribute to economic activity rather than reduce it.

Senator Inhofe is in the pocket of big oil, and should therefore have no credibility, but he and his ilk are dangerous. Imagine a meteor was discovered on a collision course with earth, three years out. Now the scientists would have to say things like "very strong likelihood of impacting" or "80% probability of hitting the earth, 55% probability of hitting near a population center". Would it make sense for people to recomend that we do nothing, because it's likely it either won't hit us or if it does, it won't harm us? Of course not. We would try to find a way to destroy or deflect it. Why? Because it is a near-term risk. Why is it that we won't eat cyanide, but we'll smoke cigarettes? They both kill us, but one kills us right away, the other slowly, over many years.

All we can do, indeed all we NEED do, is to work around these people. Ignore them, marginalize them to whatever extent possible, and keep taking steps that will avert global warming. In the long term, it could make us extinct, and that's about as important as anything can be.

posted by mikey @ 11:05 AM