Green Atlanta

This week’s edition of The Sunday Paper, with its cover “Is Gore Wrong?” is the latest example of a press that is at best overly scrupulous about giving “equal time” to both sides of an issue, at worst hostile to policies that might harm their advertisers and/or owners, or something in between.

Though the story itself can claim some balance (one scientist who agrees that humans are causing the globe to warm is quoted), the bulk is given over to coverage of a rally in Marietta by a group claiming impartiality but which clearly opposes any attempts by government to contribute to a solution.  The cover and the oversized blurbs both emphasize opposition to global-warming science.  There are also quotes from scientists who believe that rising temperatures are due to solar wind, an increased discharge by the sun of charged particles that prevent cosmic rays from reaching the earth’s atmosphere.  Cosmic rays, the theory goes, increase cloud cover, shading and cooling the earth’s surface, so when the solar wind blocks them the earth warms.  See this article for a debunking of this line of thinking.   

Two things this writer would note about The Sunday Paper article:

1.  Though the article definitely gives more attention to the skeptics, at least it does not devote any space to the claim one still hears often in conversation- that the planet is not getting warmer.  Even the 400 scientists the article claims challenge aspects of the prevailing science apparently at least acknowledge that Earth is heating up.  Last week’s projections for the disappearing ice at the North Pole certainly back this up.

What the article does not say is that even most of the well-known climate skeptics who are also climate scientists, such as Patrick Michaels (see his book The Satanic Gases) actually acknowledges that the  science makes sense.  Where skeptics disagree with the mainstream is in their belief that any warming won’t be that bad, or that it might actually be beneficial.

We will never be able to confirm absolutely that either increased concentrations of greenhouse gases or a bigger solar wind are causing particular changes in our climate- how could we?  We will also never be able to predict infallibly how much warmer things will get as a result- how could we? 

But given what could happen- a cascade of feedback loops; extreme weather events; disappearing coasts, agricultural lands, and habitats; extinctions; and all the resulting problems for human civilization- is it worth taking the risk that the skeptics, who are in a distinct minority, are right?  Much is made in the article about the potential outlawing of incandescent light bulbs.  Are we willing to play dice  with our civilization, even with our children’s and possibly with our survival, to preserve our “right” to read by an incandescent bulb instead of a fluorescent one?

2.  The article notes that a member of the group organizing the rally handed out $8 bills bearing Gore’s likeness and which said, “Good for one gallon of gas.”  The bill suggests that Gore is the cause of expensive gas, but the reality, of course, is much different, and it is Gore and others who favor emissions reductions who actually have a plan to keep us away from $8 gas.  They support a set of policies that would promote a world where people would not need to buy gas at all, or very little- cars would largely run on something else entirely. 

What will lead to $8 gas is a continued reliance on gas as our source of vehicle fuel.  Domestic production of oil, whether it is in ANWR or offshore, won’t change that, as the federal government itself attests (see here and here).