Global Warming hardly ever mentioned anymore

Front page news of the world’s troubled economy, gas and oil wars, middle east tensions, have all usurped our planet’s condition in terms of global importance. Some will argue that the global warming press coverage commonplace just five years ago wasn’t justified, that it was media hoopla. To believe that is akin to burying your head in the sand.  Global warming isn’t better than it was in 2007. It’s worse!  According to the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists, in 2010 global emissions of carbon dioxide jumped by the largest amount on record. Yet for the most part, in 2012, global warming warnings continue to be tempered, distorted, and ignored. While the preponderance of the world’s scientific leaders believe that global warming threatens the existence of all life forms on this planet, skeptics continue to voice loud contrary opinions. Disproportionately, a large number of these skeptics are from the governing institutions of of the United States who continually ridicule international efforts to curb global warming.

Five years ago I posted an article relating to the contentions of global warming. I wrote the article after I had eavesdropped on a conversation at a coffee shop between two 20-somethings. The peak line for me went something like this.  “Global warming, yeah, yeah, global warming, keep it coming, it keeps me warm in Boston. I need it.”  For most of America, global warming is esoteric, overblown, false, no big deal, or catastrophic. If the conversation is serious, two core questions arise: Is it man made? Does it threaten our existence? The problem for the green movement is that science cannot completely agree, and thus the mission for a cleaner planet gets murky. The mission itself gets polluted.  If you’d like to read the article, it’s right here:

 God-given Commonsense view on Global Warming

David Marsh, April 6, 2007

LOS ANGELES, California – The deadly cyclone that tore through the island of Madagascar last month affecting more than 130,000 people was caused by global warming, claims a local scientist —

The BBC’s green bashing documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” which aired last month in Great Britain is now causing a flash storm in the United States —

The divisive debate on global warming is one of the most puzzling and mind boggling I’ve experienced. Temperature anomalies aside, from my eyes, our world does not look even remotely as clean and lovely as it did 30 years ago. I remember swimming in the glorious French Mediterranean when I was a kid, and the sea looked and felt nothing like it does today, oily and green. As a kid, the night skies were alive with millions of bright twinkling stars, the air in the city still smelled of trees and flowers, not nausea inducing gas fumes, and the Antarctic was a continent of ice. So I know first hand that the planet has changed significantly over these years. It’s been polluted, and the polluting continues. You don’t need to be a scientist to figure out that our planet is reacting to pollution, you just need to use your God-given commonsense.

Most of us pick up our news intake in mini bytes, a few minutes at the computer, another few flipping TV channels, a conversation at the water cooler. Not surprisingly, when we hear a seemingly sensible argument debunking the entire global warming theory, it tends to muddle our thinking. Point in case: myself. After watching Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” I pretty much thought to myself, well, that’s it, game over. Then I started hearing the other side, scathing counters by the likes of CNN’s Glenn Beck and journalist Robert Tracinski who wrote a post “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” in which he slams certain media outlets for calling carbon dioxide a pollutant, and my thinking of doom and gloom began to soften, which arguably might be a good thing.

The problem is the debunkers tend to do more harm than the alarmists. The debunkers tend to make people forget commonsense, so much so that when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their latest findings on Global warming, almost every person I spoke to about the report, and it wasn’t a few, laughed it off. These people, it seems, would rather drown in their polluted cities or maybe die of thirst in the same places rather than entertain the notion that our planet is conveying some sort of message.

Let’s play the devil’s advocate for a moment. Let’s say the IPCC has it all wrong, and that the changes in our climate are temporary and very normal, a view akin to the stance of the recent BBC documentary. Governments will spend fortunes needlessly implementing environmental changes, many industries will be forced to conform to the new paradigm or fold, people will have to curb their environmental onslaught, new clean power inventions will overtake the old systems, the skies and oceans will take on a cleaner look and feel, and smog and fuel stinking streets will become memories of the past. What a terrible thought, huh?

Though technically correct with his commentary on what carbon dioxide is, right wing journalist Robert Tracinski and others of like mind who decry global warming activism, are guilty of making millions of Americans lethargically indifferent to environmental pollution, which, rightly or wrongly, is locked hand in hand with global warming. Keeping the status quo is not a good thing. Debunking the hundreds of climatology scientists who are 90% certain that human produced carbon gases are contributing to global climatic changes is not a good thing. Even if the less than 100% degree of certainty in a court of law would result in a verdict of reasonable doubt, does the world really want to let global warming go free, which means letting polluters go free? Can humanity afford to guess with our future? Surely it makes more sense to err on the side of caution, even if the climate concerns are overstated.

What really amazes me is why there are so many outspoken voices against global warming awareness from individuals without any vested interest in the automotive industry or the oil industry, in fact from any major pollution causing industry. To the millions of plain, hardworking people in America who believe wholeheartedly that global warming is hyped, not so bad, a hoax, a liberal minded ploy, all I can say is this: Are you ready to bet your life on it, and the lives of your children and grandchildren? How sure are you that we are not on the verge of massive species extinction and what makes you think man is exempt?

While some scientific/media reports paint an alarming picture of our future on this planet, and others make light of the subject, and while the political posts use each viewpoint at whim, bending and distorting the facts, you would be hard pressed to find a practicing, employed scientist who rejects the notion of man’s involvement in global warming. Even Dr. John Christy, one of the leading climatologists in America, most notably recognized for his outspoken contrary opinions on some global warming issues, has publicly stated that “It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the atmosphere and sending quantities of greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate change hasn’t been increased in the past century.”

As the climate debate rages on, as fierce as the weather in the southern hemisphere this year, we seem to lose perspective of one of the core values of the green movement: loving the earth. Even if carbon dioxide is not the cause of global warming, the pollution from industry, from cars and boats and planes definitely affects all living things on our planet, and not in a positive way. So the bottom line is this: If commonsense tells you global warming awareness will lead to planetary respect, then maybe you’d like to pass on this message of hope and change. If on the other you don’t feel we should err on the side of caution, feel free to e-mail me why we should carry on as normal, and by all means pick up my novel “Into the Abyss” not so much about global warming as global respect.