Science and Politics

Just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change moves closer to consensus on global warming, the US Govt finally, sort of, acknowledges that, sure, climate change could be happening.

An article in today's Times discusses the Panel's findings and soon-to-come report, which will lay out the science behind climate change and define what this change will cause. While there is some disagreement on the panel, it centers on differences in projections of just how much the sea level will rise during the 21st century. Not if, but how much.

Points to be made in the report include:

--The Arctic Ocean could largely be devoid of sea ice during summer later in the century.

--Europe’s Mediterranean shores could become barely habitable in summers, while the Alps could shift from snowy winter destinations to summer havens from the heat.

--Growing seasons in temperate regions will expand, while droughts are likely to ravage further the semiarid regions of Africa and southern Asia.

The squabbling among the scientists, mild though it is, is focused on revising projections of sea level rises due to newer, lower estimates having left out "recent observations of instability in some ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland."

Meanwhile in the good ol US of A, we're still not totally sure that this is even happening. Our political ostriches, motivated by greed not by fear, still worry that we're being fooled by overzealous greenies bent on letting China and India surpass us as the strongest global economic players.

Since the GOP has lost control of Congress, though, change will come. Barbara Boxer is the new head of the Environment and Public Works Committee, ousting James Inhofe, moron and Republican of Oklahoma, who claimed that climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. According to Inhofe, even still, "There is no convincing scientific evidence" that human activity is causing global warming... We all know the Weather Channel would like to have people afraid all the time."

I don't even think this merits comment.

But, at least the time has come for this to be up for public debate. We're not afraid of talking about it anymore which, shockingly and sadly, is a big step forward.

One of the worst things about this governmental idiocy, as I see it, is that we're missing the biggest economic opportunity to come along in recent memory. Green energy will happen. It has to. And instead of jumping out ahead of the world and developing technologies that everyone will want and need, we go after the ANWR, we buy bigger vehicles, we keep dumping money into the pockets of those we fight in the war on terror. We continue to do what we've always done.

Change will come. But is 2008 too late?