Is it getting warm in here?
Nineteen climate scientists recently were asked to review former
Vice President Al Gore’s documentary about client change for
accuracy.
The consensus: Gore got it right.
Is it getting warm in here?
Nineteen climate scientists recently were asked to review former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary about client change for accuracy.
The consensus: Gore got it right.
That should not be greeted as good news, because when it comes to global warming, it’s not a good thing to be able to say “I told you so.”
The picture Gore paints is dire. He talks of increasingly violent hurricanes, New York City inundated by rising ocean levels, much of Florida disappearing for the same reason and catastrophic droughts.
If anything, Gore did not go far enough, according to one researcher. The Associated Press quoted Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, as saying Gore’s position that existing technology and a change in habit can avert global warming is over-optimistic.
The movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is in limited release. But already, more than 1 million people have seen it.
Scientists, even those skeptical about human-influenced climate change, agreed that Gore only erred in the smallest of details.
Like the former vice president himself, the movie may not get universal raves for its entertainment value.
“My wife fell asleep,” the AP reported Scripps Institution geosciences Professor Jeff Severinghous saying. “Of course, I was on the edge of my chair.”
What has me scratching my head is why acknowledgement among leading scientists that our pollution is changing the climate is not front-page news. It’s not being actively discussed in Congress. People are not converting their Hummers into studio apartments. It’s not being discussed around our water cooler.
We may be setting a series of events into motion that would render the planet profoundly less habitable. We’re changing the climate.
I suspect the answer to why it’s not being discussed is like the 400-pound gorilla in the room. It’s too big a topic to deal with, so let’s not deal with it. The gorilla may eventually leave the room, but the climate will not return to normal unless we act.
Ultimately, that will mean that we live a little differently or we may not live at all.
While we have some of the strictest clean air laws around, the sheer amount of energy we consume means that Americans remain significant polluters. That’s a sorry legacy to leave to our children and grandchildren.
On the brighter side, the same day’s news carried notice that a pair of whooping cranes hatched two chicks in central Wisconsin, the first hatchlings to emerge in the wild in the eastern U.S. in over a century.
The wild birds will join some two dozen young cranes that are being introduced through Operation Migration, a nonprofit group trying to build the eastern flock. These magnificent white birds standing more than four feet tall inspire more than awe. They breed a kind of lunacy in their advocates.
With a wild population numbering little more than 100, volunteers and scientists go to extraordinary lengths to ensure their well-being. Some have been assisted in migration by people piloting ultralight aircraft painted to resemble a king-sized crane.
The return of wild breeding signals an important milestone for the statuesque birds.
