MODERN TIMES
by Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 25 June 2005
THE GLOBAL WARMING STORY
USA fiddles while Earth burns
Earth now absorbs
0.85 watts per square meter more energy from the sun than it emits to
space--equivalent to an 0.85-watt heater placed over every square meter on the
planet. To put it another way,
this energy imbalance is equivalent to the effect of 400,000 huge 1000-megawatt
power plants that put their entire energy output into heating the planet. This is the amount of energy now going
into global warming.
Hundreds of glaciers
are melting all over the Antarctic Peninsula, where climate has warmed by 3.5
degrees since 1950. The huge West
Antarctic ice sheet is partially disintegrating and sliding seaward. Global temperatures rose by one degree
during the twentieth century, sea levels are rising, there's been a five
percent increase in the frequency of heavy rains in the USA, carbon dioxide
concentrations are at by far their highest level in half a million years,
Alaskan temperatures are up by seven degrees since 1950, the Arctic ice cap has
thinned by 40 percent since 1950, the edges of the Greenland ice sheet are melting away, mountain glaciers are
retreating all over the world, spring thaws are occurring earlier worldwide,
upper atmospheric water vapor is increasing, Europe's recent record-breaking
hot and deadly summers have been linked to global warming, and there are
literally thousands of research reports about biological changes caused by
recent global warming. The World Health
Organization estimates that global warming already accounts for more than
160,000 deaths annually.
Nature
is speaking to us loud and clear, but President Bush and most Americans are not
listening. Like the (partly
fictitious) story of Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned, the USA fiddles
while Earth burns.
Not long ago,
America was the world's environmental leader instead of its laggard. Through the Carter and Reagan
presidencies, we led the fight against ozone depletion; you can find my June 11
column on this at http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/. That fight culminated in 1986 with the signing of a sweeping
treaty that quickly did away with essentially all ozone-destroying chemicals,
including the extremely profitable refrigerating fluid marketed as freon. Powerful corporations such as Dow and
Dupont had the good sense to support the ozone treaty, and sufficient business
acumen to reap big profits by being first in line to produce non-destructive replacements
for the banned chemicals. The ozone
story shows that it's possible to take radical action against global
environmental problems, that U.S. business can play a wise supporting role even
when enormous profits are at stake, and that the USA knows how to lead on these
issues.
The global warming
story, on the other hand, is an absurd and tragic farce. Present harm and future catastrophe
stare us in the face, while our president rejects the Kyoto treaty on global
warming as bad for business. Alert
consumers opt for highly efficient automobiles partly in response to global
warming, while General Motors rejects hybrid vehicles and pursues its giant
SUVs and thus continues losing sales to environmentally-aware foreign
competitors. British Prime Minister
Tony Blair implores our president to support global warming action at the
coming G8 economic conference, while Bush mumbles platitudes about conducting
further climate research. The news
media consider the fate of the planet to be too abstract to consume the
valuable minutes that they could otherwise devote to pop stars, murders, and
Hollywood intrigues. Many people
prefer to put their faith in novels like Michael Chrichton's State of Fear rather than in the published findings of thousands of
serious scientists.
Science itself is
partly responsible for our nation's folly, because science teachers have not
educated public school or college students about science-related social
problems such as global warming.
On the other hand, scientists have, to their credit, extensively
researched global warming and have tried to warn the public. An unprecedented joint statement from
the leading scientific academies of the eight nations involved in the G8
summit, plus Brazil, India, and China, warns that governments must no longer
procrastinate on global warming, which the academies see as humanity's gravest
danger.
President Bush's
anti-science and pro-fossil fuel ideology have been evident for years. This administration has repeatedly
ignored the findings of the thousands of scientists participating in the
ongoing scientific consensus represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. He ignored a 2002
U.S. National Academy of Sciences report that he himself had requested. When his own Department of State
reported to the United Nations that global warming is caused by humans and is a
danger to the world, he derided it as "a report put out by the
bureaucracy." He removed the
section on climate change from a 2002 Environmental Protection Agency
report. He tampered with a 2003
EPA report, specifically demanding deletion of a 1000-year temperature record
that contradicted his own opinions, insertion of a reference to a discredited
study funded by the American Petroleum Institute, and elimination of the
report's overall conclusion. EPA
director Christine Whitman says the situation was so "brutal" that
she opted to delete the entire global warming section. Bush pressured the UN to replace U.S.
scientist Robert Watson as head of the IPCC because the oil industry didn't
like Watson's conclusions.
The president and most Americans are following the pseudoscientific fantasy of determining one's conclusions before considering the evidence. But nature cannot be fooled. We'd better start listening to her.