Seriously, though, what's going on in the world of climate change? From the perspective of someone who follows political news first and environmental news to a lesser extent, it seems as though the environmental movement has lost steam.
As of a couple years ago, it seemed like things were going strong. Al Gore's efforts, including the release of An Inconvenient Truth, put climate change in the headlines for a while. Additionally, the previous year's hurricane season (2005) had been the most active on record, with oddities like a cyclone hitting Portugal...and Katrina, of course.
When I took EAS 268 (Climate & Global Warming) last spring, environmentalism was very much still "in." High gas prices helped push reluctant policymakers to state that something had to be done about our carbon emissions, if for no other reason than to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
So, what happened? Here are a few of my ideas:
1. The environment became a non-issue in the presidential election. John McCain came out in favor of reducing emissions, etc. Even T. Boone Pickens was running ads, and he was about the last person you'd expect to "go green." Whereas the previous years had featured Gore & the environmentalists versus Bush & the polluters, 2008 didn't have any of these clear matchups. Even Bush, in his last few months, was making statements about the environment. Without conflicts between the candidates, the media focused less on this issue and more about foreign policy, tax cuts, and other more controversial things.
2. The economy skewed governments' priorities. As I quoted a few days ago from the must-read Telegraph (UK) column, with a collapsing economy, it was suddenly much less appealing to spend large sums on climate change mitigation.
3. It's been cold. Global temperatures were down this year, particularly over the last couple months, where it's been cold and snowy throughout much of the U.S., Canada, and Europe. While hardly a scientific measurement, what people observe outside their window dictates to a considerable extent how much of this global warming business they believe.
4. NASA has been blundering around. The agency declared that this October was the warmest October on record, due mainly to significantly above-average readings from parts of Siberia. In a highly embarassing incident, a blogger discovered that NASA had mistakenly plugged in Siberia temperature data from September, which was presumably warmer than the October numbers. NASA was forced to go back and correct their algorithm.
Despite all this, from my own education, it seems like there is no reason to doubt that global warming is occurring. A key point from EAS 268 was that temperatures do not need to increase each year to indicate a warming trend. We could see cooler temperatures for several more years, but this would not slow the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We know that these gases will cause warmer temperatures. And any credible climate scientist will reach this conclusion.
Another interesting factor is a tremendous decrease in solar wind this year:
"The average pressure of the solar wind has dropped more than 20% since the mid-1990s," says Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is the weakest it's been since we began monitoring solar wind almost 50 years ago."Scientists aren't sure what the effect of this decrease will be, but it's worth considering that it might be contributing to the cool temperatures we've been seeing.
Taking one climate class doesn't qualify me to be a scientist, but as someone who follows the news I'm worried that our environmental issues may no longer carry the sense of urgency they require. As I wrote in an editorial for the Progressive in December, Obama's election won't by itself solve any of the major problems facing our nation, including the environment. I hope Obama will take advantage of historic Democratic majorities in both houses to address the environment.
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