On the east coast there is a heat wave making the climate change debate more intense. The debate was hot when blizzards hit the east also. Extreme weather events are getting used by both sides to support their global warming arguments within the debate about climate change and energy bill in Congress. And just in time for the heat wave, a British panel exonerated the “Climategate” scientists, saying it found no evidence that the group manipulated any of their research to back up global warming. Meanwhile, 2010 is shaping up to be the warmest year in history.
Heat wave is going global
The heat wave is mostly hitting the news because it’s cooking places like New York and Washington where the national media hang out. Other places in the world are hot also. The heat wave has gone global according to the Christian Science Monitor. Beijing hit a near-record 105 degrees Fahrenheit. On July 6 in Baghdad and Riyadh, it was 113 and 111 degrees. Kuwait set the day’s world temperature high at 122 degrees. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) reports combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the first five months of the year was the warmest on record, and 1.22 degrees warmer than the 20th century average.
More heat waves and blizzards caused by the climate change
During March blizzards, climate change skeptics mocked Al Gore. But will heat waves continue if carbon emissions aren’t reduced? It was reported by TIME the fact that no single weather event is caused by climate change is clear, but politicians and lobbyists will make an effort to use them in the climate and energy bill debate anyway. Actually, weather and climate aren’t the exact same thing. Figuring out precisely how climate change affects the weather is tricky. But blizzards and heat waves conform to a general scientific consensus that climate change will result in more extreme weather.
Climategate scientists’ research could be legitimate
The above climate change argument is the position of the Climategate scientists, a group of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. As outlined by the New York Times, these individuals have played a leading role in efforts to understand the earth’s climate. Last year some e-mail messages sent by the scientists about global warming were stolen and posted to the Internet. Politicians, lobbyists and other global warming skeptics seized upon the e-mails as proof that the scientists were hiding data that conflicted with their positions on global warming. But a report by the panel investigating Climategate said no evidence was found of behavior that might undermine their conclusions.
Better safe than sorry – climate change
Climate change is such a controversial issue because climate science is complex and hard to explain, and the individuals doing the explaining still do not understand climate as well as they would like. This opens windows of opportunity arguments on both sides of the issue. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post points out that if we can’t deal with a disaster like the oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico 2010, how are we going to reverse concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere?
Carbon tax with the idea pay me now or pay me later
This leads us to the climate and energy bill and its intended cap and trade system or carbon tax. Republicans against government intervention are potentially setting up a future in which the government is forced to intervene on a planetary scale. Klein said he’s a lot more comfortable with the government’s ability to levy a carbon tax now than its ability to repair the atmosphere later on. That’s why when faced with the choice between being avoiding the economic risk of a carbon tax or taking a step to preserve the future of the planet, we should choose the planet.
More information accessible at these sites:
Christian Science Monitor
csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0707/Global-heat-wave-hits-US-reignites-climate-change-debate
TIME
ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/07/06/turning-up-the-heat-on-climate-change/?xid=rss-topstories
New York Times
nytimes.com/2010/07/08/science/earth/08climate.html?src=mv
Washington Post
voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/the_case_for_being_careful_wit.html
