Hell and High Water: Global Warming–the Solution and the Politics–and What We Should Do
Hell and High Water: Global Warming–the Solution and the Politics–and What We Should Do – Review
The author outlines the great case that, with a ninety per cents certainty, global warming is a fact and humans usually caused it. On our present course and over a time of various decades or a team of centuries – nobody knows how long – the glacial ice caps will melt and sea level will rise 20 to 80 feet. Great cities made on coastlines throughout the world will be under water. Much of the mid -United States will become desert as will many other areas throughout the world. Economies will collapse. Climatologists have actually been hedging – this scenario is rosier than what they actually think. In the aspect of substantial data, why would the same people that rely on exact technology for air travel, cell phones, and extra eases of everyday life, deny the force of science when it comes to conclusions they don’t like? Joseph Romm answers this question on page 107. “Ideology trumps rationality. Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming – strong legislative regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean-energy technologies into the market.” To libertarians and to some conservatives, the villain is not global warming, it is concern of government. Unfortunately, history exhibits that corporations don’t clean up their act voluntarily – they only do so when forced. As a affair of fact, corporations in the US conform to a set of specifically legislated rules that is overtly sociopathic. If they DON’T act strictly with self interest and profit in mind, they can be successfully sued by stock-holders (”The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power,” by Bakan). The charge of their PR departments is to present them as responsible environmental citizens when they’re not. So what techniques do naysayers use to combat this longtime concensus among scientists and rapidly growing concensus in the general public? They use the same techniques commonly used in political campaigns – programs thoroughly thought out by think tanks that seek to make both parts of an issue begin to be what they are not. More than 2/3 of this book is officially dedicated to the political fights over global warming. At the probability of eventually losing half my readers, these are the same techniques Intelligent Design advocates use against the model of evolution, and for similar reasons. You don’t see any groups clamoring for different views about tiny structure in high school physics classes – but early physics is not widely perceived as a threat to a particularly cherished belief system. In both cases, a firmly held ideology prevents fair review of the data. In both cases (Evolution and Global Warming), the theory can be greatly reduced to basics and clearly understood. In both cases, the currently learning curve is steep for an thorough kind of the subject matter, leaving plenty of room for strong spin to the casual observer (most of us). In closing, may I paraphrase from memory an observation that Robert Wright (author of “The Moral Animal”) made: “Humans have an fine range of proper equipment, a persistent tendency to misuse this equipment, and are tragically unaware of this misuse.” The naysayers really believe they’re doing the right thing – at least some of them. The systematic method may not be perfect, but it has proven over and over to be the closest we’re tring to come to the truth, and it’s self-correcting. History exhibits that the findings of science are finally accepted. I hope governments consider and act on the concept of global warming sooner rather than later. The earth doesn’t care. Ninety-nine percent of the species that have still existed are now extinct and earth isn’t going somewhere for several billion years no matter what we do to it. Nor is life likely to be completely wiped out – just species that evolve very slowly to make proper adjustments to climate change, including mainly of the large mammals. I hope it’s not our turn.