Warranted responses maybe overstated. Fear may be unwarranted. (We can only hope.)

In response to Ms. Winters’ Climate Change on the Back Burner, Stir as Needed I would like to add my opinion to this discussion. She is correct that more attention needs to be paid the issue, but I am going to demonstrate how it is going to be almost impossible to accomplish anything.

On the one hand, Climate Change is a very real problem and needs to be dealt with. On the other hand, climatology as a discipline seems to be still in its infancy and I’m not entirely convinced that we really understand the full implications of Global Warming.

Certainly predictions such as those coming from Dr. Aiguo Dai are worth heeding, but we should be careful to make sure that there is strong consensus from climatologists before instituting policy. Even he admits that most climate change experts don’t really recognize his projections yet. The 2009 Australian dust storm, while the most dramatic in 70 years, is not unheard of. See the Melbourne dust storm of 1983. The problem with being an expert in a field such as climatology is there is going to be a huge incentive to exaggerate dire predictions for the purpose of gaining all important attention and research money. So while I do agree something needs to be done about Global Warming, I would like to see Dr. Dai’s predictions supported elsewhere.

As far as what to actually do about Global Warming, Ms. Winters is right in saying that this issue is going to be tabled for quite sometime. Between a focus on fighting debt, and a government and populous that is generally opposed to dealing with this problem, we are very limited to what we can do. Furthermore, as the US produces about 1/5^th the world’s carbon dioxide, there is a great burden of responsibility on this country with respect to the issue of Global Warming. Yet at the same time, that means we have a major economic incentive to ignore the problem. China, the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide (still at about 1/5^th of the world’s CO2) also has major economic incentive to hope this problem goes away.

So between more immediate political problems, economic disincentives, apparent conflict within the scientific community, and general public disbelief, this problem is not going to take care of itself on a political level. Even presuming the above problems did not exist, there would still be the question of exactly how to go about fixing global warming. Is it too late? Have we already reached critical pollution mass? What sorts of programs will stop this looming disaster? What sorts of programs will just protect us? What is feasible? Assuming still that we could coherently answer these questions, there is still the matter of funding. What would it take? How much would it cost?

So, whatever is coming, balmy winter temperatures or weather Armageddon, it looks like our countries’ citizens and politicians will do little to stop it. It will take powerful grassroots movement. It will have to be so forceful, so insistent, that people have to take notice. Or not. No pressure.

In the end, I just hope its bad science.
That’s what I hope.
It’s not what I believe.