The April 3, 2006 issue of Time Magazine is out just as oil prices begin to rise again. It is a special report on global warming with its cover proclaiming: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried: Climate change isn't some vague future problem--it's already damaging the planet at an alarming pace. Here's how it affects you, your kids and their kids as well."
For anyone not really following this issue closely, the articles in this McDonald's of periodicals offer a great, fairly simple foray into some of the main issues surrounding climate change and global warming.
For those of us who think we know everything (which, in this field, is impossible), reading each of these admittedly short, sound-bite-like pieces is essential. The problem of global warming is still in the "convince-the-voter-that-it's-real" phase. Reading these Time pieces will give you a good feel for what is currently being digested by lay-people. Going further, the journalists who wrote these pieces are a good example of said lay-people with enough information to be dangerous. The thrust of the information presented by Time is that global warming is here and it's going to get worse.
Heavy-handed? Yes. True? Yes. Life has never been so bafflingly interesting, has it?
VISUALIZING DISASTER
As you'd expect, Time offers some awesome photos of natural calamities: a polar bear stranded on ice floes, cattle trekking through droughtland, and a young man and girl floating on a raft in a swamped Indian village. The lead article, "The Tipping Point," provides us with all the basics: touching on the Gaia hypothesis, examples of global climate catastrophes (droughts, typhoons, hurricanes, accelerated glacier shifts, predictions of sea levels rising), and the latest poll information showing that 85% of respondents agree that global warming probably is happening (which I'm going to bet is the last straw that the editor's needed to make this project a go).
Overall, the multiple articles here are laid out well, providing excellent charts and graphs, beautiful little stories, and tidbits of information on everything from Chinese energy engineering to the disappearance of harlequin frogs, shifts in butterfly migration, food scarcity experienced by African elephants, Sweden's new Ministry of Sustainable Development, corporate America's positive approach to climate protection, some of the basic economic questions surrounding taxing carbon, the rise of eco-evangelicals, the impact of India and China on the greenhouse gas problem, and some basic information on the idea behind carbon trading organizations.
Probably the most insightful aspect of this special report is the attention the editors gave to the surprising feedback loops and interrelationships between climate phenomena that scientists are only just now beginning to see. For instance, as the poles melt they give way to heat absorbing warmer water. The less ice covering the earth, the less heat is reflected back into outerspace. And, as the northern waters of the Western Hemisphere rise in temperature, ocean currents, especially the Gulf Stream, will shift, meaning that Europe, where climate is modified by the Gulf Stream, may well experience longer and colder winters--much longer and much colder, according to some.
GROUND BASIC?
As an example of how surface-level Time's articles can be, they have a page called "The Climate Crusaders," which is a 3/4-page photo of Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, and a two paragraph, 180-word "article" on carbon trading as a concept--which he more or less gets credit for inventing. This page really does very little to educate the lay-person on the fact that there are a number of phenomenally creative entrepreneurs and investment funds out there providing a host of solutions to global warming through carbon funds and emissions trading.
In fact, if you really care about the solutions to global warming (or if you like good news), you should subscribe to In Business immediately. This month's features at their web site are on reconstituting local food networks (featuring ReVision Farm located in Boston); and on Portland, Oregon, one of the most sustainable cities in the country (a city committed to reducing GHG emissions while simultaneously building a vibrant economy). I will be doing a piece for them on carbon fund organizations over the summer.
WHAT THEY SKIPPED
Time has ignored some really big issues that are essential for everyone to understand. First, they offer us all sorts of horror-producing graphs that show projections for where we're going with sea levels, the global mean temperature, and levels of global CO2 emissions (an astounding visual). But it would really have been nice to see a graphic splitting out greenhouse gas emissions between the major end-use sectors. I mean, how much of the problem is transportation-related? How much electric power production? Industrial, commercial, etc.? (by my calculations, using data from the Energy Information Agency, the answer is: residential-21%; commercial-17%; industrial-29%; transportation-33%; electric power represents about 39% of total CO2 emissions).
Or how about a nice little list of the top-ten greenhouse gas emitting states? (Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, New York, Michigan and Louisiana--all responsible for about 50% of the nation's energy-related carbon dioxide emissions).
Secondly, providing documentation on the contributions of gases per fossil fuel and other sources (like methane from landfills) would also educate the public. The world's dependence on coal for electric power is about to increase dramatically over the next decade now that petroleum and natural gas prices are so high. Coal is a massive contributor to atmospheric CO2 emissions, contributing 32% to overall emissions and 82% to total electric power emissions.
Coal is a problem. A big problem. It is the biggest problem we have right now because world-wide policies are looking to invest heavily in coal-powered electricity for the next 10-20 years and although you hear a lot of talk about "clean coal" its debatable whether such massive investment is going to successfully make much of a dent in emissions reductions.
Time also offers nothing on fuel standards for the transportation industry, nor do they provide any information on the problem that urban sprawl creates by increasing the distances people have to drive daily (the average American commute has doubled in the last several decades). Time also doesn't delve into the politics of highway construction and the imbalance between funding fuel efficient mass transportation and the inefficiencies of automobile, truck and air travel.
Finally, on the business side of the equation, Time does not reference the turmoil that the insurance industry is going through in attempting to account for global warming and climate change catastrophes. Nor do they definitively tackle the issue of economic development and opportunity that technology innovation and new energy inventions provide the economy. The boom years of the 1990s were driven by an explosion in communications technologies (yes, folks, your computer is actually just a sophisticated multi-media communications device). Given the proper leadership, investment, and support, the next economic revolution can and will be in the energy-related fields. Just like computers, the goal is to eliminate dependence upon large-scale centralized systems and to liberate individuals, families, and businesses from today's energy networks. Time's message is Be Very Worried. How about: Be Very Bold?
I'm sure Time and Newsweek and the major broadcasters will cover these issues over the coming months, but leaving them out may well have the effect of creating blindsides for those who are concerned about the realities of our situation.
AH, MY CRITONIA!
Journalist David Ignatius called it in a January op-ed for the Washington Post. In "Is it Warm in Here," he wrote: "...we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind." Since then, the pot has started to simmer. Some journalists, in fact, are beginning to wonder if they were taken in by the Bush Administration (and the fossil fuel industry) the same way they were taken in by those in power regarding Iraq.
Things are picking up a bit in the mainstream, however. 60 Minutes aired a feature a few months ago that provided information on the Bush Administration's muzzling of James Hansen, a NASA scientist and director of the Goddard Space Institute, one of the world's foremost experts on the science (and data, which is key) surrounding global warming. It is my guess that ABC Nightly News, Newsweek, MSNBC, among others, will turn up the heat over the next few weeks heading into the summer. Now that the basics have been regurgitated by several major broadcasters, the wannabes and contrarians are going to step up with all manner of criticism, as will intelligent and thoughtful media outlets (in print and electronia) with a variety of detailed, hopefully new and enlightening stories to tell.
What's most intriguing right now, however, is that after Time put out their somewhat heavy-handed and predictable set of 200-worders with fantastic photography and interesting graphics, both Robert Novak and George Will produced for the mainstream equally heavy-handed and predictable criticisms of the anti-carbon elite. Forbes publisher Rich Kaarlgard also ran a blog entry along the same lines. There will be more, I assure you.
The arguments against global warming (especially from Will) as a concept are, as far as I can tell, a rehash of Michael Chrichton's shoddy reasoning in his infamous "novel" State of Fear (I post my responses in italics):
1. Climate change isn't real; the statistical error of minus or plus one degrees in world averages is far more likely than a "real" temperature increase of one degree (which is what most climatoligists currently agree on); besides, according to Robert Novak, "...[James Hansen] energized the global warming movement by predicting a temperature rise of 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the [the period of 1988-1998]. When the actual rise in surface temperatures over the decade was only 0.2 degrees, Hansen stepped back from his earlier predictions." Somehow Novak (and his compadre Chrichton) don't know the real story here. Hansen had done a sensitivity analysis with various scenarios--one of which was 0.8 degrees. The history of how things got distorted has been amply described by Gavin Schmidt (I believe) at RealClimate.org.
2. Even if there is global warming, it's really not that big a deal for those of us in moderate climates because a shorter winter (and earlier spring) is good for agriculture and tourism and probably a dozen other things. Yeah, right. Tell that to Katrina refugees. Also, the ski tourism industry is beginning to see the effects of warmer temperatures on their bottomlines. It's also just begging those near the equator and those in northern latitudes to migrate into the temperate zones. With world population going the way it is, I don't think we need more people in fewer and fewer places.
3. China and India were not required to adhere to the so-called Kyoto Protocol, so it's just darned unfair and that's why we shouldn't do anything. Bill Clinton wouldn't let us sign the KyotoProtocol. Congress wouldn't pass it. George Bush is just looking out for America. The people have spoken and this proves (somehow) that the global economics of climate protection are riddled with injustice. Kyoto was a 20th century enterprise folks. We're now in the 21st century and the shit is hitting the fan in far too many ways than any of us could have imagined. As far as climate change and global warming are concerned, there's no question that China and India need to get on board with mitigation, but unless the 800-pound gorilla (U.S.) sits down at the table and acts like a mature, thoughtful giant beast, the other beasts will continue to do what they want.
4. The big Chrichton argument against global warming (in his book anyway) is that back in the 1970s scientists and environmentalists were convinced that "global cooling" was wreaking havoc on the planet; by implication this means, I think, either that scientists and environmentalists can't be trusted to give us meaningful answers on big confusing questions or that things are so complicated and hard to understand that indecision is being proferred as a virtue. I remember the media hype back in the mid-70s. That was when climate science was just picking up speed. As far as I understand it, however, the notion that scientists were in consensus about global cooling is essentially a myth. For a critique and explanation of why the myth exists, check out "The Global Cooling Myth" at RealClimate.org (by the way, for the uninitiated, this really is the mother of all websites on the science of global warming because the contributors are the top climate scientists in the world including: Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Raymond Bradley, among others).
So, if you read Will, Novak, Kaarlgard and other post-Time/60 Minutes/ABC News/Ad Council nay-sayers over the summer, remember that their arguments are beginning to seem a bit anachronistic, canned, and pretty much uninformed by developments arising over the past 12-18 months. It's almost like they got together and came up with some talking points after reading Chrichton's ridiculous "novel" (I use quotes here because regardless of your politics, State of Fear is one of the most pitifully written, poorly-plotted, paper-doll best-sellers I have ever read. No self-respecting author would have let that story go to press. See my review at getunderground.com for more).
To conclude, there's a groundswell here. Maybe the 85% number in the opinion polls has tilted the media; maybe the fascinating new eco-evangelicals out there provide evidence that middle America isn't as split on the environment as we'd all assumed (back there in the old days--after the 2004 elections). Or, who knows, maybe liability insurance coordinators, risk specialists, and media industry attorneys are wondering whether it might be possible to sue the press for distorting reality by quoting "both sides" of the equation when one of the sides of the equation is generally receiving funding from various levels of the fossil fuel industry.
Whatever the case, global warming now has a bit of traction and the costs of heating oil, gasoline, electricity and natural gas continue to be a problem. My guess is that this momentum will continue at least through the summer because there tend to be a few droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods from April through September. Al Gore's got a documentary called "An Inconvenient Truth" coming to a theater near you very shortly (really!); numerous books are popping up all over; Elizabeth Kolbert is making a move towards getting a Pulitzer for her highly acclaimed New Yorker pieces on the effects of global warming; and every month two or three major new peer-reviewed scientific studies tell us something new about the world's changing climate.
But here's the obvious issue: unlike Brad and Angelina; Jennifer and Vince; or even Michael Jackson and Kobie--global warming doesn't carry with it a sexual charge and the potential for titillating innuendo. It is the Mother of All Human Problems, and as such freaks a lot of people out. How long will this issue stay in the mainstream if it has no tits and abs, no salacious mouth or sly grin, it doesn't wear sheer blouses or tight bulging briefs? How long will we care about changing our world when we've met the enemy and the enemy is us?
Comments