Global Warming Thoughts

One of the things that puzzles me in America is the politicization of global warming.  Ultimately, this isn’t about politics; it’s about science, and the interpretation of data.  I guess that’s what’s so interesting to me: how the way we interpret data, really, is along party lines.

I think there are some things we should all agree on, though:

1. We are in a state of warming around the globe.  The extent of that warming is somewhere between “cause for concern” and “alarming.”  I don’t think it matters which point on that axis you choose.  It’s pretty amazing, really: click here for an animation of the last hundred years or so from NASA.  Blue means a cooler-than normal stage, yellow means hotter, and red means much hotter.  See what I mean?  Note that I’m not saying that today is hotter than normal where you live: that’s not the frickin’ point.  I heard Glenn Beck (my current punching bag, I admit) pooh-poohing global warming by telling his listeners that it was freezing in New York in August.  See, this is why I wish Mr. Beck had attended college: then he might have taken a stats class or something, and he’d know that to select a specific day on one point on the map, or even a season or a year in a region, means nothing in a discussion about global warming.  Sheesh.  Anyway: without for the time being examining why, can we just all agree that the data suggests that we’re in a fairly severe warming stage for the earth?
2. We don’t know exactly why the earth has been warming, but greenhouse gas emissions are a pretty darn good bet.  Another decent bet might be that the earth is just in a cycle.  But we should agree to this as strategy: if we’re in a cycle and we cut emissions of greenhouse gases unnecessarily, we’ll have done some short-term economic harm (although, at least for America, probably long-term economic good — as we’d reduce dependence on the unstable middle east); but if the cause is human-controlled emissions and we ignore it, there are potentially disastrous long-term consequences.  So, just as a matter of strategy, it makes a lot of sense to try to cut greenhouse gases.  It’s sort of a Russian roulette argument: Someone offers you $50,000 to pull the trigger of a gun loaded with, let’s say, two bullets.  Even though most of the chambers are empty, smart people just don’t take that bet, since the consequence of being wrong is so high, and the missed financial opportunity just doesn’t make up for it.
3. Long-term, using less oil is really good strategy for America anyway, even if you don’t take ecology into account.  Picture a future America where we use, let’s say, 30% of the oil we use today (through a combination of fuel efficiency, hybrids, batteries, more efficient ships and trucks, wind power, solar power, etc.  All of it.).  Our dependence on the nutjob Middle East is reduced to near-zero.  We can essentially ignore all of their nonsense, since instability in that region has no economic consequence for us anymore.  (Israel, of course, is still an important question.  But otherwise we don’t have to care.)  We’ve created jobs in an energy economy that is controlled within our borders, and that economy is sustainable.  As an important aside, our air is cleaner — whether or not that cleanliness is a factor in global warming.  How is this anything but good long-term strategy for America?

I think #3 above is why I had such a problem with the whole “drill, baby, drill” chant during the GOP convention: I was thinking to myself, “In what world is that good strategy for America, independent of any particular party affiliation?  How is that smart?”

It’s not, I think.  And I don’t see how our party affiliations should keep us from agreeing on that.  None of the above (aside from the Beck commentary) requires a liberal worldview to agree with it…right?