Last week a conference took place 4000 miles from Charlotte that was
vitally important to the Queen City’s citizens and leaders. Near my home in
Devon, the quiet cathedral city of Exeter – once razed into ruins by Hitler’s
Luftwaffe – played host to an important international conference on global
climate change. As we in Charlotte studiously avoid taking any action that will
decrease our ozone and fine particle pollution that’s produced by driving endless
miles around our poorly planned city, scientists from all over the world discussed
the reality of forthcoming climate changes that are potentially catastrophic
to cities and countries the world over.
Here in America, Charlotte is fairly typical in doing nothing to curb emissions.
Recently, the Mecklenburg and Union Metropolitan Planning Organization refused
to back a plan (put forward jointly by environmental organizations and the Charlotte
Chamber of Commerce) to reduce ozone and particulate pollution in the air we
breathe by changing our commuting patterns. Contaminated air from our cities
is altering the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, but while Charlotte worries
about local problems if our air quality doesn’t improve — like losing
federal funds for building more roads and failing to attract new economic development
— scientists in the shadow of Exeter’s medieval cathedral discussed larger
issues. The world’s leading experts were trying to avoid the looming, catastrophic
changes in climate that could radically reshape the world’s geography, politics
and economics.
The phenomenon of global warming, and its associated physical and economic impacts, get short shrift in the White House and large sections of American public opinion. Typical responses range from ignorance to hostility; wild suspicions have even been voiced that the whole thing is a United Nations plot to damage America’s economy. Most remarkable of all is the reaction by rightwing political commentators to a new novel by Michael Crichton entitled State of Fear, in which the author lambastes environmentalists as fearmongers and terrorists who trigger climate-related disasters to bolster their case.
Skeptics of global warming in this country have promoted this work of fiction and its few flimsy footnotes as living proof of the author’s central thesis, that global warming is “a set-up from the beginning,” foisted on the public by dishonest scientists and environmentalists.
The footnotes in the Crichton novel refer to a small number of scientific studies that raise questions about the massive consensus in the scientific community about global warming. To boost these few lone voices, the Exxon Foundation has recently donated nearly $16 million to organizations to produce more disinformation, specifically peddling the line that global warming is a natural climate fluctuation, not a man-made phenomenon. However, these puny efforts pale in comparison to the massive weight of objective, unambiguous research that predicts dire consequences if we don’t change the ways we live and travel around our cities.
What Crichton hides from his readers is the international consensus of thousands of climatologists, from countries all over the world, each funded by separate organizations or governments, and with no common caucus that could ever be said to influence their views. Between 1993 and 2003, the respected journal Science published 924 rigorously researched articles on climate change, and every single paper supported the idea that humans are to blame for global warming.
Among the leading scientists whom Crichton and gullible sections of American public opinion would like to discredit is the British government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, who has described global warming as a greater threat than terrorism. Indeed Prime Minister Tony Blair has stated unequivocally that global warming is the greatest menace currently facing civilization. Significantly, the White House’s only response was to unleash a vociferous attack on Sir David King by Myron Ebell, George Bush’s chief climate adviser, for “exaggerating” the dangers of climate change.
Britain’s leading Sunday newspaper, The Observer, reports how scientists have spent decades creating computer models to simulate Earth’s atmosphere, and these climate models — run on some of the world’s most sophisticated computers — provide explicit evidence about global warming. Factors quoted by skeptics, like solar fluctuations, natural climatic cycles, or increases in atmospheric dust, simply cannot explain, on their own, the raised temperatures observed around the world. Only when increased, man-made carbon dioxide emissions are factored in do the computer models mirror reality. Moreover, scientists agree that unless major countries reverse their polluting policies, the global warming trend may become irreversible in another 10 short years.
Meanwhile, back in Charlotte, we continue driving on our merry way, ignoring all the signposts to a fetid future. Just as we discount the coming of global warming, I doubt we’ll do anything to curb our homegrown pollution until it becomes far worse, and its potentially severe health and economic consequences affect us directly. Then perhaps we’ll believe in fact rather than fiction.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2005.
