So says Dick Meyer at CBS News, who dings the media for reporting it as a political wedge issue. Excerpt:
Now flaps are what reporters and consultants focus on. "Split Over Global Warming Widens Among Evangelicals," read one The Wall Street Journal headline. The Washington Post declared: "Global Warming Starts to Divide G.O.P. Contenders." Democratic strategists now see climate change as a wedge issue. Maybe they can peel some traditionally Republican voters away by playing the green card.Well, how about a headline that says something like, "Growing Consensus On Global Warming All Along The Political Spectrum?" Too boring.
What's really boring is the perpetual push to polarize everything. America is not polarized. It is fragmented, confused, complicated and inconsistent. As it should be. Voters aren't polarized about global warming; the vast majority thinks it's a serious problem. The debate about what to do about it is unsettled, to be sure, at every level.
The truth is the environment is an issue where folks on the left and on the right have found some real common ground. Keep an eye out for more pockets of consensus as this campaign that is built on phony polarization drones on. It's more challenging than listening to the same old arguments.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I love it when Rod takes my advise...
Alaska certainly isn't benefiting from global warming: the most recent bill for replacing damaged roads, pipelines, airports, etc. I saw was $600 million, and that's not counting damage to forests, wildlife, rivers, and coastlines.
OTOH,
"High [oil] prices have given a boost to oil-rich Alaska, which in September raised the annual oil dividend paid to every man, woman and child living there for a year to $1,654, an increase of $547 from last year."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111007A.shtml
Are oil prices connected to global warming, or are they connected to supply and demand? If they are connected to global warming, which will come as news I'm sure to the oil companies, perhaps that's a good thing! Could help dampen demand and bring down emissions as temps rise.
As for the infamous Newsweek story that Limbaugh and the neocons love to bring up in this context, it wasn't a cover story (on the cover, in fact, was a picture of a helicopter in Vietnam -- how appropriate).
Nor was it part of an overwhelming consensus of scientists in countless different fields and nations, buttressed by huge databanks of evidence from thousands of ocean temperature stations, satellites, the paleo record, etc.
Heretics isn't a great term for those who refuse to believe the evidence for climate change, because it's not a religious question -- unless you have a religious belief in the market, which often seems to be the case. As Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist for the World Bank, wrote: "Climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen."
Hey, Kit, I'm neither Limbaugh nor a neocon. Nice ad hominem, though. The alleged consensus is falling apart, although it won't be reported for a year or two...can't ignore record icepack in the Antarctic forever. Visit Greenie Watch for many links to climate information that the Ministry of Truth has dispatched to the memory hole.
The consensus on global warming is international, scientific, and popular, as the CBS poll Rod referenced above shows. The BBC just polled over 20,000 people around the world and found strong support not only for the existence of global warming, but a remarkable willingness to pay a carbon tax (as long the monies went to reducing emissions, and not propping up governments). Denialists often attack the evidence on global warming by arguing that one region or another is not showing the effects of global warming, but this is exceedingly well-accounted for in the science: see Gavin Schmidt's discussion of Antarctica in RealClimate, for example. The idea that this debate has been in some way suppressed is preposterous; just look at the thousands of scientific papers published on the topic, or, for example, the National Center for Atmospheric Research's site. For example, here's a clip from a recent AP story they linked to:
"Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, added: "What is really shocking is the reduction of the oceanic CO2 sink," meaning the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere.
The researchers blamed that reduction on changes in wind circulation, but Robock said he also thinks rising ocean temperatures reduce the ability to take in the gas.
"Think that a warm Coke has less fizz than a cold Coke," he said.
Carbon dioxide is the leading "greenhouse gas," so named because their accumulation in the atmosphere can help trap heat from the sun, causing potentially dangerous warming of the planet.
While most atmospheric scientists accept the idea, finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been a political problem because of potential effects on the economy. Earlier this month, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former Vice President Al Gore for their work in calling attention to global warming.
"It turns out that global warming critics were right when they said that global climate models did not do a good job at predicting climate change," Robock commented. "But what has been wrong recently is that the climate is changing even faster than the models said. In fact, Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than any models predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than IPCC previously predicted.""
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.