We finally got around to talking about what to do about global climate change yesterday. It’s a hard subject to talk about because the predictions are so bleak, and it’s such a big job. But finally someone said something that made me feel a little more positive. Our visiting scientist, James McCarthy, said that yes, it’s a big job, and no, we don’t know how to do it, but we’ve been in that situation before. All we need is the strong commitment from the national and global leadership to figure it out and make it happen. When Kennedy said that we’d go to the moon within a decade, we didn’t have the technology to do it, but the country was committed to it and made it happen. At the beginning of WWII, Roosevelt told the leaders of the automotive industry what he needed in terms of ships and planes. One of them asked, what about cars? His answer was that there weren’t going to be any cars. A national commitment is not looking so good right now since a large portion of this country doesn’t believe in global warming and many of the rest don’t believe it’s a problem. But, Dr. McCarthy is a member of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and he is convinced that the global community is getting close. He says that we are quickly reaching the point where the US will either jump onboard or be dragged. His word is good enough for me at the moment.
The discussion eventually decayed into the usual academic complaints. People in this country don’t know how to think anymore…these uneducated idiots seem to think that a bunch of diabolical scientists are spreading lies for personal profit…how can we make them understand if they don’t know anything…politicians have bad priorities…the media is giving the crackpots equal time. Basically it boils down to this: people don’t trust scientists because they use big words, and scientists don’t like having to re-teach all of high school chemistry and biology just to make (what seems to us to be) a simple point. I don’t really know what to do about that either, but it’s a much more manageable problem.
2 comments:
I agree that the evidence is mounting such that all one has to do is open his/her eyes. If we're lucky, there will be a change in the government with in the next couple of years. I'm not convinced it's not too late, but trying something is better than nothing even if it has to wait another 2 or 3 years.
Based on our current knowledge and technology, yes, it is too late. Dr. McCarthy's point was that there is no bound to our ability to create new technology when we put our minds to it. There will be changes, but if we work hard now, we can limit the extent of those changes and find ways to deal with the ones that occur.
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