For most Americans, hearing about global warming involves a fair amount of taking things on faith. When Rush Limbaugh blatantly lied and claimed that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide was due to the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, how would most people know he was telling a lie based on a something like 10-fold overestimate in the amount of carbon Pinatubo was ejecting and on a conflation of two different kinds of carbon: carbon dioxide and particulates.
When Al Gore tells us what's up, most people would consider it just as reliable as Rush Limbaugh's lies. But I am lucky. First of all, I do keep up on the scientific literature, including climate research to some extent. But my ability to understand the details is limited because I am a biologist.
But my wife is a climatologist. So when I hear Al Gore, either live, as I was lucky to do some years back, or watching An Inconvenient Truth right now on Showtime, I am watching it with my wife and her friends, who all know the science behind it backwards and forwards. They know this material the same way you and I might know addition and subtraction. They know the facts Al Gore is talking about.
Both times I have heard Al Gore's presentation on Global Warming, I have one or more fact checkers right next to me. My fact checkers pretty much approve Al Gore's message in its entirety.
Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is not controversial. That is what we have to realize. It is not based on controversial data. It is based on solid science.
I am used to thinking like a scientist and looking at scientific data. I look at Al Gore's graph showing the carbon dioxide record over the last 600,000+ years and the proxy temperature record (based on ratios of oxygen isotopes) over the same period, the absolute most striking thing about these two graphs to me is how tight the correlation is. It is a very reliable correlation. Carbon dioxide goes up, temperature goes up. This has been the case for more than 600,000 years on this planet.
Now, the other striking thing is how off the charts modern carbon dioxide levels are. In the last 600,000+ years, carbon dioxide has NEVER ONCE been anywhere close to as high as it is right now.
Temperature is going to follow off the charts. That is the prediction you can make based on more than 600,000 years of correlated data over many ice ages and warm periods.
These are solid scientific facts.
Anyone who is still "skeptical" about anthropogenic global warming is either a fool or is trying to con you. You can take that to the bank. It is happening and it is happening now.
The details of what will happen are still speculation. But even the most optimistic of predictions are not that great. We are facing big, BIG problems even in the optimistic predictions. If the more pessimistic prediction prove true, then we are suicidally stupid to ignore them.
Here we are. We are at the point where we KNOW what is happening. I have a fact checker right next to me. It is time to stop debating if it is happening.
It is time to do something.
The February 9th issue of Science, America's most respected scientific journal, dedicates itself to this very question. It begins describing the 4th IPCC conclusions and making it clear that science KNOWS that global warming is happening with as much certainty as science EVER has regarding anything. From there, this issue of Science discusses solutions. It is time to focus NOT on debate but on solutions and scientists are at that point.
I am starting my advance copy of John Kerry's book. It is billing itself as precisely this same thing. John Kerry begins from the understanding that YES, we KNOW that global warming is happening with as much certainty as we ever can know anything. We have 600,000+ years of data to draw on and it all tells us the same thing. And Kerry wants us to focus on solutions and that is what his book is purporting to do.
I will read and review John Kerry's book. So stay tuned. I would like to also read through that issue of Science if my own scientific experimental schedule and my family schedule allows me. And I would like to help shift the dialogue towards solutions.
An Inconvenient Truth is ending right now on my television. And John Kerry's book is in my backpack waiting for my subway ride tomorrow. And we just put my son to sleep, and he will be facing the consequences of what we choose to do or not do.
For me this is a key time for us and, far more so, for my son. He can't understand this. He knows his alphabet and can count to 20. That is about it so far. But I understand and so it is up to me. And you.
Stay tuned.
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