On the east coast there is a heat wave making the climate change debate more intense. When blizzards hit the east last March, the debate was hot also. Extreme weather events are getting used by both sides to support their global warming arguments within the debate about climate change and energy bill in Congress. A British panel exonerated the “Climategate” scientists, saying it found no evidence the group manipulated research to back up global warming. 2010 is turning out to be the hottest year in history.
Post resource: Heat wave ignites climate change debate, 2010 warmest year ever by Personal Money Store
Around the globe is a heat wave
The heat wave is news because it is cooking places where the national media hang out. But other parts of the world are also roasting. The heat wave has gone global according to the Christian Science Monitor. Beijing heat about 105 degrees. It was 113 and 111 degrees on July 6 in Baghdad and Riyadh. Kuwait set the day's world temperature high at 122 degrees. As reported by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the first five months of the year was the warmest on record, and 1.22 degrees warmer than the 20th century average.
Climate change causes there to be more heat waves and blizzards
During March blizzards, climate change skeptics mocked Al Gore. But will heat waves be the norm if humans fail to reduce carbon emissions? TIME reports the fact that no single weather event is caused by climate change is obvious, but politicians and lobbyists will make an effort to use them in the climate and energy bill debate anyway. Weather and climate are different things actually. Figuring out precisely how climate change affects the weather is tricky. But blizzards and heat waves conform to a general scientific consensus that climate change will result in more extreme weather.
Climategate scientists’ research is being called legitimate
The above climate change argument is the position of the Climategate scientists, a group of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. As outlined by the New York Times, these individuals have played a leading role in efforts to understand the earth's climate. Last year some e-mail messages sent by the scientists about global warming were stolen and posted to the Internet. Politicians, lobbyists and some of the other global warming skeptics seized upon the e-mails as proof the scientists were hiding data that conflicted with their positions on global warming. But a report by the panel investigating Climategate said no evidence was found of behavior that might undermine their conclusions.
Climate change – better to be safe than sorry
Even without the heat waves and blizzards, climate change is such a controversial issue because climate science is incredibly complex and hard to explain, and the people doing the explaining still do not understand climate also as they would like. This opens windows of opportunity arguments on both sides of the issue. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post points out that if we can’t deal with a disaster like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico 2010, how are we going to reverse concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere?
Carbon tax – pay me now or pay me later
This leads us to the climate and energy bill and its proposed cap and trade system or carbon tax. Republicans against government intervention are potentially setting up a future in which the government is forced to intervene on a planetary scale. Klein said he’s a lot more comfortable with the government’s ability to levy a carbon tax now than its ability to repair the atmosphere later. That’s why when faced with the choice between being avoiding the economic risk of a carbon tax or taking a step to preserve the future of the planet, we should choose the planet.
Discover more information:
Christian Science Monitor
csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0707/Global-heat-wave-hits-US-reignites-climate-change-debate
TIME
ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/07/06/turning-up-the-heat-on-climate-change/?xid=rss-topstories
New York Times
nytimes.com/2010/07/08/science/earth/08climate.html?src=mv
Washington Post
voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/the_case_for_being_careful_wit.html
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