Even before Hurricane Katrina demolished New Orleans last week, I read that the intensity of this particular tropical storm could be explained by global warming.
After all, hurricanes are gigantic heat engines, and if the ocean surface is warmer, then there’s more heat to power the hurricane. Thus the wind blows faster and more rain falls than otherwise would have.
Of course, just about every natural disaster in the past decade, at least, has been blamed on global warming. Our five-year drought might have resulted from shifts in the jet stream brought about by global warming. The tsunami of last December might have been aggravated by a slight rise in sea level caused by global warming, which is melting the glaciers. A hard winter could also be the result of global warming, since it’s supposed to make for more climatic extremes.
And if that’s not sufficiently dismal, try sorting out politics of global warming. If you’re a liberal, you most likely believe in it, presumably because hundreds of scientists say it’s happening, and it fits with an apocalyptic vision of catastrophe because we trashed the environment.
If you’re not a liberal, you probably don’t believe in it, presumably because it seems impossible to gather enough information from enough places over a sufficient period, and then construct a model that will accurately predict climatic changes. Or you’ve got an apocalyptic vision that has nothing to do with climate change, but rather with a decadent culture that inspires divine wrath.
When we get to the science, about the only thing everybody agrees on is that the average ocean temperature appears to have risen slightly in the past century.
Why? The global warming explanation is that our consumption of fossil fuels (coal and oil) has risen greatly during that period. These fuels contain carbon, and when they’re burned, they produce carbon dioxide, an odorless gas. It’s also a “greenhouse gas.” In a greenhouse, light enters through the glass. Some of that light energy is used by the plants inside, and some becomes heat. The heat cannot pass easily through the glass, and so it gets warmer inside. On a global scale, carbon dioxide works like the glass – it lets light through the atmosphere, but deters heat from radiating back out into space.
That’s the theoretical explanation for global warming, which supposedly makes the oceans deeper and snowpacks thinner. This could be hard on people who live near sea level, and those who live at high altitudes and depend on snow for a livelihood, like ski-resort operators. But it could make northern areas, now too cold for agriculture, into productive farmland.
So the effects of global warming are not entirely dire. But it still may be a big problem. The solution that is generally offered is to burn fewer fossil fuels, so there will be less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Also, we should plant more trees, because they inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, thereby reducing the concentration of one greenhouse gas.
Let’s take global warming out of the picture for a moment. Is it a bad thing to plant trees? Are trees evil? In general, would it hurt us to have more trees? Can we not make use of those trees after they have matured?
As for petroleum, is it good for our country to be sending billions of dollars each year to countries whose residents hate us? Is it a productive use of our time to be commuting for hours every day because we’ve built sprawling metropolitan areas that rely on cheap gasoline? Is it good for public health to construct environments where walking and bicycling are dangerous or impossible? Is it smart to rely so heavily on a diminishing resource?
Is our nation secure when one storm can cause substantial economic damage because it affects petroleum production, transportation, and processing facilities?
The responses that we’re supposed to make to global warming, like planting trees and coming up with better energy sources, are things that we should be doing anyway. So it doesn’t really matter whether global warming is real or not. The solutions are good for our health, our economy and our future.
Ed Quillen of Salida is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
