State of the Climate

On page 13 of the introductory pamphlet “A Brief Guide to Alcoholics Anonymous,” the organization's famous 12 steps begin as such: “We admit we are powerless over alcohol—that our lives have become unmanageable.” Although President Bush maintains that he quit the sauce on his own, without the help of AA, he is evidently familiar with their directives, for on Tuesday night in his State of the Union address, Bush admitted that we have a problem: global warming.

The president first officially acknowledged the dangers of global climate change in the summer of 2002. Hindsight has rendered silly the breathless reporting of Bush's eureka moment nearly five years ago. But unfortunately, the solutions offered by his administration to solve this catastrophic problem have hardly evolved since that “historic” day of admission.

“Come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity” is AA's step number two, and it's clear that our President has checked this one off his list as well. From the beginning, the administration has repeatedly assured us that it's only a matter of time before the high powers of technology swoop in to solve all the problems associated with global warming. “It's in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply. The way forward is through technology,” Bush repeated on Tuesday night. “We must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and clean, safe nuclear power. [applause]”

This rhetorical strategy is no accident. It is exactly the approach highlighted by Frank Luntz, the Republican strategist and spinmaster whose frighteningly Orwellian memo [PDF] detailing how to dance around the issue of global warming has become the basis for the GOP's talking points on the matter—even after Luntz acknowledged the errors of his ways last year. It's a good strategy—the president will be hard-pressed to find anyone on either side of the climate-change debate to disagree that technology can be part of the solution, but the truth of the matter remains: To truly make a difference, alternative energy technologies must be supported by smart federal regulations. And to say that this administration has been hesitant to impose such regulations would be a sizable understatement.

Without regulatory measures such as stronger “gas-guzzler” taxes for inefficient vehicles (the average fuel economy of American cars is less than half the average of the European Union and Japan), support for the organizations developing and improving alternative fuels and more stringent industrial emissions standards, technology will continue to fight this battle with one hand tied behind its back. Even applications of current alternative energy technologies could use some help: The greenhouse gases generated by the production and processing of the 35 billion gallons of green fuels Bush called for in his speech—a perhaps overly optimistic seven-fold increase over 10 years—would be roughly the same as those released by the burning of an equivalent amount of regular gasoline.

As the AA mantra goes, we hope the president will “keep coming” and follow through on the promise of technology, providing ample federal support for alternative energy to thrive. For more information, see popsci.com/energy to find out what our most innovative scientists can do to help with our addiction. —John Mahoney

Comments

[brayden]

For the record, I think this is an absolutely wonderful post. Thank you.

[anyonmus]

Global warming is totaly fake. The iformation I am sateing is based on information from a person with a P.H.D. in physics from Stanford University. If you add up every once of green house gasses ever, in all of human history,it would equale less than one half of a small volacnic erupation. Forthermore, ever time the world has warmed up, human society has made huge advandces. Please escuze my spelling.

[brayden]

Dear anyonmus:

I'm sure I'd be a better man if only I was able to respect the intelligence gathering of an individual unable to spell 'information', 'stating', 'ounce', 'greenhouse', 'equal', 'volcanic', 'eruption', 'furthermore', 'every', advances', AND 'excuse'. (I shudder to imagine the no-doubt legions of other words you have yet to grasp.) But this shouldn't be about spelling; afterall, it is very possible that I have a spelling error in my own post; the point should be thusly: Those who discredit the teeny gains in environmental solvency the western nations make by attempting to paint the global warming issue as a hoax are doing a disservice not only to themselves but to the entire human race. The fact is that humans have a huge impact on the environment around them. A huge negative impact. And if we don't monitor ourselves before its too late, well then pretty soon it will be too late. Scientists are pretty much unanimous in their acceptance of the dangers our species poses to itself by way of industry and technology, except of course those bankrolled by Exxon Mobil. So despite whatever you may have learned from your genius friend with the fancy P.H.D., why don't you do yourself a favor (and the rest of us, too) and rethink your stance on this crucial issue.

I can't wait for all the advances we can make once we're forced to stay indoors at all times lest our skin bubble and boil from the intense temperatures.

[John Bush]

Our climate has cycles. We all learned in grammer school that fossels in coal show that North America was once a tropical area. Climate change is a fact but all the causes are not known. It seems to me that since we know we are in a warming cycle we should do what we can to reduce the impact, deal with it and stop arguing about the cause. We know what to do and how to do it but spend all our efforts pointing fingers.

[Carol Ming]

Great concerns of climate change to me is at what timescale changes will occur. At what rate is our local and global environments going to drastically change and cause mass disease, starvation and ultimately a mass extinction. Humans direct acts such as fishing, lumber and mining already causing severe environment effects. So now what are the indirect effects and how will we cope.

[Peter Charette]

The reason that the cars in Europe (I was there a couple years ago) & Japan get better gas mileage is because they are TINY, as in sub-compact size. If you are willing to take chances on getting serious back problems from being crammed into such a small car, then you should purchase such a vehicle, instead of attempting to condemn the rest of us, via environment regulations, to an increased risk of physical disabilities.

[Peter Charette]

Another point to be made is that why should I (via federal taxes) bankroll the solar panel and other "green" companies? Those who state their concern about oil company tax breaks & profits never seem to be concerned about this point.

[John M. Wiggins]

According to three papers published in the March 6 2005 issue of "Science" the amount of incoming solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth has increased dramatically in the last two decades. Since all of the energy reaching the earth ultimately comes from the sun do you think that this might just possibly explain whatever "global warming" has been measured in the past 100 years? The ninteenth century saw the end of "the little ice age". During this period average temperatures dropped 7 to 10 degrees below average temperatures during the medieval warm period. Scientist believe this was caused by a decrease in solar output. It is widely known that the sun has periods of increasing and decreasing solar radiation. There are other things that cause warming of the earth, the least of these is carbon dioxide.

[el granto]

are we going to belive brayden who cant even spell ounce hes an idiot
i did a lot of research on the topic an i can tell you its all too real
the medeval warm period is nothing in comparison
most of us are self-respecting nerds
I have come to terms with it
do the research
its way too real to ignore
i know my stuff.
don't argue.

[nclark]

I remember all the rage about Global Cooling in the 70's. Everyone had proof, people were panicking to minimize their emissions, and governments were preparing to spend bliions of dollars to stop the imminent threat. Why? Because scientists said it was going to happen. Naturally, it never did, and the basis for those scientists slowly eroded. Now, after a decade-long sabbatial, we have "global warming". It'll all be forgotten about in 25 years, as nothing happens, and the proponents of climate change ssslllooowwwlllyyy back out.

Just as the Earth has natural cycles, so does human psychology.

[occupational accidents]

There are lots of industries working all over the world but good to see there are lot of blogs also who are sharing industrial information. Great job keep this work up!

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Oh polossi GO AWAY!

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The US is expected to face heavy criticism at the meeting, especially from the EU, for not doing more to fight global warming.

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Here we can analysis that the changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities. The United States is the world's largest emitter of so-called greenhouse gases.

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I think they must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology.

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Totally agree with some of the given points in your blog.But there are some points which are little confusing.

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Good Post. It seems to me that since we know we are in a warming cycle we should do what we can to reduce the impact, deal with it and stop arguing about the cause. Thanks.

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The US is expected to face heavy criticism at the meeting, especially from the EU, for not doing more to fight global warming.

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Climate change is on the agenda of a global summit on sustainable development taking place in Johannesburg in August.

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I don’t consider Global warming is totally fake. But it is true that by adding up green house gasses ever only once, it cannot be equal or manage to equalize that overall effect for global warming.

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The fact is that humans have a huge impact on the environment around them.

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It seems to me that since we know we are in a warming cycle we should do what we can to reduce the impact, deal with it and stop arguing about the cause.

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Meteorologists and climatologists regularly use Normals for placing recent climate conditions into historical context; such as comparisons with the day's weather conditions on local television.