Reading About Global Warming

by Deb Powers

Back in the 70s, I fell in love with a song by Cashman and West - American City Suite. It was specifically about watching the changes in New York City, but the song keeps coming back to me when I look at what's happening to the world - and listen to the people who would deny that there is anything wrong. It's even more poignant when I read those who agree that the evidence of global warming is undeniable - but that there is no evidence that it's caused by anything man has done/is doing. The song goes:

And I've never felt so lonely or so helpless
Wishing that I didn't know the truth
But they tell me that a friend is dying
And there's nothing in this world that I can do.

Lyrics by: Terry Cashman, Tommy West

That's the message the the deniers want us all to believe - there's nothing in this world that we can do. We can't save the patient, they say, so we must save ourselves. Their answer - those who think we need to find an answer at all - is that we need to adapt to a changing world so that we will survive what they say is a "naturally occurring event in the earth's cycle". The Earth isn't dying, they say. It's going through one of its natural changes - the same kind of change that brought us the Ice Age. The trick isn't to try to keep it from happening. The trick is to learn how to live within the changes.

I don't believe that the way to cope with global warming is to make our houses more airtight and build more powerful air conditioners. I don't believe that the way to cope with global warming is to fly off to the stars and build colonies on Mars. I believe that there is something we can do to slow global warming - I believe there are lots of things we can do about global warming. I believe that one of the most important things anyone can do about global warming is to get educated and educate your kids.

And when I speak about getting educated, I'm don't just mean "learn about global warming". I mean GET EDUCATED. When you're not educated - when you can't think critically, it's far too easy to get taken in by some of the fuzzy logic and ridiculous "science" being thrown out there in an attempt to prove that the so-called "global alarmists" are using fuzzy science. Like this one:

Debunking ice cubes in a glass

Global warming and climate change deniers would have you believe that melting polar caps can't possible raise the sea level. Ignoring all the evidence that the sea level is, indeed, rising - or at least that the sea is encroaching ever more on the land on which we live - they use a flawed analogy to explain how it's not possible for melting ice to cause a rise in sea level.

If you put ice cubes in a glass, they say, the water level in the glass does not rise when the ice melts. Go on, try it for yourself and you'll see that they're right - when you put ice cubes in a glass of water, the water level in the glass remains level as the ice melts.

However, the Earth is not a glass of water. If you want to see how melting ice caps affect the sea level, try this experiment instead.

1. Get a 9x12 baking pan and a couple of small saucers out of your pantry.
2. Put the saucers upside down in the baking pan. 
3. Add about an inch of water to the baking pan.
4. Place two or three ice cubes on top of each saucer and watch what happens to the water level when the ice melts.

That's a model that more closely relates to reality. The earth is not an empty glass. There are land masses and mountains and streams and rivers. A huge proportion of those polar ice caps are actually on land, not floating in the sea. When that ice melts, water flows into the ocean and makes its way through the water system. And that's not even taking into account how ice melt - which is fresh water - changes the salinity of the ocean, changing the habitat of the sea creatures that are part of our food chain.

Much of the other "science" quoted to deny global warming likewise breaks down in the face of logic and reality. It breaks down in the face of direct observation - despite variations in highs and lows in temperature, for instance, there is a definite long-term upward trend in temperature with an upswing that coincides directly with the start of the Industrial Age.

I believe that we may not be able to reverse the damage we've done to the environment - but I won't let that stop me from trying. In that spirit, I write here every week. In that spirit, I offer things that I think are valuable to know and to read and to see. In that spirit, here are some things you should read about debunking the debunking of global warming.

• Walter B. Sikora: Global Warning is a real issue (which debunks the deniers as Galileo myth)
• Climate change press coverage gets weird (which takes on the latest press coverage)
• The Earth is Warming? Adjust the Thermostat (about climate engineering - instead of carbon control)
• Prioritising green technology to beat global warming

 

Graphic courtesy of Crystal Cloud Graphics.