A scorching heat wave on the east coast is intensifying the climate change debate. The debate was hot when blizzards hit the east also. Extreme weather events are being seized upon 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. Meanwhile, 2010 is shaping up to be the warmest year in history.
Source for this article: Heat wave ignites climate change debate, 2010 warmest year ever by Personal Money Store
Wave of heat going global
The heat wave is news because it is cooking places like New York and Washington where the national media hang out. Other places in the world are hot also. The heat wave has gone global as outlined by the Christian Science Monitor. Beijing heat about 105 degrees. It was 113 and 111 degrees on July 6 in Baghdad and Riyadh. The world temperature high was set in Kuwait at 122 degrees. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) reports 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 – 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 lower carbon emissions? According to TIME, the fact no single weather event is caused by climate change is obvious, but politicians and lobbyists will try to use them within the climate and energy bill debate anyway. Actually, weather and climate aren’t the exact same thing. It is tricky to figure out how climate change affects the weather. But the March blizzards and the July heat wave conform to a general scientific consensus that climate change will result in more extreme weather.
Climategate scientists’ research might be 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 which is in England. The New York Times reports that these individuals have played a leading role in efforts to understand the earth's climate. Last year some e-mail messages which were sent by the scientists about global warming were stolen and posted to the Internet. Politicians, lobbyists and other global warming skeptics used these e-mails as proof the scientists were hiding data that conflicted with their positions on global warming. But a report that was given by the panel investigating Climategate said no evidence was found of behavior that might undermine their conclusions.
Climate change – better safe than sorry
Climate change is such a controversial issue because climate science is complex and hard to explain, and the people doing the explaining nevertheless don’t understand climate also as they would like. On both sides of the issue, this opens arguments. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post points out that if we can’t deal with a disaster like the oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico 2010, how are we going to reverse concentrations of carbon within the atmosphere?
Carbon tax-Pay me later or pay me now
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 has to intervene on a planetary scale. Klein said he’s a lot more comfortable with the government’s ability to levy a carbon tax at the moment than its ability to repair the atmosphere later. That’s why, he said, when faced with the choice between avoiding the economic risk of a carbon tax or simply just taking a step to preserve the future of the planet, we should choose the planet.
Citations:
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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