http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1219-08.htm
Published on Friday,
December 19, 2003 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Nothing Virtual About Global Warming
by Richard Steiner
President Bush recently chided Saddam Hussein for his cowardly
attempt
to hide, saying that "when the heat got on, you dug yourself
a hole
and you crawled in it." These same words also describe the
attempts
by Bush and friends to evade the issue of global warming. It's
time
for them to crawl out of their hole.
The overwhelming scientific
consensus is that global warming is real,
it's serious, it's caused mostly by humans and it is to some extent
correctable. But due to the intransigence of the Bush administration
and comrades, virtually nothing has been done to correct it.
These folks have not
only tried to scuttle the Kyoto Protocol
but the U.S. Senate recently voted down an even more modest
attempt to cap greenhouse gas emissions -- the Climate Stewardship
Act of 2003 -- in the United States at the year 2000 levels
by year 2010. That would be far less extensive than cuts
proposed by Kyoto. The act was broadly supported by mayors,
unions and insurers and would have saved the U.S. economy
some $48 billion a year in energy savings alone. But the
administration and Senate conservatives would have nothing
of it.
Worse, Congress is
on the verge of passing a disastrous
energy bill that only digs our fossil-energy hole deeper.
This was the bill that was drawn up behind closed doors
by Vice President Cheney's energy task force -- a group
of old-guard fossil-fuel tycoons. Such policy is steering
us to a train wreck, and it is time all Americans said
enough is enough.
On global warming,
the science is clear and unequivocal.
In Alaska the warming over just the past 40 years has been
astonishing. Arctic air temperatures have increased over
5 degrees, sea ice cover is shrinking at a rate of 3 percent
per decade and the thickness of the arctic ice cap has
decreased from 10 feet to 6 feet. Glaciers are receding
and thinning across the arctic and elsewhere, contributing
to a measurable sea level rise.
Storm surge is causing
"an unprecedented coastal retreat,"
according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program;
that's up to 150 feet in five years at one location.
Thawing permafrost is causing serious ground subsidence,
adding huge costs to infrastructure maintenance. Forest
fires and insect infestations have increased, and warm
water in the Bering Sea has caused seabird die-offs,
rare algal blooms and dramatic declines in salmon runs.
Scientists now fear that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free
by century's end.
Science is also clear
that most of this recent warming
is caused by human activities. Globally, burning of fossil
fuels has increased almost five-fold in the past 50 years,
releasing about 6.5 billion tons of carbon as CO2 into the
atmosphere each year. Atmospheric CO2 levels are 31 percent
higher today than pre-industrial levels, higher than at
any time in the last 400,000 years and perhaps the past
20 million years. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change concluded that "most of the observed warming
over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities,"
a conclusion confirmed by the National Academy of Sciences
and other scientific bodies.
The American Geophysical
Union recently said greenhouse
warming is a "virtual certainty" and that it "constitutes
a real basis for concern." And the World Meteorological
Organization reports that the three hottest years since
the beginning of record keeping in 1861 have all been
in the past six years, with 2003 the third hottest.
If the present impacts
of global warming are of concern,
the future looks far worse. But instead of acting on this
information, the current administration is issuing calls
for more studies and voluntary actions. Administration
officials have fabricated "scientific uncertainty" as
a reason to do nothing. With an issue so important to
the future of humanity, such paralysis-by-analysis
is outrageous.
We need to reduce global
carbon emissions by about
two-thirds, and we know exactly how to do this:
more energy efficient cars and power plants,
mass transit and alternative energy sources,
improved building and appliance standards, efficiency
subsidies, and so on. We need an energy bill to do
precisely that, and Americans should insist that
Congress kill the current energy bill and make
a real attempt to solve the energy/warming problem.
Despite the administration's
deceits, such precautionary
action would not only alleviate global warming but also
help relieve our energy crisis, reduce health impacts
of air pollution and improve our economy as well.
The only real question
left in the global warming
debate is how long we will let Bush and his political
allies hide in their hole.
Richard Steiner is
a conservation specialist with the
University of Alaska Marine Advisory Program in Anchorage.
©1996-2003 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
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