Skeptics
of global warming are fond of declaring the phenomenon a myth whenever
unseasonably cold weather strikes a city or region. Those of us who know and
comprehend the truth remind those skeptics that the first word of global warming
is global. In fact, when measured globally, the decade which we just closed was
the warmest on record in the southern hemisphere.
However, in order for the evidence of the anthropogenic origins of global warming to elicit the type of fundamental cultural change which will place humanity on the path to addressing the crisis with the effective scope and urgency it demands, popular culture must be affected and in a manner difficult to ignore. Last month’s Vancouver Olympics yielded just such an opportunity and I am hopeful that global warming skeptics and deniers were paying attention.
Climatologists favor the term climate change over global warming in part because the term helps defuse some of the skepticism. Naturally, I agree with them. However, I continue to use the terms interchangeably for a simple reason. The vested interests who profit by maintaining the status quo of fossil fuel addiction and deforestation spend huge sums of money every year on disinformation and propaganda. They are not swayed by accurate science.
Another reason that climate change is a better name for the crisis than global warming is that in the short term, many regions, in fact, are experiencing colder weather even as the globe warms on account of the natural balance which our atmosphere strives to maintain. Fortunately, the effects of climate change are becoming so obvious that even some skeptics have begun to say, “That can’t be right.”
Our
climate is changing and the Vancouver Olympics are an ideal example because
people from every continent gathered there for winter games which had almost no
winter.
During the Lake Placid or Salt Lake City winter games, who would have imagined weather in British Columbia, Canada so unseasonably warm and dry that snow had to be imported to the mountains and the grass had to be trimmed in the city?
Not to be outdone, skeptics of global warming point to this evidence and see only random convergence. If the opposite effect had not occurred along a similar latitude approximately 2,000 miles east of British Columbia, such rebuttals might be persuasive. In truth, the rebuttals of skeptics only help to make the case of climatologists. You see, even as the Vancouver Olympics struggled with springtime weather in February, the Chesapeake Bay region of North America withstood record snowfalls and hurricane-strength winds, even as the games were underway!
Where skeptics see random events, those of us who know the facts see further proof. Perhaps the worst news, however, is the fact that the 2014 winter games already are in the planning stages for Russia, an area which is losing permafrost so quickly that the games may prove impossible to produce.
I shudder to think what the future holds now that the proof of global warming has achieved a new pinnacle of incontrovertible. Global warming deniers and skeptics needs to get over themselves and move to higher ground.
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
photos credit: © VANOC/COVAN
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Since this is a global warming blog, it should come as no surprise that I perceive of petroleum in terms of its effect on the climate of our lovely planet. Such a perception, of course, is important. However, the process of delivering petroleum fuels to our local pumping station is complex and highly polluting.
Worse still, it is easy for the world to lose sight of the fact that only a fraction of the world’s oil is buried beneath desert sands. Most, in fact, is entombed by tropical rainforest or other territory which is important to wildlife and people, especially subsistence farmers. It is for this reason that petroleum companies owe a special debt of gratitude to the peoples who grant mineral rights to the oil beneath their feet. In some cases, though, such a debt is abused, as in the case of the Cofan Indigenous community of Ecuador.
For many years, Texaco, now part of Chevron, deliberately dumped waste oil from its petroleum mining activities into a river which its personnel knew was utilized by the Cofan people. As a result, many Cofan families suffered horrible side effects.
The new film [Crude details this horrible, deliberate and avoidable tragedy. I invite you to view the teaser and sign the related petition at
ChangeChevron.org
Even as we move into the era of peak oil, it is imperative that we never lose sight of the fact that our reliance on petroleum for energy causes a whole range of negative consequences, most of them avoidable if we exert will power. The poisoning of the Cofan Indigenous community of Ecuador is one of the sadder (but by no means saddest) results.
No member of the human race deserves abuse, particularly by greedy oil companies which use a portion of their profits to engage a propaganda campaign to convince citizens of the industrialized world that petroleum is not a dirty business. It surely is!
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
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