Rhetorical Outbursts

Chances are, you have noticed that temperatures are up about one degree as compared to 100 years ago. But why, or rather, how do you know?

George will has an idea of why and how 85% of Americans are certain global warming is happening, and it has very little to do with the ability of that 85% to distinguish an 81 degree July afternoon from an 80 degree one:

The National Academy of Sciences says the rise in the Earth’s surface temperature has been about one degree Fahrenheit in the past century. Did 85 percent of Americans notice? Of course not. They got their anxiety from journalism calculated to produce it. Never mind that one degree might be the margin of error when measuring the planet’s temperature.

Do the 85% of Americans certain global warming is happening in 2006 remember the 1970’s? If not, Will provides a brief refresher of scientific opinion from that era:

Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.” Science Digest (February 1973) reported that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age.” The Christian Science Monitor (”Warning: Earth’s Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect,” Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers “have begun to advance,” “growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter” and “the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.” Newsweek agreed (”The Cooling World,” April 28, 1975) that meteorologists “are almost unanimous” that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said “may mark the return to another ice age.” The Times (May 21, 1975) also said “a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable” now that it is “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950.”

So, is the earth warming or cooling? Do we believe the scientists from the 1970’s or the 2000’s? According to Will, we should believe both:

In fact, the Earth is always experiencing either warming or cooling.

Thanks, George, for pointing out that getting hysterical about what happens in any given 20-30 year period on our guesstimated 4,600,000,000 year old planet is, well, a waste of hot (or cold) air…