The Global Warming Issue

ã Dr. Gary D. Lemmons, December 3, 2006

The first storm of the 2006-07 winter season roared across the mid-west this week, dumping snow, downing power supplies, spawning tornadoes, and wreaking havoc from Kansas to Pennsylvania.  Travelers were stranded and life in that part of the country was thrown out-of-sorts to say the least.

Some pundits and commentators immediately assigned the event to the results of “global warming”…that malady that seems to be affecting the world where the temperature is, ever so slowly, getting warmer.  How they rationalize that “global warming” causes “blizzards” may seem, at first light, an oxymoron, but, if one pays attention, the argument, in the end, does hold some logic.

There were other commentators and pundits who immediately began to rile against the environmentalists as “tree huggers” and “loonies” who have only one agenda and that is to return civilization to a “Garden of Eden” state (not that, that would be all that bad).  These folks went on to assert that there is no “global warming” and that all of this climate concern is unwarranted.

I do not know whether or not there is anything to “global warming” as a theory.  Anecdotally, I do know that weather patterns have changed since I was a boy.  Winters seem to be less more moderate temperature wise and of less lengthy duration.  When winter storms do come, they seem to be extreme and to pack more of a wallop.  In the seasonal changes times of spring and fall, severe weather seems to be of more intensity.  Tornados, hurricanes, and damaging straight-line storms seem more frequent and more violent. 

Of course 50 years is no time in the grand scope of history, and the changes I see may be attributable to randomness or chance.  However, I read about the various concerns that many scientists are expressing, and I have friends, who have traveled north to the glaciers of Canada, Alaska, and other parts of the world, who tell me that these wonders in nature are melting!

Unfortunately, our national government does not seem to have a consistent policy on the issue of “global warming.”  This is true of both major political parties.  When it suits the purposes of the Republicans or Democrats they will give great lip service to issues that might combat “global warming.”  However, at other times both political camps can support actions that clearly would not be in the interest of maintaining the environment.

What really should occur is for the Congress to appropriate funds for and the President to appoint a national council on “global warming” to advise our lawmakers on this issue.  Members of this council should be true scientists, not political pseudo-scientists.  The council should be enabled to study this issue and make recommendations to the Congress and the President for legislation and policy that would address any “global warming” concerns.  Then the Congress and the President should listen and act on those recommendations.

I suspect that the issue of “global warming” is real.  Perhaps it is not as much of a threat as the environmentalist would have us believe.  Perhaps we don’t need to have all automobiles destroyed and all coal-powered factories shut-down.  At the same time, perhaps there are sensible steps that individual citizens, as well as the corporate world, might take to make things better.

Oh, well, we have to remember that politicians are in charge.  That is an environmental disaster in itself.