by Bob Siegel

This has certainly been an interesting winter for our climate. Here in Rochester, it started out with exceptionally mild weather. People were delighted to be walking around in shirtsleeves in early January, while at the same time trying to ignore a nagging sense of disquiet reminding them of what Al Gore’s film had so recently and so successfully pointed out about the impact of our contemporary machinery on the greater machinery that makes our planet inhabitable. Officially, this "warm spell" was attributed to El Nino. But as Tim Flannery points out in The Weather Makers, El Nino cycles have been getting longer and warmer over the past thirty years due to unprecedented warming in the Pacific Ocean, a direct result of the greenhouse effect. Last year was, in fact, the warmest American year on record. The recent warm spell was a good time for reflection, even as farmers worried whether it would ever freeze hard enough to kill off last year’s insects.

The farmers’ wish was granted. The big chill came along bringing tons of snow and sub-zero temperatures. And just like when gas prices fell, people immediately forgot about the larger issue, even as the skeptics predictably re-emerged from the woodwork.

Fortunately, an increasing number of people in high places are now focused on the longer view. The overwhelming physical data alone could no longer be ignored. The devastating storms, floods, and droughts have been so severe that some places, from Sudan to Southwestern Australia will never be the same. The American Meteorological Society, a long time holdout for doubting Thomases, finally issued a statement that "human activities resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases …, have become a major agent of climate change." This was just about the same time that the Union of Concerned Scientists released a paper exposing a massive public disinformation campaign. Their study, now known as The Exxon Report, reveals how certain oil companies pursued a strategy nearly identical to the strategy used by the tobacco industry regarding the link between cigarettes and lung cancer, to spread doubt about the impact of fossil fuels on global warming.

Just a few days later, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was released, consolidating evidence from climate scientists around the world, stating that "warming of the climate system is now unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level." The document was signed by 110 countries, including some whose economies depend on the world’s continued use of fossil fuel. Yet the report reads, "Global atmospheric concentrations of (carbon dioxide) have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values." The confidence level is now greater than 90 percent.

For those of us concerned about the planet, this high-level acceptance of the current reality can only be seen as positive. Yet the reality itself is rather bleak. Well-timed good news on that front came from the American Solar Energy Society. Their report, entitled Tackling Climate Change in the US, claims that "Energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies have the potential to provide most, if not all, of the U.S. carbon emissions reductions that will be needed to help limit the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to 450 to 500 ppm by the year 2030." This, of course, assumes prompt and decisive action by all parties, not exactly a given.