The chemical giant DuPont, the bulldozer company Caterpillar, the aluminium producer Alcoa and the US subsidiary of BP, will all join with environmental groups next week to pressure the Bush Administration to get serious about global warming. STORY HERE OR HERE
The age of global warming denial, meanwhile, also appears to be drawing to a close. Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, has cut its funding to groups who argue global warming is a hoax, and is now working to develop strategies it can accept for emissions reduction.
It’s about time. Hell, even the religious fundamentalist dinosaurs know global warming is upon us. “It’s time for us to become good stewards of the earth,” as one of my very best friends, a religious liberal, told me two days ago. “God would want us to do that – protect our earth that he created.”
Actually, it would help change the dialogue if we changed the “global warming” label to “global climate change.” There’s always a small handfull of pesky oil company employees who troll around the blogosphere, posting about how the winters are colder than they can ever remember in Houston, and about lost orange crops in southern California. I could play their game and remind them that I’ve seen much colder winters here in Texas, those of 1983, when the temps didn’t get above freezing for 12 days, or that of 1987 when ice storms brought down 38 steel communications towers in West Texas and wreaked havoc with electricity and telephones for hundreds of towns. (Hello, Mick and “Ethanol.”) This winter is not fun, but it’ s not as bad as others I’ve had to work through.
“Rapid global climate change” would be a better nomenclature for what greenhouse gases are doing. The north and south poles are melting. Bears are not hibernating in Siberia anymore. Birds are returning to the New England states earlier every year, as are blossoming fruit trees.
BUT, some places around the globe will see colder winters. Canada, for one, as the polar ice caps melt and let arctic winds blow across open sea waters instead of ice with its insulating properties. England and the northern European countries will see colder winters because the Atlantic Gulf Stream water currents won’t carry as much tropical warming that far north anymore. And Houston, Texas may get more freaky ice storms?
Global Warming, Rapid Global Climate Change, call it what you want, just don’t call it a hoax. It is here upon us. A few dinosaurs and employees of oil companies will continue to troll and whine, and to be scorned by all thoughtful, intelligent people.
