The heat is on in Oregon, politically, in the Global Warming controversy.
Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the powers that be in Salem have decided that the earth is indeed warming up and that it’s we who are to blame.
State Climatologist George Taylor, a professor in the College of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Oregon State University, does not agree. Taylor has not hopped on the Global Warming bandwagon, and has thus distanced himself from the “scientific mainstream,” including his own colleagues at OSU.
He’s also ticked off the governor, who has made no secret of the fact that he wants to take the title of “state climatologist” from Taylor. The governor says that Taylor’s views interfere with the state’s stated goals to reduce greenhouse gases, the accepted cause of global warming in the view of a majority of the scientific community.
All of this, of course, comes on the heels of the latest meeting of the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change in Paris earlier this month, in which the leading international network of climate change scientists from 13 countries concluded that global warming was “unequivocal” and would likely last hundreds of years. They also concluded that humans were “very likely” to blame for the climate change that is expected to result in heat waves, extreme storms and droughts, and changes in ocean temperatures and wind patterns.
Maybe everybody else is right and Taylor is way off base. But the fact that the scientific community has embraced the global warming is either testimony that they all have uncommon wisdom and complete assurance that their reasoning is logical and without fault, or that they’ve observed a natural phenomenon for which they simply feel compelled to come up with some sort of acceptable explanation, as priests and magicians did in ancient times for rulers who wanted instant answers.
The fact is, there are a lot of unknowns associated with global warming, as anyone who is thinking honestly has to acknowledge. Our society has reached the point that, because we’ve used the scientific method to achieve great advances on many fronts, we need to be able to explain everything. Plus, there’s no question that our activities as humans have polluted the atmosphere and impacted to the natural world. The fact that we’re concerned about this is not necessarily wrong. The fact that we blame ourselves for this global warming problem may be.
It’s very convenient for global warming advocates to overlook the fact that we have barely 150 years of reliable surface temperature records to work off of in determining what’s going to happen to our thermometers for the next several hundred years. Of course, there are other methods, such as measuring the width and other characteristics of tree rings, examining the isotopic composition of snow, corals and stalactites, and studying records of crop harvests and locations. These activities can give us clues, but they aren’t definitive.
Climates change. Between 900 and 1200, for instance, history tells us that the region of northern Great Britain (including Scotland) was known for its wine. Grapes won’t grow there today.
The average height of Britons in 1000 AD was close to 6 feet, which was not the case later when the nutrition was not as good. During that same period, the Vikings were traversing the North Atlantic in boats that would never make it across that ocean, one of the roughest in the world, today.
By the 13th century, Northern Europe got colder as the Little Ice Age set in, and people moved south as violent weather patterns took hold in the north and famine and plague swept through the region, leading to one of the most sweeping mass deaths ever.
The bottom line is that we really don’t know anything about long-term climate change, other than what we can tell by looking at tree rings and history books. But we live in a society where scientists are expected to answer every question and most are very willing to do so. And heaven forbid if you’re not on the bandwagon.
Gov. Kulongoski needs to back off on George Taylor, even if the scientist is terribly wrong. Politics should not dictate what scientists say, and to threaten Taylor just because the scientific majority is moving in a different direction is just plain wrong. Much as modern-day scientists would like to think differently, much of their belief structure is built on theories.
Face it: other than the fact that we can measure temperatures with more accuracy now that we have improved technology, most of our ideas about how they affect the earth and how they’ve changed are merely theories. They don’t know. They just think they do.
We do know for sure, though, that one way to cut down on carbon dioxide, which is believed to cause global warming, is to plant trees. The National Arbor Day Foundation has pledged to help the U.S. Forest Service plant 50 million trees over the next 50 years to combat deforestation, caused mainly by wildfires.
That’s not a bad idea, particularly since they’ve gotten a $50 million pledge from Enterprise Rent-a-Car Co. to do it.
Not only do trees reduce CO2, they also are right shady during those hot summer days.
And it looks like if this global warming phenomenon continues, we’re going to have some of those.
While the politicians posture, plant some trees.
You can buy some Saturday , March 3, at the Linn County Chapter of Oregon Small Woodlands Association’s Tree Seedling Sale. The event will be from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Santiam Building at the Linn County Fair and Expo Center, 3700 Knox Butte Road in Albany. When it really gets hot, those trees will be there for you.