U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe’s snowball stunt has done something quite useful.
It has sparked another round of debate over whether Earth’s climate is changing.
The Oklahoma Republican sought to debunk the climate change theorists when he brought the snowball to the Senate floor this week. It’s really cold in Washington, D.C., the chairman said. So the snowball is a symbol of what he believes, which is that climate change is a load of crap.
http://time.com/3725994/inhofe-snowball-climate/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Fscienceandhealth+%28TIME%3A+Top+Science+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+UK
Actually, it’s not.
As the brief essay attached to this post notes, although the D.C. temperature was quite cold, that very day it was swelteringly hot in Opa Loca, Fla. — 87 degrees hot, as a matter of fact.
Does the temperature in Opa Loca on one day mean that Earth’s climate is changing? Not any more than the snowball in D.C. disproves it.
But the debate is a good one.
Science has produced mountains of evidence to suggest that the planet is getting warmer. Yet we keep hearing deniers suggest that the planet is getting colder. The polar ice caps are melting. No, wait! They’re getting larger.
The climate is changing because of human activity, scientists have concluded. Others say the climate change is part of an epochal cycle.
Here’s a notion worth considering. What if we actually did reduce carbon emissions significantly by requiring industrial plant managersĀ to do a better job of controlling what they’re spewing into the atmosphere? How about if Third World governments cracked down on those who are obliterating forests and reducing the level of oxygen being pumped into the atmosphere to counteract the carbon dioxide that contributes to the carbon levels? What if we did all we could do to make the air cleaner with less carbon?
Wouldn’t that sustain the planet longer? Wouldn’t all that work slow the deterioration of our resources, if not reverse it?
Chairman Inhofe can deny the existence of climate change. But a cold day in D.C. doesn’t prove his point.
I am not going to buy into the notion that doing nothing about any of this is good for the only planet we have.
I have to agree. There may be a cyclical change occurring at this time but for the first time in history, there are 7 billion people and 1 billion motorized vehicles affecting the outcome. Ignoring these effects is an indication of ignorance. And willful ignorance is unforgivable.