Climate Consensus

Last week, in his last days as chairman of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma held Senate hearings on the global warming issue that featured many of the scientific community's skeptics and doubters on the issue. The overwhelming weight of opinion in the scientific community points toward global warming as looming danger of catastrophic proportions. but there are still scientists who question the evidence and point to climate change as a long, recurring, natural cycle. Skepticism is a good thing and without scientific debate and exploration the earth wood still be flat and I'd be hacking this post out on piece of bark. The danger inherent in the "global warming is a media hoax" theory put forth by the tenacious Inhofe is that such thinking slows down the process of change and energizes the right-wing, talk-radio crowd to dig in with a self-righteous smirk as they throw darts at the DVD jacket of "An Inconvenient Truth".

I, myself, usually hate to part of the "consensus" because thinking with the crowd isn't as much fun as doing battle with "the man" (in this case "the man" may be General Motors so I'm getting mixed signals). In the case of global warming the debate is really over, the impending risks too high, and the benefits to change, though economically painful, will ultimately create a global culture that is richer, safer, and more eco-friendly. Now that's what I call evolution.
g