When I told a scientist friend recently that Hurricane Katrina could be attributed to global warming he scolded me severely. I was not to refer to individual extreme weather events as the result of global warming, and if I continued to do so I would bring disgrace and dishonor not only to myself but to the whole world scientific community. Well, I thought he was exaggerating a little (he does that occasionally), but now I find Britain's Royal Society, the oldest and perhaps greatest scientific society in the world agrees with him. As the Guardian reports (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1758298,00.html):
'Britain's scientists are drawing up a plan to fight renewed attempts by sceptics and industry-funded lobby groups to derail international action on climate change. But the memo also criticises environmental campaigners for misrepresenting scientific evidence and says that green groups and the British media "have been guilty of expressing unjustified certainty about the science of climate change". It criticises Greenpeace for blaming global warming for the 2003 heatwave that killed 30,000 people across Europe. Global warming could not be blamed for individual weather events, although it does make some more likely to occur.'
Well, far be it for me to presume to criticise the Royal Society (even though they haven't yet made me a member), but I haven't heard so much nonsense related to global warming since the last speech by Michael Crichton, or a response by a troll to one of my HuffPo posts . This is one of the reasons why Crichton and Lundberg and Cooney and the small number of other bad guys have been able to prevail over all the scientists of the world.
Global warming means two things for the future of the only planet humans can live on. On the one hand a slow (though accelerating) and steady increase in CO2 levels and as a consequence average temperatures and as a consequence melting ice and as a consequence rising sea levels. Good hard science for all this, measurements to burn, while the planet burns, definitively showing the change. But Joe Public can't read graphs (nor can the global warming sceptics it seems), and gradual change means nothing. In fact you will read idiotic remarks about how it will be nice to have warmer weather in Milwaukee. It all seems a long way away and of little consequence - certainly no reason for Joe Public to stop driving Hummers or to change his lifestyle in any way.
But the other big effect of global warming is the increasing frequency of extreme weather events - droughts, floods, hurricanes, big snowfalls. There is no doubt that the increasing water and air temperatures are going to cause more and more instability and drive stronger and stronger storms. The climate change deniers know this, and greet each new event with the chorus that we have had floods, or storms, before. They dare the scientists to mention increasing instability, because they know that people can potentially identify with this in terms of individual effects on families, and on the economy. Explain it to the public in those terms, using each new disaster as an example of what is going to be more and more common, and the most uninformed member of the public, or politician, will get the message.
To avoid doing this, as the Royal Society, and my friend, want, is to play into the hands of the grossly overpaid CEOs of energy companies. What do you, dear reader, think I should do?