Earth Unbalanced | Green Energy News

April 24, 2005 – Vol.10 No.5

EARTH UNBALANCED.

The title of the press release from NASA is telling - Scientists Confirm Earth’s Energy Out of Balance. The story behind the story is now common belief. The Earth is warming because of high levels of atmospheric pollution. Carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and black carbon particles are trapping solar heat.

But beyond the title of the release comes a problem in the way the public (especially skeptics) understand the problem of global warming.

The press release says that the imbalance of the Earth’s energy is 0.85 watts per meter squared. That imbalance will cause an additional warming of 0.6 degrees Celsius ( about 1 degree Fahrenheit) by the end of this century.

Fine, but the press release doesn’t mention that we’ve already had 1.1 degrees F (0.6 C) of warming since the beginning of the 20th century.

But there’s a bigger problem with the way the press release is written.

Far down in the release comes the most important paragraph of all:

“As the Earth warms it emits more heat. Eventually the Earth will be back in balance, if the greenhouse gas emissions are kept at the same level of today. Scientists know it takes the ocean longer to warm than the land. The lag in the ocean's response has practical consequences. It means there is an additional global warming of about one degree Fahrenheit that is already in the pipeline. Even if there were no further increase of human-made gases in the air, climate would continue to warm that much over the next century.”

The phrases that should be emphasized, but are not, are “if the greenhouse gas emissions are kept at the same level of today” and “Even if there were no further increase of human-made gases in the air...”

“Today” means today, now, immediately. “No further increase” means stopping at this point. The press release doesn’t mention that greenhouse gas emissions are rising daily and are expected to rise over the coming years, decades and the century because only meager action is being taken to stop the increase. The press release does not emphasize the need for immediate action.

Why such a problem in the structure of a press release? Press releases are made for the media. Good media outlets, good reporters, may take the time to contact the scientists behind the study to get the full story. Other less-so-conscientious may report the story as released by NASA without examining further: The release doesn’t answer enough questions. The big question reporters should ask is how high will temperatures get if we don’t stop increasing greenhouse gas emissions immediately?

The media, the news, is often the only connection between the worlds of science and government and the people. The people deserve the full and complete story. For the release and graphics visit NASA at

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/earth_energy.html