Living in the Onion Skin | Green Energy News

December 3, 2009 – Vol.14 No.37

LIVING IN THE ONION SKIN.
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News

President Obama is set to jet off to the UN climate summit Copenhagen with a basket of greenhouse gas cutting proposals from the U.S. Don’t be disappointed if little comes of this for months. He needs Congress fully behind any commitments. The House is ready to roll. The Senate is dragging its feet on a climate and energy bill.

If both houses can’t agree on a bill by late Winter or early Spring, action on climate change may be another year wasted away. 2010 is an election year. Congress and Obama are already on ice thinner than the greenhouse gas-warmed Arctic. Unemployment is expected to be high in November. Voters won’t be in any mood to accept any potentially life-altering, wallet-pinching mandates from Washington, no matter what size they may be.

Congressmen are watching their cozy seats very carefully.

Obama and Congress would have an easier time at passing climate legislation if more constituents were behind them on the issue. Unfortunately not all Americans are believers in global warming. Not all are convinced it’s a problem.

There’s a reason that not all Americans are convinced. They’ve been poorly educated on the subject for years. Those doing the convincing – scientists, politicians, educators, environmental organizations, the media (including Green Energy News, as small as it is) – have done an inadequate job of telling the story, of educating the general public. Trust us, they’ve said, we know better, without even bothering to discuss some of the most basic things about the planet and the science of global warming. They’ve used scare tactics (the glaciers are melting, the seas are rising) to try to convince people that something is wrong. But they’ve rarely spoken in plain understandable language about what’s happening to our only home. It is their job to teach and they’ve failed - which is why so many are skeptical.

--- Do people know how thin the Earth’s atmosphere is? Do they know that the troposphere, the bottom layer in which all of us live, is on average about 8 miles or so thick, a mere onion skin on a planet 8000 miles in diameter? Probably not.

--- Do they understand that given the thinness of the atmosphere it’s possible to have changed the composition of the air by pumping man-made emissions into it for a couple of centuries or so? They’ve probably never thought of it.

--- Do they know that the chemical composition of exhaust from power plants and cars is not found in nature? Coal occasionally burns by itself, as does oil that’s found near the surface, but do they understand that neither natural coal or oil burning is a regular occurrence? These questions have never been discussed, as far as I know.

--- Do people understand the meaning of the greenhouse effect? Do they know that the planet operates just like a greenhouse in which flowers are grown? Unlikely.

--- Do they understand that greenhouse gases comprised of carbon are just an insulator, a blanket in which everyone lives. Do they know that greenhouse gases are not in a layer in the atmosphere like ozone but around us all the time, touching our bodies? Do they know that insulating greenhouse gases are just like the blanket on a bed. If it gets too cold you throw on another one, too hot and you kick one off. Do they understand that the planet now has an extra blanket it doesn’t need? Many don’t.

--- Do people understand “scientist’s speak”? Scientists speak of tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. But when people think of tonnage they think of heavy solid things like bricks, not floating things like gases. Why don’t scientists come up with a better, more straight forward way of describing the volume of greenhouse gases in the air?

--- How can people believe that a few hundred parts out of a million can make a difference how warm the planet may get when scientists speak of greenhouse gases in parts per million. Can’t they find something more understandable way to describe and illustrate how a few parts can make a big difference?

--- Scientists speak of average temperature rises on a global scale, but never mention that an average is just an average like any other: the sum of numbers divided by the number of numbers. Do people know that the average is important, but that local or regional temperature changes are actually more so? There are big changes, for instance, when the temperature in a region that historically stayed below 32 degrees F (0 C) suddenly finds itself more often above 32. What may have been ice for ages is now water.

--- Speaking of degrees, Americans think in Fahrenheit (F) not Celsius (C). Yet when temperature increases are mentioned they are often given in C without the conversion to F. A 1C degree rise seems like nothing. But a 1.8 F (the conversion of C to F) is almost 2 degrees, and that seems more significant.

What people don’t know about the planet they need to be taught, but in a way that’s simple to understand. It can’t be assumed that everyone fully understands what scientists, and others, are saying. There’d be fewer skeptics with a down to earth explanation about global warming.