Short version: science doesn't stand a chance.
In the course of reviewing a couple of recent global warming books, Chris Mooney explains why we're falling to face the facts of "A Really Long Heat Wave." He writes with reason, not sweetness, but just enough piquancy to make his review enticing, despite the grimness of the news:
And thus the disconnect that is one source of the unfolding tragedy of our time. As Archer notes in The Long Thaw,
global warming could change the planet for the next 100,000 years,
which is how long it may take for igneous rocks to "breathe" back in
all the carbon dioxide we've released over just a few centuries.
Scientists say the Holocene period of the earth's history is giving way
to the Anthropocene — we human beings are now driving the planet,
recklessly pushing it to unimaginable disaster. But, hey, it's still
not pressing; there's always some breaking news development with more
apparent urgency.
Consider press treatment of the early 2007 release of the Fourth
Assessment Report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. These U.N. reports, which come only once every five
years or so, sum up the considered judgment of the international
scientific community, and the 2007 report (whose authors were later
awarded a Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore) flatly said that global
warming is now "unequivocal" and predominantly human-caused. How did
the press respond? According to an analysis by the Pew Research Center,
global warming ranked fourth among news stories the week the report
came out. In total coverage, it lagged behind Iraq, the 2008
presidential campaign (this was January of 2007), and tensions
with Iran. By the next week, global warming had vanished from the
roster of top stories entirely, supplanted by, among other things, the
Super Bowl, the death of Anna Nicole Smith, and the bizarre story of an
astronaut "love triangle" that ended in attempted murder and kidnapping
charges.
Kit Stolz 