Climate Change as Popular Culture

Climate Change as Popular Culture is proving to be somewhat of a slippery slope. Not a new concept, it began as early as the 1900s, then an environmentalist concern in the 1970’s as the coming “Ice Age”. More recently as “Global Warming”, and now we know it as “Climate Change”.
“The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, amidst hysteria about the dangers of a new ice age. The media had been spreading warnings of a cooling period since the 1950s, but those alarms grew louder in the 1970s” (Anderson, 2006, p. 5). Despite this warning, in the early 1990s, global warming became the concern of the moment, according to the press.
More recently, “climatologists have become worried that the warming trend “may be irreversible, at least over most of the coming century,” according to Time magazine on Nov. 13, 2000”, Anderson (2006) reports. The obvious solution was policy changes and research grants totaling four billion dollars a year. According to scientist and environmentalist Stephen Schneider (as cited in Anderson, p. 15), “to do that, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination”. He goes on to explain the tactics used, such as dramatizing and simplifying facts, while minimizing any doubts to the public. Former Vice President Al Gore has published two books, Earth in the Balance in 1992 and An Inconvenient Truth which has a companion film, extolling the need for global constraints and the dire consequences of global warming.
The records compiled by the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) indicate that the highest temperature variations recorded were in 1934 and 1998 (2008). Both years recorded 1.24º Celsius above the average with a five year mean of .42° and .52° Celsius respectively. Granted, the trend down in mean temperature has not been as great after 1998 as it was after 1934, it has however, been dropping (NASA, 2008). This brings us to ‘Climate Change’.
“The warm currents of the Gulf Stream, according to a 2005 study by the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, U.K., have decreased 30 percent. This has raised “fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age,” as the Gulf Stream regulates temperatures in Europe and the eastern United States” Anderson (2006).
Apparently most every major weather event, climatic variation, or instability of temperature can portend some impending change in the world climate forecast. This obvious roller coaster of climate outlooks creates an atmosphere that challenges the credibility of the warming pundits. “We spend about $500 billion a year on a military budget, yet we don’t want to spend peanuts to protect against climate change,” Nicholas D. Kristof, of the New York Times said in a Sept. 27, 2005, piece. The reference to ‘change’, rather than ‘warming’, is a recurring theme in the current global climate debate and implies a never ending battle of ‘mans responsibility’ for climatic events. However, in The New York Times, less than a year later, reporter Andrew C. Revkin gave no credence that weather extremes are our fault. “There is more than enough natural variability in nature to mask a direct connection, many scientists say” (as cited in Anderson 2006, p. 16).
Concerns over the climate and potential cooling or warming are not new. Mr. Andersons article (2006) deals specifically with the debate since 1895. The point of the article is the teeter-totter between warming and cooling for more than 100 years and the fact that we just really do not know. Consensus does not a scientific fact make and common sense should dictate that we not bet our entire society on an uncertain hypothesis. None who were around can say our world is less clean than it was even 30 years ago. I would suggest we follow as we have, utilize our resources, technology and cool heads to leads us to still yet a better tomorrow: as it has during our continually improving stewardship throughout the industrial age.

References
Anderson, R. W. (2006) Fire and ice (Special Report, May 17) Alexandria, VA: Business & Media Institute. Retrieved April 24, 2008 from http://www.businessmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/Fireandice.pdfNational Aeronautics Space Administration. (2008) . Contiguous 48 U.S. Surface Air Temperature Anomaly (C). Retrieved April 24, 2008 from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt