Last week's New York Times Week in Review section offered a tiny blurb about the recent hot weather headlined "How the Heat Came On." Ostensibly, the article set out to explain the meteorological conditions that created the mini heat wave that New York City went through last week. "Hot spells occur," Andrew Revkin wrote, "because surfaces are heating and the oceans serve as a depository for that accumulating energy." But before getting into that he made sure to point out, "Global warming has little to do with hot spells."

This note on global warming really struck me. How could Revkin be so certain and authoritative that last week's heat wave was completely unrelated to a broader trend of global warming? In fact, he can't be. It will be at least a few years before we have any idea of how 2005, or the spring of 2005, or last week's hot spell fit in to the big picture of man-made climate change. It takes time for trends to show themselves.

Ross Gelbspan, author of Boiling Point, argues that the continuing denial of global warming is, essentially, a "crime against humanity." The criminals Gelbspan is thinking of are mostly people like Phillip Clooney, the former oil industry lobbyist and recently resigned Bush administration official who went out of his way to edit EPA climate reports in ways that play down links between man-made emissions and global warming. But what about Revkin's blasé, off-the-cuff global warming denial in the Times on Sunday? Where does that fit in on the crimes-against-humanity spectrum?

In some ways I find this little New York Times blurb equally troublesome. With a Phillip Clooney, you know exactly what you're dealing with (He has gone back to work for Exxon-Mobil). Revkin, however, is supposed to be on the side of truth and objectivity. His hot spells article either shouldn't have said anything about global warming or it just should have noted that we can't really know if a particular heat wave is part of a broader trend -- just as we can't know whether a specific pack of cigarettes causes a lung cancer to start growing.

To my mind, the mini-denial of the Times is very different but almost just as bad. It works on a much more subtle, unconscious level than Clooney's heavy-handed, egregious actions. The Times article lulls us with its calm authority. It gives the sophisticated Sunday reader the comforting sense that global warming is something happening somewhere else -- in Alaska and Antarctica. Our hot spells gots nothing to do with it. Don't worry says this blurb. You still don't really need to think about how your fossil fuel-intensive consumer-oriented way of life is impacting the wider world or even your very own weather.

Indeed, last week's hot spells were merely the result of localized meterological phenomenon.... totally disconnected from broader global trends.... you're getting sleepy... very sleepy... You're flipping to the Sunday Automobiles section now... You're looking at the ad for the new Subaru Deforester... If you owned one you could get the hell out of this steaming, hot city and go to the beach... Now when I snap my fingers...

10:25 PM | Link |