Some Like It Hot

By: Greg Mitchell Last night, I was watching ?The Daily Show,? as usual, and heard Al Gore reveal that he had been warning about global warming for 20 years. I?ve heard him say this a few dozen times lately, but for some reason, this time, it finally occurred to me that my own concern about this issue goes back at least as far.

Back in 1985, Viking published a book I wrote with Pascal J. Imperato, titled ?Acceptable Risks,? which examined how regulators, and individuals, choose to ignore certain hazards while taking action against others, often in a highly irrational way. The penultimate chapter explored an emerging danger we called ?The Ultimate Risk: The Greenhouse Effect.?

This is what global warming was called back in the good old days when we still had plenty of time to address it. But until Al chatted with Jon, I hadn?t bothered to go back and look at what I actually wrote -- to ponder the state of science and alarm in the mid-1980s.

What I found: There?s not much new under the ever-hotter sun. The ?inconvenient truth? of global warming has been told for more than two decades, to little avail.

In fact, the chapter in my book opens with a warning about the Antarctic ice sheet melting, and a rising of the sea level likely to ?submerge? coastal cities. The paragraph that followed could have come directly from the Gore film (without the slide show) twenty years on: ?There have been warming trends before, but never one so rapid as this -- virtually overnight on the geological clock. Rather than having several hundreds years to cope with the changes it may bring, humankind will have to adjust in little more than half a century.?

Of course, we are now 20 years into that half-century.

?More than a severe disruption of the world economy is at stake,? I wrote. ?The very survival of Earth?s highest forms of life may be on the line.? But, I advised, ?Something can be done to prevent -- or at least mitigate -- this threat. On a global basis, humankind can cut down its burning of fossil fuels, stabilizing the excessive accumulation of carbon dioxide in the earth?s atmosphere that creates the hazard known as the Greenhouse Effect.

?There is no sign, however, that we have the slightest interest in doing this.?

One thing has changed, however. Back then, scientists felt sure the warming would soon come -- they accurately projected a one degree global rise in 20 years -- but it had not yet appeared. They explained that normal temperature cycles were probably masking the trend, and ?the lack of clear-cut evidence for a major warming effect may have terrible consequences, for it has already undermined efforts at getting governments of the world?s nationals to deal with the threat of such an effect.?

So what was our own Congress doing about it then? About as much as it is now. But there was an excuse. Climate change, as noted, was still somewhat speculative. One top scientist told me, ?To really KNOW anything you?ll have to wait another thirty years, so we won?t be able to convince Congress of anything until 2010.?

As it turned out, we came to ?know? a lot long before thirty years passed. As Leonard Cohen once put it, "We asked for signs/and signs were sent." But making that 2010 deadline now looks quite doubtful.