Thursday, July 16, 2009

522...Elizabeth Payne On Global Warming

In an editorial in today's Ottawa Citizen, an editorial that skillfully uses the near death of Lake Erie 40 years ago as metaphor, Elizabeth Payne thoughtfully asks "What will it take to get some concrete action on global warming?"

The answer is simple yet out of control of science and scientists.

It has to get warm.

As in hot.

Ridiculously hot.

Not that I am being Lowell Greenesque and doubting that global warming is an issue but you did ask the question Miss Payne.

It is just hard to energize the common man, and none are more common than I, behind a cause that one cannot feel and in a summer in Ontario and Quebec where the temperatures have barely touched 20 let alone the 30's and near 40's of years gone by, it is difficult to believe that there is global warming.

Intellectually I know that there is global warming but when I am running my car heater in July in Ottawa it is hard to emotionally buy in.

Lake Erie had dead fish washing up on shore, the Cuyahoga River catching fire in Cleveland, great optics for television; global warming doesn't have that.

The issue has to be saleable. And it has to be localized.

The only question is, how?

WFDS

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