By A.C. McCloud

Both ABC News and Time have sensationalistic articles out about global warming, essentially telling us to put our heads between our legs and kiss our posteriors goodbye. By the way, rarely does one see such an ominous headline about climate, unless it’s the infamous Newsweek piece from 1975 (which seems to have disappeared).

Is the warming really out of control? As any scientist would respond, “hard to say.” The evidence clearly suggests we’ve been warming, the issue is just how much can be attributed to the exhaust end of automobiles or smoke stacks.

Here in Memphis our average temperature was above normal eleven out of the twelve months of 2005, and January 2006 was nearly 10 degrees above normal. Statistically speaking, that is stunning.

But to understand just how widespread the warming might be we need to look to satellite data, since it’s less prone to data corruption compared to ground based sensors. The sky kodaks do show a rise, especially in the last ten years. Notice there was no visible trend in the late 80s as alluded to by the ABC coverage.

Here’s the bad news. Let’s say most of the warming is being caused by our “carbon footprint,” as James Hansen and the others assert. There’s simply nothing we can do to stop it. Nothing. It’s coming much too fast and furious. Ironically, efforts like Kyoto wouldn’t have stopped it either.

Conversely, if carbon is NOT the major contributor to our present warming, there is even less nothing we can do to stop it. We’re left to hope this is an aberation on the chart.

In the final analysis, whether we’re toasting ourselves to death or not is of secondary concern, since we’re going to run out of cheap fossil fuels anyway. The solution calls for innovative thinking rather than panicky socialism. For example, there are some cool things in ideaspace right now, like mining Helium-3 from the moon. It’s high time for some new-age Edisons, Bells and Whitneys to begin saving the day.