Short version: science doesn't stand a chance.
In the course of reviewing a couple of recent global warming books, Chris Mooney explains why we're falling to face the facts of "A Really Long Heat Wave." He writes with reason, not sweetness, but just enough piquancy to make his review enticing, despite the grimness of the news:
And thus the disconnect that is one source of the unfolding tragedy of our time. As Archer notes in The Long Thaw, global warming could change the planet for the next 100,000 years, which is how long it may take for igneous rocks to "breathe" back in all the carbon dioxide we've released over just a few centuries. Scientists say the Holocene period of the earth's history is giving way to the Anthropocene -- we human beings are now driving the planet, recklessly pushing it to unimaginable disaster. But, hey, it's still not pressing; there's always some breaking news development with more apparent urgency.
Consider press treatment of the early 2007 release of the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These U.N. reports, which come only once every five years or so, sum up the considered judgment of the international scientific community, and the 2007 report (whose authors were later awarded a Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore) flatly said that global warming is now "unequivocal" and predominantly human-caused. How did the press respond? According to an analysis by the Pew Research Center, global warming ranked fourth among news stories the week the report came out. In total coverage, it lagged behind Iraq, the 2008 presidential campaign (this was January of 2007), and tensions with Iran. By the next week, global warming had vanished from the roster of top stories entirely, supplanted by, among other things, the Super Bowl, the death of Anna Nicole Smith, and the bizarre story of an astronaut "love triangle" that ended in attempted murder and kidnapping charges.
