Yesterday I had a chance to talk with writer Christina
Birchfield, who is a fellow National Writers Union member and a blogger
at the Green Builder magazine
website. Christina has written a number of posts about global warming, the most
recent of which is "Changing Climate Deniers' Minds?” In that post, she reviews Pew Research data
and notes that Republicans and those Independents who "lean
Republican" are much more likely to be global warming skeptics – this seems
to be related to the fact that there has been a real downturn in the number of
Republicans (and Republican-leaning Independents) who place a high priority on the
environment compared to 20 years ago. Christina also referred to an article in
Bloomberg View,
which asserts, based on Gallup Poll data, that “Americans' views on climate change
increasingly have more to do with politics than science.” “When I studied at the
University of Chicago, one of the political science truths was that once people
had formed an opinion it was unlikely to change,” Christina notes in the post. “They
would distrust or disbelief the messenger who delivers facts that refuted their
opinions.”
Despite the existence of
climate change deniers, Christina remains optimistic. Both in her blog and in
our conversation, Christina focused on the importance of renewable sources of
energy, particularly solar energy. She mentioned the Idaho-based Solar Roadways
start-up (which she blogged about in an earlier post http://www.greenbuildermedia.com/news/solar-roadways-smart/intelligent-infrastructure) as having potential to make a difference. The Solar Roadways people want to pave driveways, roads and parking
lots with hexagonal solar-cell paving. Christina noted that the indiegogo campaign for Solar Roadways met and exceeded its
fundraising goal and said that as of June 4 more than 44,000 people contributed
nearly $2 million, which she found heartening.
But in spite of occasional good news, it's hard not to feel real concern about climate change. On the front page of today’s Daily Star there was an Associated Press story called “Global warming hits SW states hardest, as summer temps soar.” The AP analyzed federal temperature records and found that the average Arizona
summer is now 2.4 degrees warmer than it was in 1984. This is the fourth
fastest summertime increase in the contiguous 48 states, and the article goes
on to say that Tucson’s average annual temperature rose 1.1 degrees in the past
thirty years. Apparently, climate scientists used 1984 as a starting point for
this analysis because it had an average temperature, and it was not “a
cherry-picked year to skew a trend either way.” Tucson is a hot place, it’s
getting hotter, and though climate change doesn’t always manifest itself in
terms of warming trends, it’s certainly doing so here. This afternoon I went out and walked around
the nearby desert for a few minutes and saw that even cacti are having a hard time of it.
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| Heat-stressed prickly pear cactus |
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