A Brief Retrospective on the Global Warming Debate

You may have seen news reports that 2023 was the warmest year on record. The same thing is said every few years, so there's a risk that we just become numb to it. As I thought about this new record, it occured to me that a whole generation has grown up almost in the amount of time since I have been paying attention to the issue. They may not realize how little the political debate has changed in comparision to what has developed in the data. Even for those of us who have been around for a while, it's easy to lose track. I think it's worth taking a brief look back.

The graphic above is the latest temperature data from NASA with my addition of a few semi-arbitrary landmarks. The first is from 1988 when NASA climate scientist James Hansen testified to Congress that the signal of global warming due to greenhouse gases had been detected, and forecasted additional warming with an effect on extreme climate events, like summer heatwaves. This testimony put the public on notice that global warming was real.

The second is the 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth, in which then-recent democratic Vice President Al Gore sought to educate and warn the public about global warming and climate change. Naturally, the political right was stirred to indignation and launched a campaign to savage him. A flood of commentary picked apart alleged flaws and hyperbole, and blamed Gore for making climate change a political issue (as the political right began cementing it into a tribal identity marker).

Finally, I've indicated the "Climategate" controversy of 2009, in which hackers obtained emails and documents from climate researchers. The contents were then leaked in an attempt to discredit climate scientists. Emails were taken out of context to make it seem that climate scientists were manipulating the data in order to mislead the public. These claims were picked up in the national press and amplified on blogs, etc. However, it didn't take that much effort to figure out that the scientists had been misrepresented. After a variety of official investigations, none of the scientists were found to have been dishonest. But the damage to the public perception of climate science was done.

I stopped at 2009 because the terms of the debate about global warming really haven't changed much since then. Year after year, the warming trend continues, and year after year, the political right offers up the same basic set of excuses for refusing to believe that there is a problem or that anything can (or should) be done about it. Just a few months ago an article was brought to my attention by that annoying feature Microsoft added to the Windows task bar that pops us with suggested content. It was essentially another right-wing diatribe about how scientists who don't believe in global warming are excluded, and blah blah blah. It could have been written in 2009 because it was just another recycling of the same old talking points without any recognition of the temperature data since then. But I guess it makes for evergreen right-wing content.

Fox News and other right-wing content providers will continue to huff and harumph about this issue, and assure their watchers/readers/listeners that THEY are the wise ones in a world gone mad. But eventually it will be clear to all but the most daft who was right about what was happening. Unfortunately, by then the deceivers will have made their money and lived their lives. Nobody will be accountable [1]. In the meantime, keep pointing to the data.

Notes:
1. I mean, what good does it do to rail against, say, Rush Limbaugh now? He's dead. And with each year that goes by, fewer people will even remember him. But the attitudes he helped foster live on.

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