Look who’s warming up to global warming
It wasn’t long ago that it was popular to scoff at scientists who claimed that greenhouse gases were eating away the ozone layer, leading to global warming.
Environmentalists were labeled as wackos, and any mention of greenhouse gases was followed by a joke.
Now Congress is talking about a special committee to study the effects of global warming and propose legislation to head it off.
It appears that global warming has gone mainstream. Republicans are joining Democrats in taking note of their constitutents’ growing concerns.
The questions aren’t about whether it’s happening, but whether and how we can do anything about it.
Monroe County is in an interesting place on this topic. Our coal-fired power plants are among the nation’s largest producers of carbon dioxide, considered the leading culprit in the global warming debate. And we have a nuclear power plant and an energy company actively considering building more nuclear plants - which could end up being one of the alternatives to burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.
We’re also dependent on the auto industry - also a major producer of greenhouse gases. Our congressman, Rep. John Dingell, is chairman of the House committee with jurisdiction over environmental issues. Rep. Dingell is known as both a supporter of the auto industry and of the environment.
And our governor is pushing Southeast Michigan as a leader in the development of alternative energy sources - sort of our niche in the world of new technology.
All this adds up to an interesting next few years.
For more on global warming, check out Ria Rogers’ blog, “Our World.”
January 19th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Hi Dan!
Monroe’s power industry is a blessing and a curse. It is a major source of jobs and tax revenue. And I think that it insulates us from SOME of the turmoil of the auto industry downsizing.
But it does come at a cost. I am a Monroe native. I’ve also lived in Manchester, Tecumseh, Adrian and Onsted. I’ve lived 99% of my life within a few miles of that river.
But I’ve never seen where that river flows into Lake Erie. For some reason, that just kind of bugs me. It’s kind of like reading a book without being able to read the final chapter.
BTW, for anyone interested, I wrote a blog entry about how the River Raisin apparently flows backwards because of the Monroe Edison plant.
http://extremesouthmichigan.blogspot.com/2007/01/did-you-know-river-raisin-flows.html
So, again, the power industry is great. But it is a definite tradeoff.
February 8th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
global warming WAS an unpopular theory to defend because the political agenda of the past was to scare the people with evidence of global COOLING. the short term climate record of the past indicated, to those who believe firmly in their drastically flawed models, that we were heading into an ice age. today’s short term climate record leads some scientists — with their inadequate climate models, based on far reaching assumptions — to spread fear of the opposite catastrophic situation. Politicians will always provide us with plenty to fear, whether it be terrorism or man made climate change. without that fear, their jobs seem less important.
February 11th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
What do you think? Was this post really from Al Gore?
I don’t think so. Sounds to me like someone posing as Al Gore, trying to cast doubt on the concept of global warming as a man-caused phenomenom that we should be concerned about.