Tom received the following email:

Dear Mr. Barnett --

I read your column distributed by Scripps Howard News Service in which you seem to say (unless I miread you) that you are persuaded, if cynically, that humans are responsible for global warming. Though we're not publishing your column, I was curious how you might answer the following from a New York Times comment board. The writer, Wendy Marshall, is responding to an earlier message by Times Science editor Andrew Revkin.

Admittedly, I am but a lowly journalist whose inquiring alleged mind wants to know. I have yet to hear a reasonable explanation of why CO2 was rising for 30 years between roughly 1942-72, yet global temperatures were falling during that time. When I was in high school in 1971, everyone was terrified because scientists were saying the the earth was plunging into a new ice age.

So perhaps my skepticism can be forgiven. I don't think 1 degree F. in 100 years is anything to get excited about even if true. Have you read Crichton's speech on consensus science? Aliens Cause Global Warming

RW

Tom writes:

I am very familiar with the IPCC's years of work on the subject, and know the chairman personally. It gets hard to critique away all their data and analysis, and just intuitively, when I know a huge mass of humanity enters into heavy CO2 production ranges in terms of industrialization and heightened transportation nets and the green revolution over the past 50 years, it simply makes intuitive sense to me.

More personally, there's simple the change of weather over my lifetime, which strikes me as profound.

When I read the critiques of the warming thesis, they seam weak. When I read critiques of the counter-theories (like warming sun), they're far more easily dismissed with hard data.

So you take all that and you go with prudence in strategic terms. What does prudence get me?

A global scheme (much needed) to bring advanced and emerging economies together on both regional and global pollution management. It also gets me (finally) advances out of oil and toward next generation sources and technologies (nuke, renewables, hydrogen (which I can crack cheaply with pebble-beds nukes), etc). Those are all good things technologically, environmentally, economically and politically speaking. I can run with all and do good things in transforming relations with emerging and disconnected economies around the world.

So it's not that hard to accept, especially since the apparent political divides on the subject are meaningless to me (leave it to Boomers to overpoliticize anything to the point of absolute stupidity).

If you want to rule the world, you don't fight the inevitable. The rapid expansion of globalization will put the planet into a lengthy period of extreme duress. To stem that impact, you need global causes to incite action and collaboration (point of my column).

Plus, I do think we need to follow the smarter Brits and rhetorically downgrade the war on terror mindset, which I find highly destructive on many fronts while producing little good. As a professional in global security, I see no benefit and much harm in the "war footing." In short, it won't take us where we want to go and it actually makes the security work harder to achieve by overpoliticizing (again, that Boomer skill of skills) every possible aspect..

The enviro footing, however, is much better suited for a host of global cooperative issues we need to explore and exploit with rising pillars like Brazil, Russia, India and China. With the EU and Japan already on board, I run with the consensus we have instead of running aground in the meantime with Bush's disastrous, isolating leadership.