George,

I'm recently back from a week at Chautauqua where global warming was the topic and where Al Gore gave a stirring and powerful keynote address. (Oh that he had spoken like that when a candidate for president!!!) All the distinguished speakers that week, conservative and liberal, were agreed that human activity as a major cause of global warming is no longer in debate among the vast majority of respected climatologists and other scientists. The number of people on the other side, like Patrick Michaels, is vanishingly small, but they often get equal time with their opponents in congressional hearings, the media and such, so that the public still tends to think scientists may be equally divided, and therefore we need to wait for more data before doing anything big to avert looming catastrophe.

The speakers, though very worried, were generally optimistic that with present and coming technologies and with a huge redirection of resources, as in a new Manhattan Project, we CAN avert disaster, but we have to act NOW. Business is catching on rapidly, but the public also has to understand the imminent threats to agriculture, fisheries, water supplies, coastal areas public health, forests, etc. and to get behind the effort to turn the battleship around. A Republican speaker, Whit Ayres, president of a public opinion and public affairs research firm, said that Al Gore is on the wrong track; that the way to get people involved was not to behave like Chicken Little (unfair comparison) but to convince them of the marvelous economic opportunities and jobs that would ensue, the fortunes to be made, when we uncouple CO/2 generation from our economic activity, and when we get serious about energy conservation. He also said that if people were made sufficiently aware of the asthma attacks, the annual deaths or disabilities of tens of thousands sufferers from respiratory diseases caused by air pollution from dirty coal plants they would demand that these plants be cleaned up.

Politically it was said that the McCain/Lieberman market-based global warming bill, with its mandatory emissions cap and trade mechanisms, is a very promising start and must be supported and passed fast.

Given what's at stake, people like Patrick Michaels, supported as they are by fossil fuel industries, should not be in top positions of authority on climate at the state and national levels.

Wilma Bradbeer (electronic mail, August 14, 2006)