There is a window of opportunity when climate change is obvious and we must take advantage of that if we are going to accomplish anything politically about climate change. Congress must act and it would be irresponsible not to. Any bill in the Senate must get full endorsement and massive publicity to get through the house. One clear place to start is with coal mining safety.
As meteorologists know, our current heat wave is due to a weather phenomenon that is well known and has occurred to some extent before and will likely occur again no matter what we do. There has been a high-pressure cell over the center of the US that has caused heat and humidity throughout much of the US. The other day it was reported that 22 people had died from the heat and the numbers will likely rise before this is over. Some people say they are confident we will adapt to changes in climate. What they don’t say is that it would only be those that survive that could possibly adapt.
I wrote this winter that I see a seasonal pattern in the interest in climate change. It was during the summer that many evangelical leaders embraced climate change and said that something had to be done about it. Last winter, Fox news and others repeatedly joked about what had ever become of global warming. As we know, weather is a complex subject though we do understand it, and global climate change does not consist of just warming. With warming there is an increase of water vapor in the air, and both higher precipitation and draught depending on the region, and if the subduction of cold water in the north Atlantic causes a change in the ocean circulation patterns we could actually see an ice age develop in Europe which would hardly be considered warming at all.
The greenhouse effect has been understood since it was discovered in the 1800s, and people around the turn of the century wondered if the coal burning of the industrial revolution could lead to problems in the future. Any future predictions are necessarily extrapolations and likely to be wrong to some degree. We do know that warming has occurred and that it is related to our emissions of carbon dioxide that have been causing CO2 levels to rise in the atmosphere. This is not controversial unless you are selling coal or really and truly love your incandescent lighting.
At the same time, coal production is a dangerous business where the people who work are not rewarded adequately for their risks and are not properly protected. Keeping these people safer and better compensated will make coal more expensive in a reflection of its actual cost and increase utilization of alternative sources. We need to act now to accomplish anything. When the Fall comes it will get cooler (anyone betting against that?). Interest in climate change legislation will also be reduced. There is about a month or two to get anything done and it will probably have to start in the senate and have to get massive publicity to get past either house.
That the cost of cleaning up coal emissions is causing coal generator projects to be abandoned is also a good sign. This is another hidden cost of coal that offsets its cheap availability and needs to be charged at the source.