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by Philip Taylor
 The brilliant cartoonist Tom Toles made a pointed comment on mankind’s
ability to ignore compelling scientific evidence in a series of panels
he drew in 2002. Three men are sitting in a steaming Jacuzzi, and one
says “So these scientists did this experiment that if you drop
a frog into boiling water he jumps out, but if you put him in warm water
and heat it slowly, he just swims around until he’s cooked.” “What’s
the point of that experiment?” asks the second man. “Beats
me” says the first. “Scientists. Go figure.” says the
third, to which the second adds “Probably the same ones studying
global warming”.
For the past 30 years I have been traveling around the country giving
lectures on the science of climate change, and the threats posed by the
thirty-seven per cent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to which
we have subjected ourselves. Among the many unpleasant consequences that
I have warned about was the fact that one day we were going to wake up
and find that we had lost New Orleans. Well, last year it happened, and
one might have thought that such a huge tragedy would have alerted us
all to the enormity of the crime that we have committed against our planet.
Alas, that does not seem to be the case.
What will it take to bring us to our senses? How many more cities must
we lose? What new tropical diseases will we have to suffer? How many
droughts and floods, tornadoes and hurricanes, forest fires and crop
failures must we endure before we realize that we are on a downhill spiral
to disaster that we may never be able to reverse?
When we say that the US is the world’s energy glutton, burning
22 million barrels of oil per day, the numbers just wash over us. They
are too big to comprehend. If only we were all forced to buy our gasoline
the way we buy bottled water, and had to carry our fuel out to our cars
when we filled up the tank, the message might sink in. Fifteen gallons
of gasoline weigh about a hundred pounds, and get turned into three hundred
pounds of carbon dioxide, which will stay in the atmosphere for a hundred
years. What if we all had to carry on our backs the weight of carbon
dioxide that we each were responsible for producing in the previous two
days? That might raise some awareness!
Sadly, that is not going to happen, so what must we do? As always, our
actions must be both personal and political. To campaign for the US to
join the Kyoto accords while squandering resources on gas-guzzling SUVs
would be hypocritical. To run around changing every incandescent light
bulb in sight for a compact fluorescent while continuing to elect to
office Senators who think our energy salvation lies buried in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge is to take care of the pennies while the pounds,
or rather billions of tons of carbon, are let loose on the environment.
 For the US and the world our long-term salvation lies in photovoltaic
solar cells, which turn sunshine into electricity cleanly, silently,
and efficiently. With just a few more technological advances they will
power our cars, our commerce, and our industries cheaply and conveniently.
Right now they are available to power our homes. The small array on my
own Cleveland Heights home lowers our electricity bill to below $20 a
month.
In the short term, wind power is the only resource other than conservation
to which we can turn for an immediate reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Electricity produced from modern wind turbines is already cheaper than
that from any competing new installation, and Ohio is excellently positioned
to become a center of activity in building and developing this new industry.
We have firms that manufacture the bearings and gearboxes used in many
of the world’s most successful wind turbines, and an Ohio manufacturer
just recently announced a new type of glass-fiber fabric that will make
wind turbine blades lighter and stronger. In Lake Erie we have a site
that could accommodate hundreds of these sleek and elegant machines,
each one of which is capable of quietly displacing the production of
3000 tons of carbon dioxide each year! We should all be adding our voices
to the call to make Lake Erie the site of the first fresh-water offshore
wind farm in the world.
Whatever we do, we are still going to be faced with the unpleasant consequences
of having spent the past century using our atmosphere as a dumping ground.
How we act in the next few years will not only determine how much we
can mitigate the impending tragedy of climate change, but will also define
us as a species either capable or incapable of acting together for the
common good.
© Philip Taylor 2006
Additional Resources:
Ohio’s Consumer Guide to Buying a Solar Electric System: http://www.greenenergyohio.org/page.cfm?pageID=625
To learn more about wind power on Lake Erie, see http://www.windustrious.org or contact Fletcher J. Miller at fletcher@GreenEnergyOhio.org or Sarah
Taylor at sarah@windustrious.org.
Philip Taylor is the Perkins Professor of Physics at Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland. There he teaches courses on the role that energy
production plays in the major political and economic problems facing
society. His research in theoretical physics involves the solution of
the equations that arise when energy flows through complex structures.
One of his major concerns is that instabilities may occur in the world's
system of ocean and atmospheric currents if our production of greenhouse
gases continues unchecked for the next decade.
Professor Taylor was born in England, where he studied at London and
Cambridge Universities. He emigrated to the US in 1962, and since
then has taught and
performed research at Case Western Reserve University, with visiting positions
at the Universities of Washington, Oregon, Cambridge, Utrecht, Manchester,
Bonn, and Bologna. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Photo Credit: Tom Herde/Boston Globe
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