Climate bickering stymies action

I’ll admit, I sometimes don’t spot a wedge issue until I’m about to step on it. Or in it.

Sure, I knew the Massachusetts Supreme Court would cause an uproar when it ruled in favor of gay marriage. And immigration is always ripe for the plucking.

But climate change? That’s a wedge I didn’t see coming. It’s not that I’m surprised to find controversy at the intersection of ecology and free-market idealism. It’s the fury of the debate that’s stunning. People take their differences on this subject very personally.

I’ve heard firsthand accounts of high school students scoffing at a guest speaker who warned about global warming at an assembly. The National Association of Evangelicals is embroiled in a family feud because the policy director wants to advocate for environmentally friendly legislation. Mention “An Inconvenient Truth” in the wrong setting, and you’ll get a reception frosty enough to halt the melting of the ice caps.

Science has always been a magnet for skepticism, especially if its findings demand big changes from governments and industries. And sparring with ideas has become the great worldwide pastime. But the scientific consensus on climate change seems to be giving rise to a new strain of aggrievement.

No way we’ll let an elitist establishment bludgeon us into changing our ways, the doubters howl.

Granted, the knights of science aren’t above bullying. Scientist Bill Gray, a renowned hurricane forecaster, has seen his research funding drop precipitously since he publicly questioned global warming. It’s the establishment’s version of a fiscal gag order. And, contrary to what some believers have posited, doubting climate change is not the same as doubting the Holocaust.

But the mounting concern about global warming isn’t the result of an evil plot dreamed up by environmental extremists, as novelist Michael Crichton suggests in his best-selling “State of Fear.” It’s not a global fraud perpetuated by the United Nations, as some anti-establishment types have wistfully proposed. Nor is it the new religion of the “upper classes” in Europe and the United States, as author Ray Evans says in his disbelieving pamphlet, “Nine Facts About Climate Change.”

The growing calls for action on the climate front are the result of documented changes in temperature, water levels, ice melt and vegetation, and repeated warnings by credible scientists worldwide that human activities are making the planet warmer and the not-too-distant consequences are likely to include accelerated water shortages, havoc among animal species and flooding in coastal areas.

The aggrieved disbelievers have come up with a line of argument that would make any law professor proud. You can lose yourself for days in the Internet give-and-take.

Skeptics: Why do the U.N. scientists omit the medieval warm period from their graphs?

Believers: According to reputable climatologists, no such period existed.

Skeptics: Then why did the Vikings settle in Greenland?

Believers: They were driven out of Iceland, and Greenland was nearby.

Skeptics: Duh, it was green – at least around the edges.

Believers: Scientific evidence shows isolated warming in some spots of the Northern Hemisphere in that period but no evidence of a global phenomenon like we’re seeing now.

Who knows? Few of us have the time to develop the vast expertise in science, technology and economics that is needed to sort out the global warming debate. Out of expediency, we choose sides.

Skeptics will rally around their own, and feed their movement with scorn toward Al Gore and anger at the scientific establishment. Far be it from me to bully any of them into changing sides. Vive le resistance.

But I’m going with the scientific consensus. I look forward to the day when an administration in Washington steps away from the wedge and moves boldly toward policies that acknowledge the problem of global warming and act to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.