CO2

As it turns out my neighbor in Montreal is a climatologist. He's a Welsh scientist, now working on a research grant from the Government of Canada, and his job is to assess the impact of global warming and acid rain on North America's climate. On his first day as my neighbor, which happened to be Derby Day last year, I plied him with some of my finest small-batch bourbon whiskey, and we argued earth sciences for hours on end. We've been arguing about that ever since - in a neighborly way, of course. He's a very intelligent but very opinionated guy, particularly when fortified with fine Kentucky Bourbon, which he grudgingly admits is a worthy rival to good Scotch. I had dinner with him today on our common back porch. "Seen Al's movie yet?" I asked him. "No," he grumbled, "I don't go in for all of that populist stuff." "But it's a good film," I pointed out, "and we've got to get the message out to the masses somehow." "Yeah," my neighbor groused, "they make us do 'outreach' too, but I don't like it." "Well," I told him, "there's a huge disconnect between science and the common man that's only growing larger, and that's how the popular press is able to latch on to foolish notions like the 'junk science' myth." "True, but I hate it anyway, "answered the Welshman, "especially when some idiot Nobel laureate in physics proselytizes about climate change even though he has no idea what he's talking about." "Well," I answered, "that's where Al's film can help." We talked for a while about the relationship between atmospheric CO2 content and the rise in global temperature. "The model that Gore refers to is too simple," my neighbor said, "because it doesn't take into account the exponential effects of moisture content on temperature variations." "So, do we have more or less than the ten years to do something, like Al claims, before we cause irreversible climate change?" "We don't know," said the Welshman quietly. "But we do know that the earth is getting rapidly warmer, and that the effects of that are going to be very unpleasant." We were both very quiet then for a while. Before I left I offered to let him keep one of my bottles of bourbon, as I don't drink it very often, but he politely declined.