The situation is so dire on World Climate Control, the old adage about Boiling Frogs is being trotted out all over the place. You know the one – put a frog in boiling ater and hew will immediately jump out – but slow cook him by gradually raising the temperature – eh voila, delicious frogs legs are yours. This is ironic because frogs and amphibians are already having problems surviving in our Brave New Economic Order. Here is the latest variant of that tale from Paul Krugman at the NYTimes.
The latest issue of New Scientist [July 4, 2009] has a story which shows that the one part of Al Gore’s presentation, An Inconvenient Truth, which received the most criticism – the part that predicted and projected quite graphically the consequence of rising sea elevations – is turning out now to be disturbingly close to the latest projections. Thus a sea rise by 1-2 meters seems almost inevitable.
So what Krugman is describing is a breakdown in trust between politicians and the public on what might happen. This is understandable given recent events throughout the developed world, where authorities are perceived as shading the truth for their advantage. But the dire circumstances are such that the time for truth testing and consensus building is rapidly waning. And of course the problems are very complex in Nature so getting a consensus even among scientists on Global Warming has already take nearly 20 years… can you imagine the problems with a skeptical public convinced that every party is trying to achieve some narrow partisan advantage. In sum, watch for Boiling Frogs at your newspaper and media outlet as regular fare over the next decade or two.