2GreenEnergy on the Local News
I just got back to the office from an appointment down in nearby Santa Barbara, which enabled me to take a run on the beach (pictured). To my surprise and delight, there was a camera crew there from a local television station, and the head dude asked my opinion on the weather, i.e., am I disappointed that we didn’t get the rain that was predicted? Am I concerned that it’s 88 degrees in early February (when the average high is 65)?
Of course, I gave him both barrels: I’m appalled that we’re not doing more to avoid the near-certain disaster that is climate change, of which this drought is just one example. Three of my four books on renewable energy are compilations of subject matter experts, including conversations with several climate scientists who have devoted their entire careers to studying this phenomenon and certify its existence. A huge ice sheet in the Antarctic will shatter into a million pieces sometime in the late part of March, which is causing that thing behind me (I pointed over my should at the ocean) to rise at an ever-accelerating rate.
As the interview took me by surprise, I didn’t have a chance to comb my hair, and I looked really unkempt; hope that won’t turn viewers at home against me.
Craig,
I can understand your desire to seize the opportunity.
But, confusing short term anomalies in “weather” patterns as evidence of climate change, doesn’t help public understanding of climate change.
Weather patterns all over the globe have always been unpredictable for inexplicable reasons,none of which have anything to do with human activity.
The planet has been warming, cooling, experiencing droughts, blizzards and cataclysmic events long before the advent of mankind.
There is considerable debate about the nature and effect of human activity on the plants climate. The idea of imminent catastrophic effect is a concept now being discounted by most reputable scientists as extreme. This doesn’t mean that human activity isn’t a major contributing factor to the planets climate. Nor does it mean that we shouldn’t be developing alternatives to the most harmful of human activity, or indulge in complacent apathy.
However, it does mean that more will be achieved with careful, well thought out alternatives, while maintaining sustainable economic growth than precipitate, disruptive policies that promote economic chaos for little real benefit.
If passionate rhetoric alone could solve the worlds problems, we’d all be living in Utopia millennia ago ! 🙂
Good point. I should have mentioned that I began by stating that I’m far more concerned about the climate than the weather.
My family and I just saw it over dinner, btw, and they took only 6 – 7 seconds out of the whole interview. Oh well. My daughter, bless her heart, is sending it to all her friends. I’m glad I can be a local hero, if only for a few moments.
I’m sure you did fine.
🙂
It was probably a great relief for most viewers from the typical random civilian interview: strong accent, bad grammar, poor vocabulary, mild dull-eyed incredulity…
They usually only reserve a few seconds for such interviews. The average conversation on the beachfront is not something that a newscast is going to assume in advance to be informative… so they just aren’t going to plan a newscast around it.
It’s likely they had plotted no time for a random interview, but since you were there, and actually knowledgeable, they squeezed in a few seconds to put some of what you had to say on air.