Posted: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 12:00 am
There are those who insist the science on global warming is settled and the facts are on hand: No reason to keep asking about data. Trouble is that things don't stand still. So it may be handy to have the new climate change research center at Oregon State, if only as a place where the Oregon public may go and ask things like:
• Under Governor Kulongoski, Oregon is pushing the use of biofuels to combat global warming. Now two studies published in the journal Science say that making biofuel from crops might actually be increasing greenhouse gases rather than reducing them. So, should the governor ask the special session of the legislature now under way to repeal or suspend the laws he got it to pass on this subject last year?
• On the subject of biofuels, OSU is sponsoring a lecturer later this month who says it's a mistake to make fuel from crops that are usually grown for food. They use more energy than they yield, and of course they increase the price of food. So should the session at least revise Oregon's laws so that we do not allow the use of biofuels made from food crops?
• Last week Investors Business Daily reported that Canadian scientists led by Kenneth Tapping, an astrophysicist, are worried about the solar cycles. He's been watching the sun and has found it unusually quiet lately. It apparently is possible that the sun might be entering a phase of solar hibernation, the way it did about 1650, when the result was more than half a century of bitter cold winters in the northern hemisphere.
• That story also said the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany had found that the sun until now has burned unusually bright for about the last 60 years, which could account for the observed rise in average temperatures during that period, meaning that carbon dioxide likely had less to do with it.
So, Oregonians might like to ask a scientifically pure and well-qualified institute, are these researchers on the level? Are their reports fake? Or are the findings valid? And if the latter, don't they knock all those alarming predictions about a carbon-dioxide-caused catastrophe into a cocked hat? (hh)