Of course, if we reject the determinism implied by forecasts like that, we’ll actually have to take responsibility for building the kind of society that we want.

First off: one scientist in the ’70s asked if there could be an ice age, and suggested further study. Newsweek and others jumped on the story and presented it as fact, instead of saying that it was a question being asked. Further study, as recommended by the scientist, showed that not only would there not be an ice age, but that there would be considerable warming. We are in the early stages of that warming now. There has been consistent consensus, and consistent evidence of warming ever since. The only current “studies” indicating that warming might not happen have been funded by the very industries that stand to profit most if we do not address warming (coal and oil). Those industry funded “studies” comprise less than 1% of the scientific opinion on the subject. The other 99%, conducted by scientists not on the payroll of those companies, point in one direction: we are warming.

The only questions remaining about warming are related to how rapidly, how the damage will manifest itself, and how, if at all, we can mitigate the damage.

Secondly, there was a similar misrepresentation of the oil crisis. The scientific community was NOT claiming that we would run out of oil by now, but that the oil supply would peak and begin to decline. This has happened. The US supply peaked in the 1970s (which is why folks suddenly realized oil was not infinite), and little of the world’s oil now comes from the US. Other countries’ supplies peaked at different points in time – with the last remaining known major fields apparently peaking sometime in mid 2005. “Peak” and “End” are two different words. The peak is simply the point at which half of the oil has been extracted from a field, and more input (think “higher pressure”) is required to extract the remaining oil. As the amount of oil in a field declines, the amount of energy expended to push the remaining oil out increases, reducing the overall yield from the field. This means oil will become more expensive, since it costs more to extract it. Over time – usually a long time, a field will eventually run dry, and on the way to that stage, it becomes increasingly expensive to extract the oil that remains – thus the oil from that field becomes increasingly expensive over time.

News in the ’70s misinterpreted this as “OMG! We’re running out of oil! Panic!” instead of the more accurate: “Hmmm… oil is going to cost more as it becomes more expensive to pump it out of the ground, maybe we should plan for that.”

Both phenomena are real, and the scientists have been correct. The poor science training of reporters combined with the sensationalist tendencies of publishers did us all a disservice by misrepresenting the reality on these important issues.

Modern journalists who rely on industry talking points, which were derived from the misrepresentations of poorly-educated press in the 1970s, instead of doing original sourcing using the actual studies, are doing a further disservice, by encouraging short-term thinking (it’s not a crisis, yet) over long term thinking (let’s keep it from becoming a crisis).

While it appears the above author is well intentioned (in his effort to sell his book), it is vital that anyone who writes on this issue have the science and facts in some semblance of order to provide reasonable political advice.

As a brief example of how Mr. Boeheim fails this test, he states that we have been “regulated into using mercury laden fluorescent lights, which unquestionably has a negative impact on the environment” is both misleading and simply untrue. The basic flaw is this, since we get 50% of our electricity in the US from coal (and burning coal releases mercury) and incandescent bulbs are much more inefficient than CFLs, then the mercury from using an incandescent bulb over the entire life cycle is greater than that from the CFL even though the CFL actually contains mercury. The environmental impacts of a lightbulb, just like a car, are centered in the use phase rather than the manufacture or disposal phase of product.

A paper by the Rocky Mountain Institute explains the debate in detail with useful references to a variety of papers from the DOE, the EPA and academic institutions. http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Climate/C08-02_CFL_LCA.pdf

The answer to this question is not “simpler than you think” and requires some calculation, analysis and research (inside the box thinking) before you begin to tell people who don’t live in windy or sunny areas to make inefficient investments. Before you tell people what does or doesn’t actually add up, you might want to do the math yourself.

To the folks at environmental leader – the site is great but keep the standards for submissions high.