Years ago, Steve Allen, of TV fame, created a program entitled Meeting of the Minds. He would bring together historical figures such as Galileo, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare for discussions among themselves of important topics.

So here in Washington today we witness the meeting of the minds of Representatives and Senators in the U.S. Congress to hear from one of their former members on climate change and global warming. Unfortunately, some of the minds in Congress reflect the scientific literacy (or lack of it) reflected in some of our national and international testing results. One member of Congress says global warming is the biggest hoax perpetuated on Americans—yes a quote from the former chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma).

Former Senator and Vice-President Al Gore met with committees in the US Congress today, The House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. In his first meeting, the reception was generally positive, although some members of the House committee (Barton, Texas) questioned the science in Gore’s report, others, such as former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hasert, agreed the debate was over regarding climate change, but we needed to figure out a way to use the coal and oil we have. Gore wants to have the U.S. reduce carbon emissions by 90% by the year 2050 and he urged Congress to take action.

If you go to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works website, you can click on a link enabling you to watch a video of today’s hearing with Al Gore, including questions and discussion from committee members (View Archive Webcast). If you have the time, I recommend going to the site, and watching the video. There are some very good exchanges, and you might be surprised to hear that many of the Senators agree that global warming is real, and something needs to be done. You will also hear the committee’s main critic, Senator Inhofe, argue with the Committee’s chair, as well as Gore, and most of the other committee members. In Inhofe’s case, presenting scientific information will not help. He is reminiscent of the tobacco lobby which continued to deny the scientific evidence that nicotine is a killer, and even drummed up false data and lied to the American people about the effects of nicotine.

It’s unfortunate that another mind was not there to add to the discussion, and help with the scientific literacy development of our members of Congress. His name is Dr. John P. Holdren, Director of the Woods Hole Research Center, Professor at Harvard University, and President of the AAAS. The Center’s mission is to understand the causes and consequences of environmental change as a basis for policy solutions for a better world. Holdren made a presentation at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole in November, 2006 entitled Meeting the Climate-Change Challenge. You can access his Powerpoint Presentation at this link. Wouldn’t be interesting to bring a mind like Dr. Hodren’s to the Congress to present the science of climate change, and show our representatives the nature of the science behind climate change, and the policy implications (that are outlined in Holdren’s presentation).

One of the underlying points in Holdren’s talk was that global climate change is coming at us faster than we once thought. He not only provides thermometer records but offers other scientific evidence that carbon emissions are the culprit causing the unusal heating of the earth.

One graphic in his presentation is the “melting” of Greenland graphic. You can see clearly that the Greeland Ice Sheet is melting, and you can research other sources to see that the melting of the Arctic is accelerating as well.

Another graphic from the Woods Hole Research Center site is the record that we do have showing the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperaure going back 400, 000 years. As you can see, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has not exceeded 300 ppm until the last 100 years. And notice the steepness of the curve.

Source: In this computer graphic, Greenland’s 2002 melt extent appears in pink. (Image by Konrad Steffen and Russell Huff, CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder)

Finally I would add that Congressional minds could be informed more soundly if they not only previewed Holdren’s Powerpoint presentation, but also the Woods Hole Research Center’s Beginners Guide to understanding the Issue of Global Warming.

If Steve Allen were to return and stage another Meeting of Minds on the topic of climate change and global warming, who would he bring together to get at the issue? Or better still, stage a Meeting of the Minds in your classroom, and have your students select the historic figures, conduct the research, and stage the production.