Congress and the pending climate bill

This week the Time Capsule is going to revisit a discovery made in the 17th century, but first we bring you a news flash from just a couple of weeks ago. This report did not come from The Express, but instead appeared on the front page of The Washington Times.

Congress, in a pending climate bill, is proposing to give those who claim to have experienced, or might in the future experience, suffering brought about by global warming a method whereby they can successfully sue the government. The idea of this provision, proposed by Democrats Markey and Waxman, is that our government has not done enough to counter warming, is therefore negligent, and lawsuits are in order. Try to imagine the suits and settlements this would generate—and remember; these damages won’t be paid by tobacco companies and cigarette smokers, they’ll be paid by you and your descendants.

We bring this up because it brings to mind 1664, the year a guy named Robert Hooke looked through his telescope and discovered a big red spot on Jupiter. The “Spot” was eventually determined to be a storm, an enormous climate-generated disturbance that never crossed above land (the planet is mostly gas and water) and therefore would presumably never lose strength.

But of late the world of science has discovered that the “Red Spot” is shrinking. The storm has been abating, little by little, for several years. The enormous event, once thousands of miles across, has lasted for more than three centuries—perhaps much more—but now seems to be running out of energy.

This causes concern. Is the climate on Jupiter changing? Is it warming? Or cooling? How can that be, as there are neither people nor cows on Jupiter? Have we done enough to keep climate change from taking place on Jupiter? Might Congress be able to borrow some money from China and fix it?

We don’t know. But we do remember the 1970s, when a major worry was global cooling. I don’t recall exactly how they fixed that, but apparently they did.

Roy Marshall is a local historian. E-mail him at news@redoakexpress.com.