Batallion of Intergalactic Smoking Missiles

I hate the phrase "smoking gun." It's an over-used, over-hyped, leading phrase that is usually closely followed by some kind of hyperbole or demagoguery - usually in the form of a mushroom cloud or some such nonsense.

Which is precisely why I'm hopeful this new report will actually cause some of the remaining climate-change doubters to break ranks with the likes of Über-Skeptic, Sen. James Inhofe:

"The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling."

Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles."

The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes "a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate," said co-chair Susan Solomon, a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

I figure that my distaste for 'smoking guns,' dramatic press releases, and demagogic language is a signal that the American public-at-large might start paying attention. Though it seems as though many may be finally coming around, particularly if 10 major American corporations are asking the Administration to change its policy of ignoring/distorting/censoring true, sound science of climate change.

It's worth mentioning though that I'm not "excited" by the release of this report - much like I'm not excited by news of more carnage in Iraq or by the prospect of the U.S. losing that war, in order to make a point to the extreme right-wing (as many war-supporters would have you believe). Like the reality on the ground in Iraq, this report makes me very sad:

As confident as scientists are about the global warming effects that they've already documented, they are as gloomy about the future and even hotter weather and higher sea level rises...[the] future is bleak, scientists said.

Sad indeed.

But unlike those whose hope for Iraq is inextricably tied to doomed, fantasy troop-escalation plans, the hope this report provides is rooted in the Truth.

I am hopeful that the continued scientific consensus this report provides -- with its 'batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles' -- will allow us to finally, collectively, use our evolutionary advantage of Reason and start to resolve this climate crisis once and for all.