Has Global Warming/Climate Change hype peaked?

It is beginning to seem as though the shrill hype over so-called Global Warming and Climate Change has peaked and is beginning to wane, with the Live Earth concerts maybe even being the absolute peak. The fever pitch of press coverage has already declined noticeably. Bloggers still chatter about it a lot, but it just doesn't seem to make "the news cycle" as much anymore.

One reason that the hype may be waning is simply because GWCC is now actually mainstream political dogma. Even a lot of Repubicans at least grudgingly acknowledge that it is now "good politics" to say that you "believe" that we have to "do something" about GWCC. Most politicians are now treating GWCC as almost a background issue or a mere check box that "everybody" automatically supports.

The upside is that GWCC will get all of the attention that it may deserve.

The downside for the true, hard-core GWCC fanatics is that the mainstream media, politicians, and the general public simply treats GWCC as one of many "important" issues to be dealt with in an orderly manner and competing for priority and resources and not as a desperately urgent "crisis" requiring the kind of immediate attention in the very short term that Al Gore, et al have been demanding.

In short, the GWCC "crisis" has been co-opted.

There is still the final IPCC report to be delivered in November, but I suspect that most people will completely ignore it as yet another "Global Warming... blah blah blah" story like they've heard before ad nauseam. I'll read the report carefully myself, but that will make me a member of a very distinct minority.

My biggest, ongoing complaint about the IPCC is that their work is done in secrecy and that none of the actual scientific data used in their deliberations is available to the general public (such as me.) They do provide terse summary reports, but all of the associated scientific detail is kept on "closed web sites." So, the big question remains: what exactly are they hiding and why do they have such an arrogant disdain for the general public's intelligence?

I'm sure there will be an occasional Kyoto-style conference and some new international "agreements" (especially once Hillary gets back in the White House) over the coming years, but most of this will be more bureaucratic in nature and definitely  not have a true, hard-core "crisis" mentality.

I think it is fair to say that the whole GWCC social and political "movement" has seen its better days and will quickly fade away to a mere shell of its former self.

-- Jack Krupansky