“Whatever it is, I’m against it!”
Alright students, listen up. I’ve had all I can take of this Climate Change/Global Warming/Ice Caps receding/El Nina/El Nino/CO2 Good/CO2 Bad/Carbon Footprint/Carbon Offset/Cap and Trade/Crap and Trade nonsense. In the words of Popeye the Sailor, “that’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”
I know this is Rich’s bailiwick, and I don’t know 1/100th of what he does on the subject, but if you ask me we all keep getting tied up in the details. It makes sense that Rich does that; that’s his job. Rich lives in the details and I thoroughly enjoy his dispatches from the front lines. But you and me? We’re rubes. Nicompoops. And, Al Gore and the rest of these yobs are making us out to be gull-a-bulls.
Is the planet heating? Is the planet cooling? I have no idea. The only guarantee in all of this is that every year it will do one or the other, or nothing. Good old Mother Earth has been a snowball in its past, and its been a hot, steamy, volcanic swamp in its past. And it has alternated between the two in its history, and all points in-between and will almost certainly do a lot more vacillating before the Sun vaporizes it in about 4 1/2 billion years. The climate is always changing. Regions that are fertile will become deserts and regions that are deserts will be underwater. Rivers will change their courses, new volcanoes will pop up and old volcanoes will grow dormant, and die. Mountains will become plains and plains will sprout foothills, then hills then mountains. Entire species will become extinct and new ones will evolve. In other words; “gam zeh yaavor.”
So, that’s the deal. If you want to know the true, real scientific perspective about climate change this is it. The climate is going to change. As the old adage goes, “Everyone always complains about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it.” Well, Professor Firefly is here to tell you what you can do about it. And, for no additional tuition I’ll also tell you what you cannot do about it…
The Firefly Method to Fix Global Climate Change
Some things humans do may be accelerating climate change. There is some evidence this might be happening. It’s not very decisive and there is also plenty of evidence that shows our impact is minimal, effectively nothing. It may take scientists years, possibly centuries to sort it all out. The Earth’s climate is very, very complex with enough variables to choke a Cray Supercomputer. There is even evidence that it is self-regulating and even if man does impact it there are self-correcting systems that will counteract man’s impact. All a long winded way of saying, “Hell if I know.” Anyone who claims to know understands less about the climate than I do, and that’s saying something!
There is good news, however, because there are some things we do know.
- Putting toxins into the environment is worse than not putting toxins into the environment. So, even if polluting the air, water and land does not alter the Earth’s temperature it is still something to avoid.
- Mankind has a wonderful track record for continually improving processes to be more efficient and less polluting and there are no signs of that stopping. The amount of energy required to grow a bushelful of corn in this country today is exponentially less than 50 years ago and incredibly more efficient than a century ago and there is no reason not to think we’ll continue to make improvements in the process. The same goes for heating and cooling your home, transporting your family, shipping goods… Awhile ago Rich published historical pollution rates in major, U.S. cities. The air today is cleaner than it was 10 years ago, and will be cleaner 10 years hence. Same for the water and same for the land. These improvements have been going on since humans first formed civilizations and will continue whether Al Gore puts together a power point presentation telling us to do it or not. Nobody likes to live in filth and waste costs money. Human nature is to be “green.” That hasn’t changed in one million years and it won’t change in the next million.
- Even if we are doing something that impacts global temperatures (and nobody really knows if we are) the cost of stopping it in the short term is much greater than the long term benefits. This guy (http://www.lomborg.com/) has broken it down much better than I ever will. Bjorn was a Green Peace guy who actually started looking at the hard numbers behind what they were trying to do and came to the conclusion that it’s a fool’s errand. Bjorn is an environmentalist. He believes in global warming, yet, once he really dug into the cold, hard facts and looked at Green Peace’s movement he realized that Green Peace is going about it all wrong. Their goals are unachievable and the money spent on environmentalism world-wide is being grossly mis-used.
- Environmentalist’s opinions are almost always the opposite of the real facts: If you want less CO2 in the air we should clear cut forests, turn the wood into buildings and furniture and plant more trees and repeat the cycle every 30 years or so. Old growth forests are bad, new growth forests are great! If you want more of a species start putting it on the menu in nice restaurants. We’ve got a whole lot of cows and chickens in this country. Polar bears and spotted owls? Not so much. If you want more of a species give hunters a season when they can shoot it. Hunters and anglers do more to foster animal husbandry through license fees and other measures than any programs run by environmentalists. If you love clean air, water and land hug an engineer. Those brilliant guys and gals jump out of bed every morning and sprint to work to find new ways of producing more of what you need while producing less of what you don’t need.
So there you have it students. The climate is constantly changing and significant changes almost always unfold over millenia, not even centuries, so there is plenty of time to adapt. That ocean front property you hope to inherit from your Great Uncle Winthrop is likely to be around for you to bequeath to your nephew, Farnsworth. And, humans have very little if any impact on the change. And, since we can barely impact it changing in one direction, our ability to un-change it in another direction is equally minor, if not impossible.
All a very long-winded way of saying, don’t lose any sleep over it.
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I find it very egocentric of one camp to think that man has that big an impact on the climate, and also of the other camp who think we could never see an ice age or some other drastic natural change happen in our lifetime.
Matt,
In defense of the latter camp, the onset of ice ages is usually very gradual, thousands of years to tens of thousands of years. You’ll have time to pack a bag and book a seat on a train to a more equatorial destination.
Now what we could definitely see is a massive volcanic eruption that could greatly reduce temperatures for decades. And, even worse, a volcano like the one under Yellowstone could blow (as it does every few hundred thousand years) taking out every living, breathing thing within a 2,000 mile radius.
From http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/under/under.html
You must be psychic, because I was thinking of the possibility of a Yellowstone eruption while replying. That could cause a nuclear winter. But by ice age, I meant that if one were to start tomorrow there would be significant change in climate in our lifetime, even if it were to peak in thousands of years from now. Or, something like a little ice age like the one that ran from the 16th-19th century. Look at the record cold and snowfall in the past seven years around the world. There are some that would dismiss this, or even a volcanic eruption on the scale of Yellowstone’s potential, simply because they don’t believe anything like that could happen in their lifetime because technology has made them so special.
Then I agree with you Matt. Isn’t there speculation that the little ice age was caused by an eruption? The U.S. dust bowl in the ’30′s is also a good example, and that was probably man-induced.
There’s also the theory of the Maunder Minimum causing the little ice age, when there was very low sunspot activity. There’s also been very low solar activity as of late.
I blame Oprah.
And if your eruption lasts more than 4 hours, contact your doctor immediately.
In some years (but not this one), for Grotto Geyser, it’s when it gets to 4 hours that you start paying attention. When it gets to 30, that’s when things may start to get interesting. (Speaking of Yellowstone eruptions)
I blame Harpo.
This would be for Prof. Firefly:
Whoa! Is that Kriskey approved?
What Mike! doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
R,
Your take is pretty much as good as anbody else’s.
If you look at climate over the full expanse of geological time, we know two things for sure about global temperatures:
they haven’t stayed constant
and
they’ve never changed continuously in just one direction.
It was amusing, when in India, coming back to my hotel room after driving through areas with so much air pollution that people on the streets were obliged to wear masks, shanty towns with no plumbing (guess where the waste ends up) and seeing garbage dumped into rivers and then watching an BBC news program that described the U.S. as the world’s biggest polluter. Hah!
Ruf – You have distilled everything down admirably. It is an enormous waste of time and effort that scientists spend so much time quibbling over details that, in the long run, don’t matter a whit.
Once again I have to express my admiration for the sheer brainpower that I witness here at Threedonia. Really, Rufus, you and the boys have made a haven on the internetweb that’s edifying and entertaining…where else can I get that?
Honestly, thank you, Rufus, Truzpr, Floyd, Mike, Outlaw, Veruckt, Eric, Wankette, JohnFN and C. Kane for that voodoo that you do so well. Thanks also to the chorus, the supporting cast who add so much with their comments. My day really isn’t complete until I see what’s happening here at Threedonia.
This is my official Happy Thanksgiving greeting as I’m going to be busy with family and work the next few days. May you all have a blessed holiday and not be dragged anywhere near a cash register the next few days.
-TCW “for that voodoo that you do so well.” Come on now…shamelessly purloining a line from a famous song! I thought that way beneath your obvious “wordy” talents.
Being as Thanksgiving is so near, I shall be ever so forgiving, and wish you and yours the happiest of Thanksgivings, and a blessed Christmas to boot!
Thanks, Fritz! You give me too much credit. Honestly, I was thinking of Harvey Korman as Hedley Lamar delivering that line in “Blazing Saddles”.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours as well.
Back at ya’, The College Widow!
Many humble thanks, TCW. Wait’ll you see what we’ve got coming next, too. Well, it’ll actually be “hear what we’ve got coming next,” but you get the point. Mr. FN’s recent post on Joe Bonnamasso, coupled with my trip back to Ahiah last week, has sparked a music column idea, too. Thank God I’ve already celebrated Thanksgiving and will have some time to write Thursday…
Weird. I was sure I saw the comment I posted yesterday on here after I posted it, but now it’s gone.
I’m afraid your summation of global climate change has been trumped:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091125/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_copenhagen
It boils down to this: “Yvo de Boer, U.N. climate treaty chief, told reporters in Bonn Wednesday, “I think it’s critical that President Obama attend the climate change summit in Copenhagen. The world is very much looking to the United States to come forward with an emission reduction target and contribute to financial support to help developing countries.”"
It’s all a matter of money. And since we have such good credit with China, we can borrow lots more. And the Nobel Peace Prize was the shiny lure.
” If you want more of a species start putting it on the menu in nice restaurants.”
It worked wonders for cod.