Climate Change

Before your eyes glaze over and you move on to another, more entertaining, blog... let me elaborate.

I am not concerned about man-made climate change and I would like to explain why.

For all the noise about CO² emissions and how they may affect climate, we forget about the impact of great amounts of ash (from volcanos) and methane. Just one supervolcano eruption could essentially wipe out every human being on the planet. I won't even mention the possible impact of a giant asteroid or comet. A major undersea earthquake could release a huge pocket of methane which would alter the global climate immeasurably. And the changes would occur so rapidly that we would not have time to adapt.

Climate change that happens over time (say, a hundred years or more) is something we could adapt to. If the planet warms, we can move inland (to adapt to rising sea levels), we can explore new methods to find (or make) fresh, potable, water. But change that happens relatively quickly will impact us rapidly and not give us time to adapt.

The problem is that rapid changes caused by natural phenomena cannot be addressed by government, cannot be even prepared for. Government will be helpless, as will we. We might as well sacrifice virgins to the Gods for all the good it would do us.

Government is, to me, an entity that seeks to increase its power and scope. In that aim, it seeks to increase its wealth (which comes from its people). It does this through various revenue enhancements (tax and fee increases) and through expanding its control over people. To justify these, it must have (or create) a reason. These are exploitations of our fears. One of the obvious fears is war, which is why we depend upon government to protect us from belligerent nations and terrorists. But we now have another one: climate change.

I think government is exploiting our fears, mostly based on their own pronouncements of its long term impacts, about this.

Call me a "denier" if you wish but I happen to believe that humans are the most adaptable creatures on the planet and strongly believe we could, and would, adapt to any changes in climate... so long as they did not happen rapidly.