Here you see yesterday’s edition of my local paper juxtaposed with my back porch.
Yeah.
Look, the Earth’s general climate may be on a trend towards getting a couple degrees warmer. That’s fine.
Do we need to do something about it? I would strongly recommend not attempting to take any “preventative measures”. The reasons being:
1. I do not believe it is a problem. Carbon dioxide is a part of life. We exhale it, plants soak it up. CO2 is good for all those trees and vegetables these hippies claim to love so much. Higher average global temperatures will allow higher latitudes to enjoy longer growing seasons, enabling us to sustain a higher global population, which means this is good for people, generally speaking. The doomsayers even admit that we will go into a phase of apparent prosperity before some mumbo jumbo happens and the world goes into widespread famine. The real question ought to be, though, what evidence there really is that the coming warming period will be different from the Medieval Warming Period, which was by all accounts a relatively great time for the human race. And is it not somewhat arrogant to assume that, in our relatively short history of accurately measuring temperatures, we can say that a particular trend is unnaturally caused.
2. Even supposing that it is a problem, the solution would not be to tax the crap out of CO2 emissions and sign onto Kyoto. We use fossil fuels at the moment because they are the most economically efficient. The pieces that need to be brought together for major technological advancements will do so the most quickly on our fossil fuel infrastructure. Thus, if you want us to get to that mythical future of fusion powered flying cars, robot butlers in every house, and minimal carbon emissions, the best thing to do would be something other than sabotaging the economy. Yes, sometimes the status quo is crappy and needs to be changed, but do it by finding and offering something better, not by crashing the current system and just hoping we’ll work things out. And by better, I mean economically better; more affordable and/or more efficient.
