Funny how the smallest things can set the brain in motion. This morning my daughter wanted to play "Arctic". I'm not even sure what that means but it did get me thinking. Recently I've read a few articles that have come up about global warming. I know what you're thinking, but I swear that this isn't the usual opinion. I'm not here to argue about whether or not the global temperature is rising. For the record, I think it is but not as quickly as many alarmist scientists would have you believe.
The reason for this post is to discuss whether or not the global temperature rising would be a bad thing. Everyone seems so concerned with whether the temperature is going up and the thoughts of cataclysmic disaster that no perspective seems to go far beyond this. Nobody in the media will dare disobey the party line and suggest that the temperature going up is anything but the worst disaster in the history of human civilization. I disagree.
In Earth's history, there have been tens and even hundreds of millions of years where the global temperature was much hotter than it is now. There were no polar ice caps, no glaciers, and much of the land surface was covered in savannas, deserts and jungles. There weren't many evergreen forests or harsh winter conditions. Many have argued that in fact this was the way Earth was for most of its history and that right now we are in a moderately cool period. It is very possible that we are heading for such another period right now. The truth is that nobody knows for sure and anybody who can claim to know for certain is lying.
Some of the theories for what will happen include further melting of the polar ice caps, rising ocean levels, droughts, floods, more and stronger hurricanes, famine, nuclear war. Ok, maybe not the last one, but all of the other predictions have been repeated over and over and over on television, online, in the papers. If all of these things were to happen in the next century or two they would prove to have very bad consequences for us human beings. People would die, buildings would be destroyed, whole towns could be wiped out. As bad as this would be for us, would it really be so bad for the planet?
When wildfires burn in the western U.S. they are a disaster because people have chosen to build homes in areas succeptable to them. Sea levels will rise if the polar ice caps melt but that is only a bad thing because we have homes and businesses on the water's edge. An outsider looking down on earth from an altitude of 30,000 miles would not notice anything of significance to the overall health of the planet and would not be able to see the suffering of people below. Humans have not been on the planet but for a brief sliver of time. We will be gone long before Earth itself meets its demise in the outer gas layers of the Sun.
We need to accept that if things are warming up, there will likely be little we can do to slow down the momentum. Instead, we need to be focusing on ways to protect ourselves from the results of such a rise in temperatures. Not to be some kind of a granola lover or anything, but I think sometimes we do need to take a step back and realize that we are not the end all or be all of this planet. We need to learn how to adjust to what Earth is doing, rather than hope that Earth adjusts to what we are doing. Accept and embrace global warming and the fact that we don't have to go back to living in caves and straw huts to do something about it. Instead we just need to go forward in our lives and work with Earth, realizing that we are but small creatures on a large planet. Adapting our lives around Earth and not the other way around is the key to our survival.
The reason for this post is to discuss whether or not the global temperature rising would be a bad thing. Everyone seems so concerned with whether the temperature is going up and the thoughts of cataclysmic disaster that no perspective seems to go far beyond this. Nobody in the media will dare disobey the party line and suggest that the temperature going up is anything but the worst disaster in the history of human civilization. I disagree.
In Earth's history, there have been tens and even hundreds of millions of years where the global temperature was much hotter than it is now. There were no polar ice caps, no glaciers, and much of the land surface was covered in savannas, deserts and jungles. There weren't many evergreen forests or harsh winter conditions. Many have argued that in fact this was the way Earth was for most of its history and that right now we are in a moderately cool period. It is very possible that we are heading for such another period right now. The truth is that nobody knows for sure and anybody who can claim to know for certain is lying.
Some of the theories for what will happen include further melting of the polar ice caps, rising ocean levels, droughts, floods, more and stronger hurricanes, famine, nuclear war. Ok, maybe not the last one, but all of the other predictions have been repeated over and over and over on television, online, in the papers. If all of these things were to happen in the next century or two they would prove to have very bad consequences for us human beings. People would die, buildings would be destroyed, whole towns could be wiped out. As bad as this would be for us, would it really be so bad for the planet?
When wildfires burn in the western U.S. they are a disaster because people have chosen to build homes in areas succeptable to them. Sea levels will rise if the polar ice caps melt but that is only a bad thing because we have homes and businesses on the water's edge. An outsider looking down on earth from an altitude of 30,000 miles would not notice anything of significance to the overall health of the planet and would not be able to see the suffering of people below. Humans have not been on the planet but for a brief sliver of time. We will be gone long before Earth itself meets its demise in the outer gas layers of the Sun.
We need to accept that if things are warming up, there will likely be little we can do to slow down the momentum. Instead, we need to be focusing on ways to protect ourselves from the results of such a rise in temperatures. Not to be some kind of a granola lover or anything, but I think sometimes we do need to take a step back and realize that we are not the end all or be all of this planet. We need to learn how to adjust to what Earth is doing, rather than hope that Earth adjusts to what we are doing. Accept and embrace global warming and the fact that we don't have to go back to living in caves and straw huts to do something about it. Instead we just need to go forward in our lives and work with Earth, realizing that we are but small creatures on a large planet. Adapting our lives around Earth and not the other way around is the key to our survival.
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