Humanity is Facing a Future of Fire or Ice
Google News is currently featuring an article on a website called phys.org/news from Trinity College, Dublin, which is credited as the author of the article, with the following headline:
“Scientists show solar system processes control the carbon cycle throughout Earth’s history”
Finally, proof that the climate alarmists have been wrong all along because, according to this article the planet itself is the culprit…but, wait. There’s more:
The first paragraph of the article directly contradicts the summary conclusion expressed the headline with this quote:
The world is waking up to the fact that human-driven carbon emissions are responsible for warming our climate, driving unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and placing us on course for the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history.
Okay, we jumped to the wrong conclusion about the article, based on the headline.
And that’s the problem. Most people don’t actually read more than the headlines. If they did, they would have found this in the second paragraph:
However, new research publishing this week in leading international journal PNAS, sheds fresh light on the complicated interplay of factors affecting global climate and the carbon cycle—and on what transpired millions of years ago to spark two of the most devastating extinction events in Earth’s history.
Okay, we’re back to square one. It’s the complicated interplay of factors affecting global climate and the carbon-cycle that are responsible for climate change (aka global warming) and therefore there really isn’t anything we can do about it. The fault lies in the stars, not in ourselves.
This article is actually a rehash of a long-established theory that periodic changes in the earth’s rotation, its orbit around the sun, axial tilt, the movement of the magnetic poles, volcanic activity and other geological and astrological factors have resulted in previous periods of glaciation, otherwise known as ice ages.
You have to drill down to the ninth paragraph to find this conclusive statement:
Present-day orbital configurations and solar system processes should have resulted in a future return to glacial conditions. However, anthropogenic carbon release will likely have disrupted this natural process, causing rapid global warming, rather than a steady return to cooler climates.
In other words, right now, the astrological and geological forces that have triggered previous ice ages are currently in evidence, but human activity (here termed as athropogenic carbon release) has prevented the advent of another Ice Age and is causing rapid global warming, as the quote indicates.
Clearly, the correct headline for this article should have been something like:
“Historical Evidence Indicates that Human Activity is Preventing a New Ice Age”
As a headline, that would be far more authentic, and far less misleading, than the headline that some editor tacked onto the article, if it wasn’t done by Trinity College, Dublin itself.(How does a college author an article?)
However, when you stop and think it through, it is difficult to avoid coming to this conclusion:
If we were not in the process of making the planet uninhabitable by increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to the point where it triggers irreversible, civilization-killing heat waves, floods, rising ocean levels, crop failures, fish kills, mass starvation, plagues and systemic collapse, we might very well be facing the onslaught of a new ice age that would inevitably result in irreversible, civilization killing droughts, crop failures, fish kills, mass starvation, plagues and systemic collapse caused by astrological and geological forces beyond our control.
Either way, we are facing the imminent collapse of world civilization and, by trying to head off global warming at the pass, we might very well be condemning this civilization and surviving generations to living in a permanent frozen wasteland.
The human race can only exist successfully in temperatures between 32 and 120 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. Below 32 degrees, hypothermia sets in with 30 minutes. Above 120 degrees, heat stroke will kill young and old alike in a matter of hours. Yes, we can survive colder temperatures for awhile, but not all year round because almost nothing will grow below 32 degrees. By the same token, we can survive above 120 degrees but not all year round because nothing growing will survive those temperatures.
This, however, seems to be the choice facing this civilization, to boil in our own waste products, or freeze because we turned off our carbon dioxide producing economy.
Which leads me to question myself and others who are agonizing over the insanities of our political process. Everyone who thinks or talks about political economics always assumes that there has to be at least one right answer.
What happens if there really aren’t any?
jpHart
05/08/2020 @ 4:56 pm
Fingers crossed your fine essay will be read by students.
This and, what? Flanders Fields. Maybe Gregory Corso’s GASOLINE. Gillespie’s HIGH FLIGHT.
Science Mag has cool detail focused on HR-6819 (a black hole ‘new’ with a sun x 10 the size of ours).
The sky no longer that limit: collective crowded rush to LIFTOFF!
Good writing kind sir….the high noon of it must be that empiricism is not a coin toss.
No kidding favor-swapping oligarchs have more to do with IT & petrol-chemical addiction than word smiths.
I often feel like falling back to a shot-n-beer when I witness young women strolling to the store
behind buggies and strollers or with those kangaroo harnesses as the WALK-WALK sign brightens;
those babies and toddlers upchucking’ to wafted tailpipe fumes. My Utopian visual of course would have ‘bridged’
intersections for elevation or at least four-legged towers with subtle updraft fans.
Like, ‘…I thought by thirty I’d be dead…’
Even JMAC1949 (founder of the CA Greens) equated the ‘trade off’ of: pollution created by full-blown electric car transition sustainability vs.’ moderation’ enabled via fuel standards and mass transit.
For some weird reason I’ve been a certifiable hypochondriac most of my life. Nowadays this covid19 as the most frequent
symbol EVER in the history of the earth, well shucks it is thoroughly inhibiting; a whole-lot-a bad-a-zing…
sure sure poetically
‘…of thee I sing…’