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Global Warming is real - glaciers and ice caps are
melting and sea levels are rising. How long this
will last is anybody's guess. NASA has even
predicted an imminent major cooling trend.
To the extent this is human caused is highly
speculative. It's only based on 150 years of
climate data of which only the last 50 years or so
is accurate. Sorry folks, but correlation does not
mean causation.
For the 5 or so billion years of earth's history we
have had a varying climate to include regular ice
ages. The chicken littles of global warming neglect
that some 15,000 years ago vast ice sheets covered
North America and Northern Europe - what happened to
it? Well they melted and sea levels rose several
hundred feet. Obviously some sort of global warming
took place - but was certainly pre-industrial. We
know that Roman era Britain had vineyards that died
off in the mini-ice ages since. Only now has the
climate warmed enough there to to sustain some
vinticulture. We also know that atmospheric CO2
levels in the Pleistocene epoch were higher than
they are now.
The Greenhouse effect is a theory. It implies that
it forms a covering layer in the stratosphere so as
to trap heat in the troposphere. If you remember the
7th grade science demonstration where the teacher
squirts some CO2 into a glass and pours it out to
extinguish a candle, the point was that CO2 is
heavier than air and eventually finds its way into
the ocean where it is absorbed. The tree line on
mountains is from a lack of CO2 unable to sustain
photosynthesis.
A more serious greenhouse gas is methane which is
lighter than air and breaks down into CO2 and water
vapor from sunlight. There are many sources of
methane- termite digestion, cow farts, decaying
vegetation and subterranean releases from the oceans
a defrosting tundra. Very little in comparison comes
from leaking wells and pipes.
That said, the earth has finite resources. Fresh
water, oceans, air, useable minerals, arable land,
and fossil fuels chief amongst them. The problem is
that earth's ever-growing population cannot sustain
the wasteful consumption of these resources. In the
last 100 years it has become increasingly evident
that the wasteful use of these resources has an
associated economic burden. So far technology has
kept us ahead of global disasters such as famine and
plague. Meanwhile our war making capabilities are
only restrained by the increasing effectiveness of
communication and surveillance.
The bottom line is that we are seriously overdue for
a comeuppance. Our current growth trends are not
sustainable. One black swan event will collapse the
house of cards we are building with funny money.
Better have some gold when it does, because that's
where we'll start picking up the pieces when the
bullets run out.
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bmurphy
10-10-2019 @ 2:51 PM