It is 98 degrees in the shade before noon.
Maybe we have actually finally destroyed ourselves. Maybe the warming of our planet will continue faster than imagined and the ground will crack and the crops will not grow and the dried trees and grasses will ignite and spray all life with death and make a desert of our once green world.
Our only option will be to die well. No funeral expenses. We will all of us and each of us be melted and flamed.
Our species listened to the demands of the greedy to make more things and to the calls of the Church to make more children to consume more of the stuff of life to replace the good with poisons and to deny that the Earth was warming or they had anything to do with it and that it was either some god’s will or some god’s test of our faith that we do nothing to save ourselves.
And so we must all now die because of fools.
Edwin
© 2012 by Edwin Kagin.
Yeah, maybe.
There’s a quote that’s very popular in German-speaking parts of the Internet: “Prognosen sind schwierig, besonders wenn sie die Zukunft betreffen.” (“Predictions are difficult, especially when they have to do with the future.”) People can’t seem to agree who first said it. Some maintain it was Helmut Kohl, being unintentionally comical, some say it was Mark Twain, being intentionally funny, some say it was Niels Bohr, intention unclear.
My point is this: thousands of years’ worth of predictions of things affected by human activity have been recorded, and over and over again they’ve been wrong. Video phones arrived much later than expected, while cell phones were widely unexpected, flying cars for the masses still aren’t here, way past the year 2000, and so forth. Just go back and look at predictions and see how seldom they’re even close, and how consistently unforeseen factors change everything.
I prefer to fight to the last. I see changes in human behavior regarding energy generation and consumption and pollution and regeneration of life and I see no way to accurately predict how these and other factors in the survival or doom of life on Earth will continue to change.
And other species also evolve, not just humans, humans sometimes overlook that.
Many too many factors involved to reliably predict the future.
But yeah, it is hot.
so, can you tell me what you think happens if greenhouses gases sequestered naturally for billions of years are released in a couple hundred? I have no problem in making prediction with facts. I see no reason to think that they can’t be made in this instance, no matter how much you may wish to claim that predictions can fail as an excuse of why this one simply must. It’s a convenient thing when you want to be selfish and not change your actions.
So, you’re assuming that I don’t support green politics or try to keep my carbon footprint small?
Yeaah. THIS. Because, like, ramdom pop culture predictions and rigorous scientific assessment, modelling and calculation based on our knowledge of the laws of nature are TOTALLY the same thing. You so win at this!
Apparently I need to clarify: I’m not a climate-change denier. I do not deny that we are in very serious trouble, I don’t deny that it’s getting much worse very quickly. I don’t deny that we MAY be doomed no matter what we do.
When I said, “I prefer to fight to the last,” I was talking about fighting against this very dire situation, and against the human activity which continues to add massively to the danger we’re already in.
If, as Edwin says, “the ground will crack and the crops will not grow and the dried trees and grasses will ignite and spray all life with death and make a desert of our once green world,” and that definitely could happen within my lifetime, and I’m not young, I will still fight to try to fix things somehow. As long as I’m still alive. As opposed to Edwin, who says, “Our only option will be to die well.” To me, that kinda sounds like Edwin has already given up. But I don’t want to put words in his mouth.
You may be correct
While I believe our climate is changing.. I would like to point out that our 100+ temps may have been encouraged by recent solar flare activity that has been going on… (for the past 8 days).. and today we got hit by a X1 class solar flare.. The X class flares are the most extreme and while it was a lower #d X flare… X class flares have the potential of wiping out power grids and communication satellites.. so .. heads up!
Maybe, but probably not.
What we’re really facing is bad enough.
I find it difficult to stifle my anger because of this, and I believe you are correct. The people in power are blinded by their lust for it, AND for getting their fellow man to bend to their wills. THIS is the biggest part of the prize, and the game is called Stacking Bodies In A Pile. Fun, huh?
Try to find a few good people to be good with you, and love each other where and when you can. Delete from your life any afflictions, and treat all people they way YOU want to be treated- not expecting them to try first. Be frugal, live simple. If we happen to get through this, make sure there’s something to start with.
I love you all and need you.
Edwin,
Get a grip.
Did you write a weepy moralizing thread entitled
“The World Will End in Ice” during the last record cold spell?
You’re trying to link this event to so-called “global” warming and the rest of the world hasn’t been anomalously warm the last week or so, only the eastern US. The heat wave was due to a phenomenon called “a blocking high pressure system”.
Now there have been more record highs than lows in the last few decades, but that is what you would expect during a period of warming. Now the question is whether the slight warming (0.8C) over the last century or so has been affected by anthropogenic factors.
Even if the answer to that is yes, there is the question of “by how much” and “is it on net a negative thing”. So try to keep a proper perspective.
Seriously, you’re blaming greedy church goers for the recent heat wave?
Mortality rates have been dropping for many decades, even in developing countries. But feel free to make moralizing and irrational statements as you like. It is your blog after all.
But don’t pretend that you are being scientific or rational in doing so.