I reached a minor milestone Friday when I mowed my lawn in December for the first time in my entire life.
My wife told me the back yard grass was looking shaggy and scraggly, so I went to work, firing up the mower for the first time ever in the month that features the “Darkest Evening of the Year (with apologies to Robert Frost).”
So, for the umpteenth time, I wondered about climate change, formerly known as global warming.
I know there are more than a few ostriches out there, people who remain in climate change denial, who continue to say all this worry about heating up the planet is a load of hooey. They even claim there are organizations and people who talk about climate change because they stand to profit from us actually doing something about it. Yet they somehow overlook and ignore the fact there are plenty of junk science lobbyists who work for the fossil fuel industries and make good money by saying everything is AOK, don’t worry, be happy.
It has been my understanding that a large majority of scientists agree that man-made global warming or climate change, whichever you prefer, is the real deal and we may suffer unpleasant consequences if we continue to sit on our hands.
I suppose the reason many are skeptical about climate change because of what happened two decades ago with the Y2K millennium bug fiasco. Not only did it turn out to be a hoax, it made some high-tech companies rich for providing unnecessary “Y2K compliant” services.
Understanding just what global warming is and isn’t is part of the problem. Too many comedians, politicians and political cartoonists have gotten away with the superficial contention that if we have a snowstorm or a cold snap here in West Michigan, then global warming isn’t to be taken seriously.
I was told a long time ago that the most crucial characteristics of climate change are really weird weather and a lot of violent storms. Weird developments such as snow in Cairo, Egypt, such as ice storms in Texas and Florida, such as a plethora of wildfires in the Western U.S., violent tornadoes in the southern United States, such as hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and such as tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan.
The evidence seems to be piling up, a majority of scientists are warning us and 200 nations in Paris this week signed on to a well-intentioned plan to reduce pollution and lower the world temperature average by 1.8 degrees Farenheit.
It’s easy to sit back and say it’s a lot of rubbish, but what if the Chicken Littles are right? It reminds me of Pascal’s Wager in which the idea is to believe in God whether you do or not because if you do, you have nothing to fear, you’re covered.
I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “If you’re an atheist and don’t believe in God, you’d better be right.” Adapt that to, “If you don’t believe in climate change, you’d better be right.”
So tell me, Chicken Little, is that half empty glass getting harder to carry around?
I don’t think there’s any getting around the fact that our planet is headed for a new ice age.
Gee, I remember, I think it was 1982, when the Christmas day was 65 degrees and we were playing basketball in the driveway with no snow or a snowbank in sight. Didn’t hear anything about global warming, global climate change then.
It was only later when politicians found out if “chicken-little” clucked loud enough, they could get more funding (mo money, mo money, mo money!) for those areas where no science was involved but consensus – and consensus rules the Democrats – to hell with science, and viola, Global Warming was born. Then when it wasn’t warming anymore, they had to change the narrative to Global Climate Change. I think we need to worry more about a coming Ice Age than warming. Can’t wait to hunt mastodons.