Pro-Global Warming
I'm in favor of global warming. Overall, I think it would be a good thing. Let's look at a few points.
Here's the basic idea. Can the climate stay the same? No. If you think the weather can stay the same then I would ask you to try to get back in contact with reality in whatever manner you may choose, going outside or looking at history are two decent ideas.
Notice that I said climate in one sentence and weather in another sentence, but I used them in a similar way. Many people that like to sell the idea of the apocalypse through climate change like to point out that weather and climate are not the same thing. True, weather is short term and climate is long term. Climate is long weather. Climate is to weather as cat is to kitten. It's not like people are making a giant leap when they think the two are somewhat related.
Starting with the assumption that weather and climate are definitely going to change we have two basic options: hotter or colder. There are nuances, I get that, but if you think that we can control the nuances of the climate then I refer you to my recommendations concerning contact with reality two paragraphs up.
If it gets colder what happens? Well, there's more snow, more ice, less water, fewer plants, fewer animals, fewer farmable areas, less food, fewer fishable areas, and fewer ocean shipping lanes. Those are the things that come to the top of my mind at the moment. Notice that humans are animals. Overall, it doesn't sound that good. (This is a general view of all of humanity across time. I'm not even mentioning some of the specifics like the people that freeze to death every year in the United States.)
If it gets hotter what happens? Well, there's less snow, less ice, more water, more plants, more animals, more farmable areas, more food, more fishable areas, and more ocean shipping lanes. Sounds pretty decent.
That's the basic reason that I'm for global warming, because it would be good for humans. I'm not going to look at too many more points, but there are a few worth mentioning.
Let's talk about polar bears. It's common for people selling the idea of global warming as a bad thing to use deceptive images in their propaganda. A common image is of a polar bear sitting, standing, or laying on an ice float. This represents how little ice these poor creatures have left, so little that they must cling to the last little piece that's still left in the ocean. But, if you look up the polar bear population it just keeps going up. It's been going up so much that some areas of Canada are complaining that they have too many polar bears and that's a problem because polar bears are big aggressive bears.
Rarely are these images captioned with something like "Polar bears can swim across open water for hundreds of miles and use ice floats to travel across large distances by riding them on purpose." A caption like this would not help the propaganda at all.
Some of the environmentalists have changed their tactics and message over the years. We'll get back to different kinds of environmentalism later, right now I'm talking about the climate change apocalypse people. And, pay attention to this, because this is some of the best propaganda I've ever seen.
Before my time there was the global cooling scare. This is actually scary in many ways. Notice how many animals, plants, and humans live in the polar circles. It's not many, it's darn hard to survive there, most things can't. Without plants and animals it's hard to keep humans alive. My father also points out that his property value wouldn't be very good if it was under a few miles of ice. This is funny, but it's also true. And it points out the fact that land covered in ice and snow is worth less because it's not as useful. More ice and snow would be a bad thing.
Somehow there was a transition to the idea of global warming. Also, maybe the earth is warming. It's hard to predict the future, especially with an open system that is so complex. Natural warming and cooling cycles occur on earth over both short and long periods of time. The earth has been warmer than it is now, and cooler than it is now. We don't know why or how all of these cycles occur. We guess, we take measurements, and we guess some more, as we should. But, we still don't know. Does the sun have some sort of cycle that significantly changes earth's climate every 10 to 20 thousand years? We don't know.
Humans have this natural tendency to look into the future and see the end of the world. That's how we put it anyway. Really, we're usually just talking about the end of humanity, because the earth was here before humanity and will be here after humanity. Some people seem to forget that. Alas, we love dystopian science fiction and fantasy where a few survivors are trying to survive after the apocalypse. It's fun, and it's valuable in many ways. But, it slants our view of the world and sometimes bends it away from what is real and valuable.
Humans also have this tendency to project things linearly. If we measure the temperature this year and it's on average one degree warmer than last year then we think, "Wow! If this keeps up for 50 years then it will be really, really hot here." Well, it doesn't work like that. We try to make computer simulations to have more complex predictions now, but we're not sure if they are more accurate than magical crystal balls or not. We shall wait and see, and still never know. If the predictions are inaccurate then you'll just never hear about it again, and in 50 or 100 years you'll be dead anyway, so it will be hard for you to know if the predictions were accurate. If you look at predictions from 10, or 20, or 30, or 40, or 50, years ago you'll see what predictions are worth, not much.
There were some issues with the global warming apocalypse so the propaganda had to adjust and change. That's where climate change comes in. Now, this is the genius part. Climate change is the apocalypse. We already talked about how it's impossible for the climate not to change. So, it means that no matter what happens, it's the apocalypse! It's ideal for the apocalypse mongers, and for the propagandists. It's not even possible to have another side to this argument. I've never heard someone make the case that the climate doesn't change. That would be insane, and I've never even heard an insane person say that the weather doesn't change. A beautiful piece of propaganda it is.
There is so much more that can be hit on here.
Forest fires in California are often connected with the global warming sales pieces. They don't mention that California has special laws that specifically outlaw doing the obvious things to prevent forest fires, like removing dead wood from the forests and such. There's a reason that these huge forest fires happen in California and almost nowhere else, it's because of the special laws put in place that make it a perfect place to have a huge forest fire.
It seems like the people that like to sell global warming the most are generally from places that aren't cold. If they had been shoveling my driveway with me yesterday in -4 degree F temps (-20 degrees C) with wind driving snow in my face, maybe they wouldn't be promoting this specific apocalyptic myth. I think the apocalypse through ice rather than fire is scarier, but maybe that's because I'm from Michigan.
The apocalypse through flood is quite popular throughout history. Global warming connects itself well to that myth too. The apocalypse through fire and flood, I can see the appeal. And, most people live along coasts. That's true all over the world, throughout the entire history of humanity. Humans do well with water, so we like to live close to water. To a large extent, we are water.
There are ancient cities that have been found underwater around the world. That lends itself to the idea that the water was lower in the past and thus the earth was colder and more of the water was frozen. It makes sense. I think it's better for humanity that those cities are underwater and half of the United States isn't covered in ice. Hopefully the warming trend continues in the future.
Think about how much we would gain if the earth were warmer. Most of Canada and Russia are almost completely useless because there's so much ice and snow. These are the two largest countries on the planet. Imagine if we could have farms on that land area instead of... nothing! Imagine the grasslands, the forests.
Alaska is huge, almost nothing is there. Greenland is huge, even less in there. Antarctica is an entire continent that's just sitting there covered in ice. If the earth were warmer all of this would be useable land area for humans. There could be plants and animals and life there.
I think that some people, maybe many people, think that if the earth were warmer then there would be huge deserts all over the place. This isn't so. There aren't deserts where it's hot, there are deserts where water doesn't fall. Many deserts are cold. Many places that are hot not only aren't deserts, they're rainforests and jungles. This is where the most plants and animals are. Rainforests and jungles are teeming with life. If the earth were warmer we would have more rainforests and jungles. There would also be more water because less of it would be trapped in ice. There would be less desert.
Some people say that the sea level rising would ruin our coasts. No it wouldn't, it would move them. This would happen over decades or longer. The coastal populations will adjust to the change over generations. This is not a flood apocalypse.
Desertification, where grasslands are turning to desert, in Africa and the United States is not because of any temperature increase. It's not even because of droughts, even through droughts for several years in an area are not uncommon throughout all of human history in all places. It's because of the mismanagement of large herds of animals. Herds of animals need grasslands, and as it turns out, grasslands need big herds of animals.
Allan Savory found this out when he killed 40,000 elephants in Africa to stop desertification, but it only made it worse. He's devoted the rest of his life, and now his daughter had devoted her life, to reversing this. By putting big herds of animals back on desert that used to be grassland you can restore the grassland in just a few years. This is real environmentalism, if you wanted to help plants, animals, and humans. If you wanted to help the environment you would be hoping for global warming.
These propaganda tactics reveal the complete lack of reason on the side of the global warming promoters. Not only have I seen polar bear and forest fire pictures, I've also seen slides where the title is something like "Polar Bear Population", then there's this graph going down. You would assume that's the polar bear population, you would be wrong. It's designed to mislead you. If you read it you will notice in the text that the polar bear population is going up and it doesn't say what the graph is actually for. Pure propaganda, and not that good.
Or, there will be a picture of the same area. One has a lot of ice and snow and the other one doesn't. "Wow, this area is losing so much ice and snow." Well, actually that's just a picture of that area in the winter and the summer, they forgot to mention that. These tactics seem ridiculous, but they work.
I've heard people make some interesting points about what could be bad about global warming. Someone pointed out to me that there are more diseases in the warmer climates. I had to think about that for a few days. Then I realized that there are more people in the warmer climates. Where you have more people you'll have more diseases. That humans originally came from warmer climates, so the disease developed there with them. There are more animals in warmer climates, and they have more diseases to transfer to humans. And, there are larger cities in warmer climates, and cities are breeding grounds for new diseases to develop.
I've mentioned good and bad environmentalists already. Here's another important point. What do you do if you're pro-global warming? Should I be burning tires in my backyard every day? Good question. No, you shouldn't, but it's not because of anything to do with global warming, weather, or climate. It's all to do with pollution. Pollution sucks. It's bad. If you've been walking in a forest, rafting down a river, fishing on a lake, or hiking up a mountain you know what good clean air is like. There's no replacement for it. You've probably also been around cars, trucks, factories, and smokers where the air wasn't clean. It doesn't feel good. I don't want pollution, and that's a whole other topic about something called the tragedy of the commons.
Obviously, the discussion could go on. Global warming would be beneficial to humanity in many ways, and global cooling would be detrimental to humanity in many ways. But, I think I've made my point. I've been pro-global warming for years, but I've never heard anyone else take the position. I think it's time. Let me point out two more things.
In the show "Game of Thrones" there are fire dragons and ice dragons. The ice dragons and ice people are scarier. Less ice is good, more ice is bad.
For centuries explorers looked for the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. They couldn't find it because it is blocked with ice. If the ice was gone, there would be a Northwest Passage.
In conclusion, as a human being hoping for a better future for humans, I am rooting for global warming. Join me.
Here's the basic idea. Can the climate stay the same? No. If you think the weather can stay the same then I would ask you to try to get back in contact with reality in whatever manner you may choose, going outside or looking at history are two decent ideas.
Notice that I said climate in one sentence and weather in another sentence, but I used them in a similar way. Many people that like to sell the idea of the apocalypse through climate change like to point out that weather and climate are not the same thing. True, weather is short term and climate is long term. Climate is long weather. Climate is to weather as cat is to kitten. It's not like people are making a giant leap when they think the two are somewhat related.
Starting with the assumption that weather and climate are definitely going to change we have two basic options: hotter or colder. There are nuances, I get that, but if you think that we can control the nuances of the climate then I refer you to my recommendations concerning contact with reality two paragraphs up.
If it gets colder what happens? Well, there's more snow, more ice, less water, fewer plants, fewer animals, fewer farmable areas, less food, fewer fishable areas, and fewer ocean shipping lanes. Those are the things that come to the top of my mind at the moment. Notice that humans are animals. Overall, it doesn't sound that good. (This is a general view of all of humanity across time. I'm not even mentioning some of the specifics like the people that freeze to death every year in the United States.)
If it gets hotter what happens? Well, there's less snow, less ice, more water, more plants, more animals, more farmable areas, more food, more fishable areas, and more ocean shipping lanes. Sounds pretty decent.
That's the basic reason that I'm for global warming, because it would be good for humans. I'm not going to look at too many more points, but there are a few worth mentioning.
Let's talk about polar bears. It's common for people selling the idea of global warming as a bad thing to use deceptive images in their propaganda. A common image is of a polar bear sitting, standing, or laying on an ice float. This represents how little ice these poor creatures have left, so little that they must cling to the last little piece that's still left in the ocean. But, if you look up the polar bear population it just keeps going up. It's been going up so much that some areas of Canada are complaining that they have too many polar bears and that's a problem because polar bears are big aggressive bears.
Rarely are these images captioned with something like "Polar bears can swim across open water for hundreds of miles and use ice floats to travel across large distances by riding them on purpose." A caption like this would not help the propaganda at all.
Some of the environmentalists have changed their tactics and message over the years. We'll get back to different kinds of environmentalism later, right now I'm talking about the climate change apocalypse people. And, pay attention to this, because this is some of the best propaganda I've ever seen.
Before my time there was the global cooling scare. This is actually scary in many ways. Notice how many animals, plants, and humans live in the polar circles. It's not many, it's darn hard to survive there, most things can't. Without plants and animals it's hard to keep humans alive. My father also points out that his property value wouldn't be very good if it was under a few miles of ice. This is funny, but it's also true. And it points out the fact that land covered in ice and snow is worth less because it's not as useful. More ice and snow would be a bad thing.
Somehow there was a transition to the idea of global warming. Also, maybe the earth is warming. It's hard to predict the future, especially with an open system that is so complex. Natural warming and cooling cycles occur on earth over both short and long periods of time. The earth has been warmer than it is now, and cooler than it is now. We don't know why or how all of these cycles occur. We guess, we take measurements, and we guess some more, as we should. But, we still don't know. Does the sun have some sort of cycle that significantly changes earth's climate every 10 to 20 thousand years? We don't know.
Humans have this natural tendency to look into the future and see the end of the world. That's how we put it anyway. Really, we're usually just talking about the end of humanity, because the earth was here before humanity and will be here after humanity. Some people seem to forget that. Alas, we love dystopian science fiction and fantasy where a few survivors are trying to survive after the apocalypse. It's fun, and it's valuable in many ways. But, it slants our view of the world and sometimes bends it away from what is real and valuable.
Humans also have this tendency to project things linearly. If we measure the temperature this year and it's on average one degree warmer than last year then we think, "Wow! If this keeps up for 50 years then it will be really, really hot here." Well, it doesn't work like that. We try to make computer simulations to have more complex predictions now, but we're not sure if they are more accurate than magical crystal balls or not. We shall wait and see, and still never know. If the predictions are inaccurate then you'll just never hear about it again, and in 50 or 100 years you'll be dead anyway, so it will be hard for you to know if the predictions were accurate. If you look at predictions from 10, or 20, or 30, or 40, or 50, years ago you'll see what predictions are worth, not much.
There were some issues with the global warming apocalypse so the propaganda had to adjust and change. That's where climate change comes in. Now, this is the genius part. Climate change is the apocalypse. We already talked about how it's impossible for the climate not to change. So, it means that no matter what happens, it's the apocalypse! It's ideal for the apocalypse mongers, and for the propagandists. It's not even possible to have another side to this argument. I've never heard someone make the case that the climate doesn't change. That would be insane, and I've never even heard an insane person say that the weather doesn't change. A beautiful piece of propaganda it is.
There is so much more that can be hit on here.
Forest fires in California are often connected with the global warming sales pieces. They don't mention that California has special laws that specifically outlaw doing the obvious things to prevent forest fires, like removing dead wood from the forests and such. There's a reason that these huge forest fires happen in California and almost nowhere else, it's because of the special laws put in place that make it a perfect place to have a huge forest fire.
It seems like the people that like to sell global warming the most are generally from places that aren't cold. If they had been shoveling my driveway with me yesterday in -4 degree F temps (-20 degrees C) with wind driving snow in my face, maybe they wouldn't be promoting this specific apocalyptic myth. I think the apocalypse through ice rather than fire is scarier, but maybe that's because I'm from Michigan.
The apocalypse through flood is quite popular throughout history. Global warming connects itself well to that myth too. The apocalypse through fire and flood, I can see the appeal. And, most people live along coasts. That's true all over the world, throughout the entire history of humanity. Humans do well with water, so we like to live close to water. To a large extent, we are water.
There are ancient cities that have been found underwater around the world. That lends itself to the idea that the water was lower in the past and thus the earth was colder and more of the water was frozen. It makes sense. I think it's better for humanity that those cities are underwater and half of the United States isn't covered in ice. Hopefully the warming trend continues in the future.
Think about how much we would gain if the earth were warmer. Most of Canada and Russia are almost completely useless because there's so much ice and snow. These are the two largest countries on the planet. Imagine if we could have farms on that land area instead of... nothing! Imagine the grasslands, the forests.
Alaska is huge, almost nothing is there. Greenland is huge, even less in there. Antarctica is an entire continent that's just sitting there covered in ice. If the earth were warmer all of this would be useable land area for humans. There could be plants and animals and life there.
I think that some people, maybe many people, think that if the earth were warmer then there would be huge deserts all over the place. This isn't so. There aren't deserts where it's hot, there are deserts where water doesn't fall. Many deserts are cold. Many places that are hot not only aren't deserts, they're rainforests and jungles. This is where the most plants and animals are. Rainforests and jungles are teeming with life. If the earth were warmer we would have more rainforests and jungles. There would also be more water because less of it would be trapped in ice. There would be less desert.
Some people say that the sea level rising would ruin our coasts. No it wouldn't, it would move them. This would happen over decades or longer. The coastal populations will adjust to the change over generations. This is not a flood apocalypse.
Desertification, where grasslands are turning to desert, in Africa and the United States is not because of any temperature increase. It's not even because of droughts, even through droughts for several years in an area are not uncommon throughout all of human history in all places. It's because of the mismanagement of large herds of animals. Herds of animals need grasslands, and as it turns out, grasslands need big herds of animals.
Allan Savory found this out when he killed 40,000 elephants in Africa to stop desertification, but it only made it worse. He's devoted the rest of his life, and now his daughter had devoted her life, to reversing this. By putting big herds of animals back on desert that used to be grassland you can restore the grassland in just a few years. This is real environmentalism, if you wanted to help plants, animals, and humans. If you wanted to help the environment you would be hoping for global warming.
These propaganda tactics reveal the complete lack of reason on the side of the global warming promoters. Not only have I seen polar bear and forest fire pictures, I've also seen slides where the title is something like "Polar Bear Population", then there's this graph going down. You would assume that's the polar bear population, you would be wrong. It's designed to mislead you. If you read it you will notice in the text that the polar bear population is going up and it doesn't say what the graph is actually for. Pure propaganda, and not that good.
Or, there will be a picture of the same area. One has a lot of ice and snow and the other one doesn't. "Wow, this area is losing so much ice and snow." Well, actually that's just a picture of that area in the winter and the summer, they forgot to mention that. These tactics seem ridiculous, but they work.
I've heard people make some interesting points about what could be bad about global warming. Someone pointed out to me that there are more diseases in the warmer climates. I had to think about that for a few days. Then I realized that there are more people in the warmer climates. Where you have more people you'll have more diseases. That humans originally came from warmer climates, so the disease developed there with them. There are more animals in warmer climates, and they have more diseases to transfer to humans. And, there are larger cities in warmer climates, and cities are breeding grounds for new diseases to develop.
I've mentioned good and bad environmentalists already. Here's another important point. What do you do if you're pro-global warming? Should I be burning tires in my backyard every day? Good question. No, you shouldn't, but it's not because of anything to do with global warming, weather, or climate. It's all to do with pollution. Pollution sucks. It's bad. If you've been walking in a forest, rafting down a river, fishing on a lake, or hiking up a mountain you know what good clean air is like. There's no replacement for it. You've probably also been around cars, trucks, factories, and smokers where the air wasn't clean. It doesn't feel good. I don't want pollution, and that's a whole other topic about something called the tragedy of the commons.
Obviously, the discussion could go on. Global warming would be beneficial to humanity in many ways, and global cooling would be detrimental to humanity in many ways. But, I think I've made my point. I've been pro-global warming for years, but I've never heard anyone else take the position. I think it's time. Let me point out two more things.
In the show "Game of Thrones" there are fire dragons and ice dragons. The ice dragons and ice people are scarier. Less ice is good, more ice is bad.
For centuries explorers looked for the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. They couldn't find it because it is blocked with ice. If the ice was gone, there would be a Northwest Passage.
In conclusion, as a human being hoping for a better future for humans, I am rooting for global warming. Join me.
________________________________________________
You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com
Comments
Post a Comment