No. Not really. I am enjoying the heatwave. We get one very hot spell every summer, the rest is usually at least very warm and there is the occasional week long monsoon to keep England green.
Presumably that left wing comic the Indy would have me think this heat is abnomal.
It seems to have made global warming is cause du jour never missing an opportunity for scaremongering. But this headline and front cover is pretty hilarious dont you think?! Bernard Ingham commenting on a press review last night pointed out to one hapless guest (who bought right into the headline without smirking) that the Romans used to make excellent wine. Just outside York.
Im not dismissing the whole argument on global warming, landfill ... human destruction of the planet ( I recycle! I recycle!) but there needs to be some proportion and latterly the whole debate seems to have been hijacked by utter loons.
Spare a thought for those who have to take the Tube. It's currently up to about 50 degrees C.
posted by Alison @ 2:18 pm
9 Comments:
And the Romans grew most of their wheat in Tunisia and Algeria. The climate was different then in may ways.
I reckon the rate of global warming is probably down to human action. I'm not a scientist but the majority of those who are reckon that we are cooking the planet.
The clincher for me is that many of the people who try to deny global warming or to talk it down are the same people who claim that God created the world in 4004 BC and that evolution is complete rubbish. In other words, people who are adept at dismissing evidence in favour of their own a-priori view of the world.
Thing is, if oil is already being pumped at peak capacity and demand will soon outstrip supply, and if there's only another 30 years' worth of it left in the ground anyway, then carbon emmissions are going to srart falling within our lifetimes, no matter whether people agree or disagree that this causes GW.
Nobody can effectively order us to curb emissions while the oil/gas supply lasts, because economies always want to grow, not shrink. Personally I have faith in technology to overcome whatever problems nature throws at us. We will use up all the oil and gas and then move on to other sources, out of pure necessity. Us humans are, and have always been, damned clever at solving our problems.
The Daily Ablution has, in the past, pointed out some of the glaring hypocrisies of the Indie's stance, by the way.
As a sixties child, I well remember the long hot summers that tended to be the norm. Melting roads, heatwaves and we all just revelled in it.
We now seem to live in a permanent state of paranoia.
"Don't forget your factor 3000 sunblock"
"Keep out of the sun and cover up"
"Drink plenty of water"
What we have all forgotten to do is to take what life throws at us and enjoy what we can.
It's summer people. It's meant to be bloody hot.
The Indy is doing environmental science a lot of damage because it continues to peddle half-truths and misunderstandings about the science. Let me boil this down...
The climate is not going to get nicer, its going to get more violent. The current warm spell is only the start of a process which will soon go into a "feedback loop" and accelerate.
Imagine a Britain where its 40C+ for weeks, baking the soil hard and killing plant life followed by violent electrical storms that ignite the dry landscape into vast forest fires. Come winter we get flash-floods that wash away the top-soil leaving the fields un-plantable and polluted.
Modern agriculture is completely dependent on petrochemical fertilisers, when the oil runs out millions, if not billions will starve. The starving will migrate in search of food. There will be war.
Its going to be really, really bad.
Oh yes, using fossil fuel releases particulates which enhance global dimming - an opposing force which is slowing the progress of warming. As the oil runs-out dimming will be reduced and we will experience the full force of what we have wrought upon ourselves and our planet.
[prognosis reductum]
Good points Wolfie.
I find it amusing (in a perverse sort of way) that some people on the political right don't seem capable of joining the dots. They tell us we shouldn't worry about global warming then tell us that immigration is a threat to our society.
Global warming will lead to immigrationon a scale that we have never seen before. As you say, it's going to be really, really bad!
Id go along with Krip and Tom. I see what Wolfie and Steve are saying but at the same time i dont think a sudden warm spell is an indicator that we are spiralling into the seventh circle of hell. Yet. The climate has always changed and man has always evolved along with it...
Summertime:
OMG! A heatwave! It's global warming!
Wintertime:
OMG! It's going to snow! We're headed for another Ice Age!
Speaking of ice ages, I remember clearly that it was only a few decades ago that we were hearing dire warnings of an ice age. It was going to be horrible! Everyone was going to die!
I'm not jumping on the global warming bandwagon especially since some interesting data has been coming out about the climate cycles of the Earth. Some interesting data has also come out about misconceptions we have held about oil and the availability of it.
It just seems daft to me that you get a few days of heat or in the winter a snowfall and everyones off on one assuming its the end of the world. Nother case of our precious MSM being...well...precious really.
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