I won't repeat the arguments for and against climate change. The people who don't believe its happening will not be convinced it is until they can figure out a way to make money off of it. Instead, I want to focus on what I believe the threat is, and what we can or cannot do about it. If you think climate change (or global warming) is a hoax (kind of like I believe extending the Bush tax cuts for people making $250,000 is vital to our nation's interests is a hoax), then you can stop reading now and save yourself a lot of eye rolling.
Over the next few decades, the fruits of our industrial labor...and the greenhouse gases we've generously donated to our atmosphere over the past couple hundred years...will change the Earth's climate as we know it. The key words here are "as we know it". Some alarmists are saying that climate change is going to make our planet unlivable. That of course is nonsense. It's just going to make it unlivable for some and uncomfortable for the rest.
Planet Earth has a history of climatological mood swings greater than even the most angst-filled teenager. We've gone from hot to cold more times than the Minnesota Vikings. Yes, our planet has natural cycles of cooling and warming. In fact, we've been recovering from the last cooling cycle for the past several thousand years, which explains why we have glacial lakes all over northwest Iowa and the Loess Hills along the western part of Iowa. The retreat of the glaciers left a legacy not only here in Iowa but around the globe...us. Civilization would have never developed to its present level without out the retreat of the last Ice Age (when, by the way, scientists say they are fairly certain there were no talking mammoths that sounded like Ray Romano).
But we've evolved (evolution is another hoax if you live in Kansas) as a civilization within a very narrow climate window. Think about it...from the rise of the Fertile Crescent and the pyramids of Egypt to the end of the 20th century, good old Earth has operated with pretty much the same climate with a few exceptions. Yes, occasionally we'll have a volcanic eruption that makes it cold for a few years or decades (read online about the "Little Ice Age" and the "Medieval Warm Period" if you totally want to geek out on these natural variations). But despite the occasional blips on the Earth's climate radar, it's been pretty much steady as she goes. And its under those conditions that humans have moved from using rocks as tools to sending information around the globe on something called the internet.
So the concern for everyone should be what happens to the civilization we've built if climate change is real and starts to change the weather patterns we've all come to depend on. For example: there's a reason we grow corn in Iowa and not cotton. But what if a few degrees on the old global thermometer shifts things north a few hundred miles? Suddenly, John Deere dealerships would look a whole lot more attractive in Canada than they do in the Midwest. What if we start receiving the same amount of annual rainfall that they do now in Oklahoma or Texas? What happens to our lives?
Or what happens if the wind patterns shift and all of those wind turbines we've been scrambling to put up (to save the world, but he way) become nothing more than occasionally spinning monuments to our own lack of planning? I'm not saying we shouldn't be adding to our wind energy portfolio, but what happens when the wind isn't here anymore?
I have expressed in earlier blogs that I think the train has left the station on whether or not this nation (or the rest of the industrialized world for that matter) will make the tough decisions needed to reverse climate change. I don't believe for a second that Americans will accept the restrictions on their lifestyles that would be necessary for us to do our part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We're just too selfish. We want less taxes and more large screen TV's, and we want everyone else to pay for the rest.
So that leaves us with two choices for climate change...
1-Deal with it and hope we can adjust. By "we" I mean our nation. The rest of the world will be on its own I'm afraid because we won't be able to work together and we won't have the money it would take to help them adjust. It's a shame, Bangledesh, but I'm afraid you're toast. And other species? They won't even warrant a shrug of the shoulders for us. Sorry polar bears, you'll have to find a new way to live (but don't move to Alaska cuz our next president could be a person who would gladly go hunting for you). Coral reefs? You're pretty and you support an entire ecosystem, but you're about to become one of millions of casualties of humans misuse of Planet Earth. We as Americans are going to be on our own to adjust to the new reality. That means we're going to have to move a few million people off the coasts to avoid the rising seas or spend trillions to build the seawalls it will take to protect them. We're going to have to adjust our lifestyle to deal with the fact that it will cost a lot more to feed ourselves than it does now because we don't have the ability to grow the cheap food we've grown used to. And if we're spending more on food we'll spend less on stuff, which means the companies that make stuff and the people who work in the factories that make stuff are just going to have to figure out something else to do. Maybe there will be enough jobs building those seawalls to keep everyone occupied.
or choice #2
2-Geoengineering. Also known as climate engineering, the theory is this. We don't have the will to make the changes necessary to reduce the amount of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere, so instead we will do other things to counteract its influence. Now THAT sounds like an American way to solve a problem...we'll just build something! The attached illustration shows some of the ideas that were once fringe concepts but are now starting to get serous consideration by seriously smart people. It seems to me that the problem with geoengineering is the same problem with stopping greenhouse gas emissions...it's gonna take money, and will, and people to agree that its the right thing to do. And I don't think we've got enough of any of them to make it viable. Except in the case of an emergency, which will be when the private islands owned by our nation's elite start to become submerged.So we don't have a lot of good options. Allowing climate change to continue unabated will lead to major lifestyle changes for all of us, and a world in disarray as refugees stream from areas greatly affected by climate change to those areas with few changes. Actually, I think the US will probably be better off than most of the world, which is why those people are going to want to come here even more than they do now. Hopefully, President Steve King will be able to come up with the money (through cuts to social programs) to finally build his giant concrete containment wall around our borders (with electrified barbed wire at the top, "we do this with livestock all the time").
