Saturday, December 03, 2005
Really Bad News on the Global Warming Front
Are humans to blame for global warming? I don’t know, and truthfully I don’t think we really can know. There are so many other factors involved, especially volcanos, that play a role as well. But our environment is changing...and its time we face up to this.
This may suprise some, but I love Rush Limbaugh. I have listened for the past 15 years with regularity. But on Thursday’s show he made a fool of himself and provided another example of why ordinary people do not trust Conservatives with the environment (though, if you have read or listened to Peter Schweizer’s new book Do As I Say Not As I Do as I suggested in an earlier post, liberals really cannot be trusted either). Rush poo-pood a story out of the U.K. this week that said that there is danger of global warming leading to a new ice age. He made fun of the story, which is very serious and shows that Conservatives just do not get the reality of the changing environment.
This story from the Daily Telegraph is a forcast of possible doom:
Global warming ‘will bring cooler climate for UK’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/01/nclim01.xml
The article details about how increasing flows of fresh water into the oceans is substantially curtailing the flow of warm currents towards the European coasts. This has to do with the fact that salt water allows for the rising and falling of cold and hot water, which brings the warm flows to the coast of Europe that are at high latitudes (like France and the U.K.).
While we have never been able to determine absolutely the cause of the mini-ice age that began in the 13th century and led to massive agricultural and population loss in the world. But clearly these changes to the flows of warm water to the European continent. This followed the warming period of the centuries before which had melted the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica. This did not happen because of the industrial pollution, but possible because of either a period of solar warming or an increase in volcanic activity.
Now it appears that we are seeing this again. Is this the casue of human pollution? We may have added to it, but I don’t think we can be fully responsible for it. More to the point, at this point we are too far down the road to stop it. The weather is going to change and possibly radically. Can you imagine the U.K. with the weather of Norway? It could be coming.
I should state that the Kyoto Accords were garbage. They were anti-capitalist, and would have resulted in massive economic dislocation, especially for the world’s poor. Kyoto was a disaster. However, we should be working to end pollution.
Regardless though, we had better get ready for a radically different world of weather, and Rush making fun of Global Warming bringing a new Ice Age is not the right place to start.
