One out of
four people do not believe in climate change; but that doesn’t matter. As Neil deGrasse Tyson stated, ‘People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.’
Ninety-seven
percent of climate scientist agree that climate change is happening and it is
the result of human activity – the consensus is in. Now the question is how bad
will it be.
The results
are visible now. NASA has charted:
· Global temperature rise
· Warming of the Oceans
· Shrinking of the Ice Caps
· Glacial retreat
· Decreased snow cover
· Sea Level Rise
· Declined Ice Sheets
· Extreme Weather Events
· Ocean acidification
Carbon dioxide
traps heat in the atmosphere, increasing global temperatures, leading to a
greenhouse effect.
The carbon
release from industry, farming and consumption is increasing carbon emissions
at an unsustainable rate; and still, the global population is steadily increasing,
resulting in a further increase in consumption of energy and natural resources; and as the ice sheets in the arctic recede,
tundra that has been trapped below the ice for thousands of years is releasing
carbon dioxide, further accelerating the effect.
Atmospheric
carbon dioxide over the last 400,000 years, according to NASSA, has never
exceeded 300 parts-per-million – until 1950.
Today it is 400 parts-per-million, and climbing at an unsustainable
rate.
The results are,
by 2050 we can look forward to Extreme droughts, higher flood stages, severe
food shortages, wildlife extinction, cataclysmic sea level rise and mass
movement of climate refugees.
What can we
do about this? The reality is that
nothing will be done.
All capitalistic
societies main concern is making money and creating a rich, elite social
class. The very wealthy, invested in
fossil fuels and polluting industries, will oppose the elimination of their
carbon footprint. They will decry
climate change as a hoax and fund politicians to champion their claim. The
average citizen will not be willing to carry the burden of increased cost in
taxation to move the country to sustainable energy. And no one is willing to give up their beef.
We talk about cow farts. Adults
and kids alike love fart jokes, so we do not take seriously the effect the beef
industry has on the global environment.
Actually, it is cow burps. As
cows digest greenery they burp methane gas, that is thirty times more potent
than carbon dioxide. Beef production is
the worst climate offender in agriculture.
The world cattle population has
the third highest emissions on earth, behind the United States and China. In the United States beef farms require
forty percent of the agriculture land to produce three present of U.S. calorie
intake.
So, here we
are. Incremental changes over a period
of time will not have a significant effect on the rapid rate of carbon dioxide
increase; and the time is too short.
The UN
Climate Chief, Patricia Espinosa, stated: “If we continue to produce, consume, to
function as we are doing now, we know that we are going toward a catastrophe.”
It would be
interesting to live in the distant future and look back on how global warming
drastically changed human society.
I am looking forward to a nice beef chuck roast stew, cooked in my slow cooker, tomorrow night.
I saute onions, garlic and celery; cube the roast and liberally cover with Paul Prudhomme meat magic; add one cup of beef broth and one half cup of Madeira wine. I cook on high for six hours then add boiled potatoes, carrots and onions (I find vegetables that cook with the meat take on the flavor of the meat.)
I am looking forward to a nice beef chuck roast stew, cooked in my slow cooker, tomorrow night.
I saute onions, garlic and celery; cube the roast and liberally cover with Paul Prudhomme meat magic; add one cup of beef broth and one half cup of Madeira wine. I cook on high for six hours then add boiled potatoes, carrots and onions (I find vegetables that cook with the meat take on the flavor of the meat.)
the Ol’Buzzard
We've been out of the ice age for 10,000 years and if the million plus Earth cycles continue we are due to start still another ice age. There are even cycles within these cycles, the earth is still recovering from the "Little Ice Age" (1300-1870).
ReplyDeleteHow much money is "man made global warming" worth? Carbon trading, carbon taxes and all the other things that go with this particular fear? Billions the last time I looked.
With this as with most things these days, follow the money...
Politics is settled by consensus, science used to take experimentation and proof. Seems that's not the case any more.
Have grant money looking for a specific answer and a good publicity budget and you can change science from observe, hypothesize & experiment to "consensus".
A system with cycles that last tens of thousands of years and it's decided that it's broke over LESS THAN 200 YEARS OF questionable data and a quality publicity team.
They can even get an old time school teacher to buy into it... they are GOOD!
Go pull out the climate headlines & claims from the early 70's and again from early this century. Check their guesses against the reality you can see...
I doubt that either of us will live long enough to see what is really going to happen...
OB:
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed sad and frustrating when the science of climate change can so easily be ignored by many. I attribute it to the huge disinterest and distrust of science in our society.... because people do not WANT to try to understand that logical way of thinking. People would rather live in their own "Private Universe" and believe whatever they fancy.
PipeTobacco
If you want to know how "Science" works, read "the Big Fat Surprise". People began dying of heart attacks at a great rate in the 1930's I believe and government and medics were desperate to find a reason. A study of several countries found a high correlation between animal fats and heart attacks. The author was a good marketer. Once you get believers on the government funding bodies, advisory committees and review committees, it becomes an established fact. The original study was cherry picked. Had data available from other countries been included, it would have shown no correlation of a negative correlation. It took three decades before research revealed the true culprit which was carbohydrates, in particularly sugar and even today not every one is convinced, especially the anti-beef, anti-food, anti-damn near everything crowd.
ReplyDeleteFor that reason I take with a large grain of salt anything produced by a UN agency, especially the notion that cattle (and sheep and goats) are bad for the planet. Cattle produce about 3% of the GHG load, not 14%. And the amount of land used for beef production is likely true but most of it is range land, not suited for other agricultural use. Add to that crop residues and grain not suited for human consumption. The quality of protein from red meat is far superior to that of plant protein.
We need more ruminants, not fewer, and we must turn more waste land back into grass. Grass under properly managed grazing stores far more carbon than forest. Under well managed grazing the bulk of that carbon is recycled into the soil.
Grazing must we well-managed. The problem with domestic ruminants in the past is that they have been managed according to the law of the commons. Plows and goats have turned more land into desert than you can comprehend. I have said it is time to beat the plowshares back into swords and use them to kill goats. But it is not necessary and would be counter productive. We need to manage grazing the way wild ruminants did, which is to say they travel in huge herds, graze everything down to a certain point and move on. They do not return until the grass has had a chance to regrow and replenish its root reserves. Allan Savoury's TED talk is worth 22 minutes of your time. https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change