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Global Warming: Climate Change is Natural
Ask the Vikings, who grew grapes in Greenland and Vinland (Nova Scotia) before the Little Ice Age drove them out of North America. Ask the Anasazi who built the beautiful cliff dwellings of the American Southwest, and had a flourishing civilization until driven away by several decades of drought. For that matter, ask the dinosaurs. Climate changes after huge asteroid impacts are natural, as was the Year of No Summer after the volcanic eruption of Tambora. It's natural for haze to collect in the basin over the Great Salt Lake and the Los Angeles Basin, both situated between large bodies of water and dry areas, hedged in by mountains. So why make things worse? Disease is natural, and we invest trillions in medicine. We don't put up with high rates of child mortality or most women dying in childbirth anymore. Why are some politicians arguing so loudly -- in the face of many, many scientific studies to the contrary, even a few by the oil companies who are lobbying them -- that climate change is only natural? Does that mean we should ignore it? We pride ourselves on how our technology has allowed us to exploit natural resources, get oil out of Alaska, pipe water into the desert, dig up diamonds from miles down, and read a license plate from space. We've got the technology to download porn on the South Pole via satellite, but we can't do anything to stop snow from melting? Come on! A huge chunk of Holland was created by draining and un-salting an entire SEA! Climate change may be natural -- in part -- but we aren't helpless hunter-gatherers living in caves and bark huts anymore. And as scientist William Calvin notes, "Hunter-gatherers could move when the weather changed. London cannot." In fact, of course, we know that carbon dioxide emissions, toxic chemicals, deforestation, overfishing and worldwide development have had a huge impact on the environment. Look at all the places where we've plopped sprawling cities on top of what used to be natural habitat, two hundred years ago. Try to find an orange grove in Orange County -- all the ones my grandmother remembers are under Disneysprawl and the Anaheim Ducks parking lot. Check the bacteria count reports and beach closures next summer and see how many days it's unsafe to swim. The ocean covers 70% of the planet. If we've filled it up with raw sewage and trash, we're in trouble (mainly because the phytoplankton in it produce 90% of the oxygen we breathe). So yes, we need to cut back on emissions and clean up our mess. But more than that. We need to be developing green technologies not simply to reduce our impact on the environment, but as a cushion against climate change. This is a dress rehearsal for the next Little Ice Age or century-long heat wave. Developing green technologies will help us learn to weather the natural swings of climate that the planet throws our way. As Katrina reminded us, putting off worrying about it until later will catch up with us, sooner or later.
Every link listed below is fascinating in one way or another, and I had a hard time choosing just ten. You will know a LOT about climate change, natural and otherwise, if you check them out.
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Review: The Two-Mile Time Machine
| Influence of Dramatic Climate Changes on Europe (The Little Ice Age)
| The Arctic Meltdown: Drowning Polar Bears and Walruses, and an Ecosystem's "Death Spiral" (2007)
| Science Daily: Impact of Global Warming on Weather Patterns Underestimated
| Science Daily: Natural Climate Change May Be Larger Than Commonly Thought
| Smithsonian: Species Explosion During Last Major Global Warming Period
| Global Warming Dramatically Changed Ancient Forests
| Science Daily: Catastrophic Draining of Huge Lakes Tied To Ancient Global Cooling Event
| Audiocast - "Civilization: Use It or Lose It"
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Worldwide Temperature Change in Last 150 Years (Source: http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/17.htm)
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