Friday, January 15, 2016

Debating willful ignorance

I'd like to share an exchange from this morning.
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RB writes:  +citizenschallenge - Our ancestors were living in a Glacial Period for 100,000 years... it just ended about 17,000 years ago. We survived the Minoan Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, The Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age... (which was a horrible time of longer more bitter winters, shorter growing seasons, failed harvests, famine and higher death rates) The Little Ice Age just ended circa 1850, and the I.P.C.C. says we've only warmed 0.85 degree C between 1880 - 2012. 

For you to think that humans can't adapt to climate change is pretty ignorant on your part. 

Ever wonder why biodiversity increases as you move from the poles to the Equator ? Wonder why biodiversity lessens as you move from the tropic to the poles ? ? 

As long as there is moisture and water.... life prefers the warmth..... not the cold. 

You don't find very many retirees retiring to the beautiful beaches of the Arctic Ocean.... or the shores of Ellesmere Island and Greenland. 

But you find a lot of them retiring to the hot tropics.... 


Wonder why ? ?
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Dear RB, Florida and Arizona are not the hot tropics - I can't think of any folks who willingly move into the 'hot' tropics - except for a few with lots of money for a nice air conditioned luxury home or hotel with other people doing all the outside work for them.  Not a good gauge for the real world buddy.

Take a look at northern Africa and the Middle East if you want a realistic taste of future migration patterns!

What I wonder about is,
how people can be so utterly disconnected from the geophysical and human realities of our planet, not to mention being oblivious to how much our infrastructure, transportation networks, food producers, power producers, construction and other industry all are dependent on relatively benign and predictable weather patterns.  

Have you been paying any attention to the increasingly destructive extreme weather events happening all over the world?


When that hot and low river won't allow them to run the power-plant that we depend on to run our air conditioners - maybe then you'll get it.  Then again probably not, Republicans will just find another scapegoat to make an enemy out of.

So sad, so stupid, I was always told we people had the brains and sense to figure it out.  Hell, we don't even care enough to bother to take the time to learn to understand what our real physical home planet is all about.  

What a waste... this Republican/libertarian PR machine that's turned cold hard reality into some kid's egomaniacal cartoon, as reflected in the above inane comment and the stupidity Senator Inhofe (a man of real power) and pals have be spouting for years in the capital of the United States, and We The People let them get away with it.  They are killing the future and can't be bothered to honestly learn about how our planet actually operates.  The tragedy is overwhelming.

1 comment:

Victor Venema said...

Florida and Arizona are also quite dry regions. The low relative humidity makes it easier to sweat and bare the heat than elsewhere.

The same goes for the daily cycle, when it is hot during the day, the relative humidity is also lower than in the morning, making it easier to endure the heat.

On the other hand, in case of climate change the relative humidity will globally stay about the same. It will thus feel a lot less pleasant.

The temperature increases mentioned in climate projections, furthermore, are for the global average. However, the land warms about twice as much as the oceans. Thus the land warming will be much larger. Because there is so much land the Northern Hemisphere, where most mitigation sceptics live, also the land itself begin far away from the oceans warms much more than the land in the Southern Hemisphere.

Maybe it is not a bad idea to listen to scientists who have studied the impact of heat waves, rather than making up something yourself about retiring in Florida.