Ghost of a flea: The sky is falling

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March 03, 2006

The sky is falling

While The Economist reports Tim Flannery has the usual things to say about global temperature change they are impressed with what they say is almost a throwaway point.

He suggests that if humanity were facing the threat of cold, rather than heat, the talking would have been over long ago and a strong plan of action would be in place. His point is that Homo sapiens is a tropical species which, having only recently spread to temperate and frigid climes, still thinks like a tropical species. It really fears the cold, but rather likes the heat. The word "warming", therefore, has positive overtones. So perhaps the underlying problem is not so much, as in the case of staying slim, that you have to trade a real sacrifice now for a potential benefit in the future, but that a lot of people who are perfectly willing to believe that global warming is happening don't really see it is a problem at all.

Being entirely convinced we are a couple million years into an ice epoch and are currently overdue for another 100,000 year ice age I am rather more concerned about global freezing myself; no matter this global cooling euphamism. You know, the same end of the world scenario climate scientists were ranting about in the 1970s when such was the fashion. Yet Homo sapiens managed to struggle on doing nothing whatsoever about it despite our tropical ancestry. Unless, that is, we count SUVs as the thin line between Canada and the ice. I hope climatology has become a more reliable discipline in the last thirty years but I doubt human nature - with its wishful thinking, doomsaying and indifference alike - has changed in the slightest; something an evolutionary biologist should appreciate.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 3, 2006 07:31 AM

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Comments

I'd be all for halting global warming / cooling / whatever provided we didn't trade away economic and strategic superiority in the process.

Posted by: Chris Taylor at March 3, 2006 11:06 AM

Flannery ignores one critical difference: ice sheets are far more destructive than a warmer climate. Warming scenario? Canada may have reduced agricultural yields and more stress for wildlife. Cooling scenario? Canada no longer exists!

Posted by: Varenius at March 3, 2006 07:36 PM