22 February 2012
Causes of Global Warming Are Immaterial
The exchange of articles regarding the importance of human causes for global warming between Trenberth et al. , Allegre et al. and others in the Wall Street Journals of January 27, 2012 and afterwards really miss the point. It is not material whom or what is to blame for global warming; moreover it is not pertinent whether global warming may have occurred in the past only to disappear as the years rolled on. The significant fact is that today’s overpopulated and delicately counterbalanced world is more vulnerable to the changes in climate that civilization may have withstood by migration and mass adaptation in the less pressurized days of yore.
Fortunately, humanity has achieved technological skills that, although costly, may help mitigate the effects of global warming on human and animal welfare. All we need to do is make the commitment to devoting our capabilities and resources to combat the potentially devastating impact of climate change, whether it be cyclical or secular or both.
Sure, such an effort may slow down economic growth as measured by the wealth of the richest among us. However we have just learned the danger of ignoring how interdependent the world is as the high incomes built on inflated real estate valuations were depressed along with middle class savings when the subprime mortgage boom collapsed. Financial sacrifice in the short term (say, even, twenty to fifty years) is undoubtedly better than jeopardizing the health and livelihoods of one or two generations by failing to search for and take wise measures to allow us to weather the inevitable or preventable consequences of civilizing our unique planet.
The exchange of articles regarding the importance of human causes for global warming between Trenberth et al. , Allegre et al. and others in the Wall Street Journals of January 27, 2012 and afterwards really miss the point. It is not material whom or what is to blame for global warming; moreover it is not pertinent whether global warming may have occurred in the past only to disappear as the years rolled on. The significant fact is that today’s overpopulated and delicately counterbalanced world is more vulnerable to the changes in climate that civilization may have withstood by migration and mass adaptation in the less pressurized days of yore.
Fortunately, humanity has achieved technological skills that, although costly, may help mitigate the effects of global warming on human and animal welfare. All we need to do is make the commitment to devoting our capabilities and resources to combat the potentially devastating impact of climate change, whether it be cyclical or secular or both.
Sure, such an effort may slow down economic growth as measured by the wealth of the richest among us. However we have just learned the danger of ignoring how interdependent the world is as the high incomes built on inflated real estate valuations were depressed along with middle class savings when the subprime mortgage boom collapsed. Financial sacrifice in the short term (say, even, twenty to fifty years) is undoubtedly better than jeopardizing the health and livelihoods of one or two generations by failing to search for and take wise measures to allow us to weather the inevitable or preventable consequences of civilizing our unique planet.
