The Earth was not created and does not change just so that humans are comfortable. The entire human challenge is to figure out ways to remain resilient in the presence of a hostile planet, and to make ourselves as adaptable to what the Earth has to offer us. That means in other words that the Earth is not optimized for us, but rather we optimize for the Earth we inhabit. Hence, ANY change of the climate/planet from where we are today is going to prove “harmful.” Why? Not because change is presumptively bad, or because we cannot adapt to many conditions, but because we HAVE to change our behavior. I’d remind you that since the Earth is always changing and since our tastes and preferences are always changing, we are regularly re-optimizing. In any event, here is the latest “Global Warming” news:
The decline in Arctic sea ice has doubled the chance of severe winters in Europe and Asia in the past decade, according to researchers in Japan.
Sea-ice melt in the Arctic, Barents and Kara seas since 2004 has made more than twice as likely atmospheric circulations that suck cold Arctic air to Europe and Asia, a group of Japanese researchers led by the University of Tokyo’s Masato Mori said in a study published yesterday in Nature Geoscience.
“This counterintuitive effect of the global warming that led to the sea ice decline in the first place makes some people think that global warming has stopped. It has not,” Colin Summerhayes, emeritus associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute, said in a statement provided by the journal Nature Geoscience, where the study is published.
There is a lot to chew on here. First of course, if I read my history of global warming properly, is that we need to use the term “climate change” and not “global warming” precisely because “warming” might actually bring “colding” in some places. What is most intriguing about this apparent fact is therefore that “warming” is not necessarily the problem, in fact it would appear to be the case that for the areas described in this article, we WANT warming. This makes the point I am making above, the reason the “climate change” debate is alluring is that you can easily point to ANY change as being costly. Generally, what this observation above tells us is that severe winters are bad, so where the warming actually leads to milder winters somewhere else that must be “good” or is this not true?
The deeper point of course would seem to be that “the science” is entirely unsettled. Of course, we all mean different things about “the science.” But by “the science” here I mean the net feedback/climate sensitivities from a CO2 forcing increase as well as the attendant economic damages that may result from them.
And, let’s revisit this quote:
This counterintuitive effect of the global warming that led to the sea ice decline in the first place makes some people think that global warming has stopped. It has not
Well, maybe. I haven’t actually met anyone or seen any serious person who has argued that the Polar Vortex, for example, is evidence of the “stopping” of climate change. However, what I have seen is the “claim” (in global warming it seems everything is a claim instead of just going to see what the data says) that the satellite temperature record (satellites are supposedly more reliable measurers of temperature) has shown no statistically recognizeable increase in global mean temperatures in something like 16 or 17 years. So, really nice that this article pays heed to that and instead deflects attention to a giant pink pony.
Much more to say, trying to keep the posts shorter and more readable.
