JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ANOTHER SERMON ON PREVENTING CLIMATE CHANGE - THE ONLY SENSIBLE COURSE TO PURSUE REGARDING THE REALITY OF CLIMATE CHANGE

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY IAN JOHNSTON IN THE INDEPENDENT

"Last year's weather proves climate change is real with 'no room for doubt', say scientists

Another silly piece on climate change.

First, you're creating a strawman argument.

Of course, climate change is real. I don't know of anyone worth reading who has denied it.

Then you use that authority-granting gimmick, "say scientists."

Well, I don't know how it is even possible to quote scientists in general. What would there be in the world? A million of them, maybe?

The fundamental unanswered questions are:

1) Did human society create the climate change we think we see?

2) And more importantly, even if it did, is human society capable of altering it?

Altering it, that is, at a cost which is favorable compared to the humanity's historic strategy of adaptation?

I remind readers again, Tacitus called North Africa "the granary of Rome" just two thousand years ago.

And we see countless other effects of climate change over even that interval, let alone over much longer periods.

The magnificent Great Lakes, around which I have lived for a good portion of my life, were created only something on the order of ten thousand years ago during the retreat of the last Ice Age.

Now, that was serious climate change, indeed, and it had nothing to do with people.

With our new technologies, archeologists dig up surprising new finds now regularly, evidence of the immense turmoil and twists and turns human society has undergone in just a few thousand years.

You know, the old Soviets advocated and built massive projects to the landscape, such as diverting the waters feeding the Aral Sea, for agriculture. They had massive plans for changing the course of whole river systems.

But does anyone today regard that as sensible?

Some of the measures advocated by our current secular religious cult around climate change actually resemble those monstrous Soviet plans, only on a global scale.

The George Monbiot types resemble nothing so much as ancient prophets going on about doom or American tent preachers trying to win souls for Christ.

I do think continued intensive scientific investigation and cautious government policy are the wise course.

A last note. I don’t see how any reputable scientist can assert that “last year’s weather” proves anything. Just not making statements of that nature is a fundamental rule of science. A single event can never be taken as proving anything.