I notice there are stories in the press in recent days suggesting that the
great northern freeze is the start of 30 years of
cold weather, global cooling, the environment readjusting itself...and so on.
While this sort of 'analysis' makes for easy reading in the popular press, it has about it the sort of simplistic critique that rather compounds the problem more than helps us understand it.
It's a sort of "what goes up must come down" type of theory.
Some climate-change sceptics have been espousing this for some time...the argument being that the earth has done this for ever and has always moved to correct itself.
What this overlooks is any qualitative analysis of what these 'corrections' might involve, or what the cost might be to world as a whole. Is a correction which involves the permanent disappearance of 35 species of birds, 456 species of tropical fish, the loss of plant life, the permanent changing of land and water structure, Ok because it is part of natural balance?
Some obviously think so.
If we use our brains, we would move to minimise damage. We would not use fluctuations, or even 'corrections' to justify our rapacious attitude towards the environment.
If we used our brains, while we would see that there is plenty of political point-scoring to be done, nationally and internationally...that it is that attitude that has got us into this poosition in the first place.
A bit of an unstructured wander over the subject........I'm sorry ...but maybe you take the point.
For a brief moment, the youngest S Clark and I were going to NY, NY (so good they named it twice!) for 10 days after Christmas. But it was not to be ( despite how much we would love to see Sean and Kristin in Promises Promises...(what DO you get when you fall in love?)
