Re: Climate Change in California Article
Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 7:26 am
I don't really want to step into this subject, because I just don't know, but it would be nice to see longer term data sets.
I think we do have some inevitable warming because of industrialization, but where the proponents of human-induced CO2 being the primary cause shoot themselves in the foot and lose credibility is in cherry picking data to make their case. For example: when I started the thread on what people thought was causing the fires, I was amazed that the CONUS actually had a history of hotter and more frequent fires during past centuries, certainly prior to 1900. It told a much different story.
The other portion of Swain's temperature data as presented in the LA Times has to do with the selection of only only cities in Southern California. Basically, what's cited is data that might or might not be the result of a region that has been, is, and likely will continue to be going through the natural process of desertification, no matter what we do or don't do to it. As goes Los Angeles, so goes the world...hardly, unless Hollywood really is the center of the universe. I can buy that we're accelerating that process, but without the contentious redirection of water that keeps it habitable to begin with, So Cal reached its carrying capacity for human habitation a long time ago. When you live in the desert, you should expect it to be hot and dry.Whereas plants and animals either adapt or die if they aren't able to align their needs to what the environment is able to provide, we create a false nature wherein we force conditions to align with our habitation needs...too many people, resulting in too much traffic to sit in (thereby generating even more greenhouse gases, as just one example), more lawns, more showers, more resources committed to just maintaining the status quo, without even considering that it's a moving target based on an ever increasing set of numbers of people with a full-service mentality...all the daily things that society does and takes for granted that it has the right and need to, etc, and a tenuous situation, possibly on the brink to begin with, only being tilted in one direction, not so much because of what we're doing to the environment, but because we're where we shouldn't really be living as a species anyhow. Certainly not in the numbers that we are, and expect to be able to. That's called unrealistic.
We have to remember that the Ivory Coast and Sahara in Africa were once lush and tropical, but now they're largely wastelands with searing temperatures that are the highest on earth, as are our own Mojave Desert and Death Valley. And these were on their way to being deserts long before smokestacks and automobiles were even a concept.
I would just like to see real data in the scope of the bigger, longer term things. I think both sides are right, to some degree, but all we're doing is arguing over who's more right. We're not going to reasonably stop polluting, ever. It just goes along with our presence. And to be a successful species, if we don't adapt to nature and/or what we create in order to live with as a function of our needs within it, we're arrogant in our thinking that we're somehow exempt, and we might speed things up or slow them down, but if we can't even agree on whether we're the cause or just living with the effects of nature, be those what they may, we're just tossing around a political football. We might as well resign ourselves to the idea that we're just one more mindless species that was helpless to do anything but take whatever comes our way...lemmings unite for a better tomorrow. Let's just agree that it's both us and the natural progression of the planet's environment, then go from there without bickering over it. Address both. So we're going to go extinct and become the next Mars. Yeah, and....why? How stupid would we be if we focused on only one aspect and found out that we got it wrong?
I think we do have some inevitable warming because of industrialization, but where the proponents of human-induced CO2 being the primary cause shoot themselves in the foot and lose credibility is in cherry picking data to make their case. For example: when I started the thread on what people thought was causing the fires, I was amazed that the CONUS actually had a history of hotter and more frequent fires during past centuries, certainly prior to 1900. It told a much different story.
The other portion of Swain's temperature data as presented in the LA Times has to do with the selection of only only cities in Southern California. Basically, what's cited is data that might or might not be the result of a region that has been, is, and likely will continue to be going through the natural process of desertification, no matter what we do or don't do to it. As goes Los Angeles, so goes the world...hardly, unless Hollywood really is the center of the universe. I can buy that we're accelerating that process, but without the contentious redirection of water that keeps it habitable to begin with, So Cal reached its carrying capacity for human habitation a long time ago. When you live in the desert, you should expect it to be hot and dry.Whereas plants and animals either adapt or die if they aren't able to align their needs to what the environment is able to provide, we create a false nature wherein we force conditions to align with our habitation needs...too many people, resulting in too much traffic to sit in (thereby generating even more greenhouse gases, as just one example), more lawns, more showers, more resources committed to just maintaining the status quo, without even considering that it's a moving target based on an ever increasing set of numbers of people with a full-service mentality...all the daily things that society does and takes for granted that it has the right and need to, etc, and a tenuous situation, possibly on the brink to begin with, only being tilted in one direction, not so much because of what we're doing to the environment, but because we're where we shouldn't really be living as a species anyhow. Certainly not in the numbers that we are, and expect to be able to. That's called unrealistic.
We have to remember that the Ivory Coast and Sahara in Africa were once lush and tropical, but now they're largely wastelands with searing temperatures that are the highest on earth, as are our own Mojave Desert and Death Valley. And these were on their way to being deserts long before smokestacks and automobiles were even a concept.
I would just like to see real data in the scope of the bigger, longer term things. I think both sides are right, to some degree, but all we're doing is arguing over who's more right. We're not going to reasonably stop polluting, ever. It just goes along with our presence. And to be a successful species, if we don't adapt to nature and/or what we create in order to live with as a function of our needs within it, we're arrogant in our thinking that we're somehow exempt, and we might speed things up or slow them down, but if we can't even agree on whether we're the cause or just living with the effects of nature, be those what they may, we're just tossing around a political football. We might as well resign ourselves to the idea that we're just one more mindless species that was helpless to do anything but take whatever comes our way...lemmings unite for a better tomorrow. Let's just agree that it's both us and the natural progression of the planet's environment, then go from there without bickering over it. Address both. So we're going to go extinct and become the next Mars. Yeah, and....why? How stupid would we be if we focused on only one aspect and found out that we got it wrong?