Friday, August 04, 2006

A Climate of Sweat

Oh wait, that's not what I mean - it's just some sweaty weather, not climate.

That's right - climate is a long-term and large-area phenomenon, not just a local hot spell.

Even were I willing to grant the doom and gloomers' contention that - the Earth is heating up - we're all going to die! - I would want to think about some of their claims.
For example:
Overall global temperatures are the highest they've been since the 1400s. OK, so that means it's finally gotten as warm as it used to be? And we're causing the death of the Earth by getting the temperature back to where it was? Did everyone die during the Middle Ages of heat stroke? Did the Ice Caps Melt? Sorry, I got carried away. I was trying to apply rational thought to this topic, which is only approachable by the True Believers.
Speaking of melting Ice Caps: imagine the entire Arctic Ice Cap melting completely - do you know what that would do to the level of the oceans? Absolutely nothing. It's already floating on the water, melting ice that's floating in water doesn't change the water's level - it's displacing the same amount of water that is replaced when the solid turns to liquid. [I will grant, being a fair-minded person, that the Antarctic Ice is (partly) a different issue, as it sits atop a land mass (the continent of Antarctica). However, the fear-mongers don't factor this into their panic.]

I still say - where are the neutrinos? We're headed for a significant cooling of the sun (another periodic event, not due to the fact that we're sucking too much light out of the sun by having too many people trying to see all at once), and that means anything we can do to keep the Earth warm is going to be quite helpful.

Despite all these inconvenient facts, I think alternative energy sources would be great things to have - we shouldn't have all our ergs in one basket, so to speak. Let's get some solar generation satellites beaming power down in microwave form. Let's get some wind turbines going off the New England coast. Let's build some more nuclear power plants - if even the French aren't afraid, why are the Democrats?

grr.