From: Steve Davies (steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue Apr 08 2003 - 09:21:24 MDT
> At 09:39 PM 4/7/03 -0700, Spike wrote:
>
> >this is something that has puzzled me. Why is there
> >fear of warmth?
>
Damien responds
> Aw come on Spike. Let's treat the topic with a bit more nuance than that,
> buddy.
> What's so puzzling? If we're really undergoing a < coff > spike of
> startling proportions in temperature, whether anthropogenic or solar or
due
> to divine punishment, the world's typical climate (it's argued) might well
> go haywire. Hotter here, colder there, but overall more turbulent,
> customary patterns thrown into chaos outside their historic stochastic
> ranges. If you're a wee animal, too bad--this is the state of nature. If
> you're a human with Vastly expensive, delicate infrastructure in place,
> ranging from coastal ports and cities to enormous established
> agricultural/pastoral/transport systems, you might be shit out of luck.
>
> Now this could be abstractly beneficial, in the way that having legacy
> industrial plant bombed out of existence can give the next generation a
> quick leg up. But people don't usually welcome the kinds of droughts and
> floods that are currently afflicting Australia, for example, no matter how
> bracing for their character and how much it unsettles the encrusted order
> of things.
>
> Damien Broderick
In other words, it's not warming so much as abrupt (relatively) change that
people don't like. The "news" in the original piece isn't news to historians
(and BTW the data is about as robust as historical evidence ever gets,
despite what some scientists would have you believe). What the record shows
is that climate change is good news for some, bad for others. So the
Medieval Climate Optimum was pretty good if you were a viking but disastrous
for Dutchmen as it led to the huge flood in the 12th century that drowned
two thirds of the low countries and created the Zuyder Zee (much of which is
still there). Not a lot anyone can do to prevent this though. Florida real
estate doesn't look like a good bet to me if you look back just 80 years to
the weather it experienced in the 1920s when it had a series of huge
hurricanes. Not so many condos and hotels back then.
Steve Davies
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