Changes

Fall is coming to where I live

It’s the time of year when we get spring in the southern hemisphere and fall in the northern hemisphere.  The reports and discussion on “climate change” decrease during this period because the temperatures often moderate.  Hurricane season does seem to ramp up, but the number and intensity of hurricanes is holding steady or decreasing.  Tropical storms are now reported on as if they were actual hurricanes, often elevated to "superstorms".  (If the media uses the term “storm of a lifetime” one more time……)

Are we experiencing “climate chaos” or something like that?  Not really.  The news media and others tend to need a good story and will elevate a normal occurrence to a climate catastrophe.  Since we live in a modern age and people like to travel, especially at holidays, there are ample opportunities to show flooding, blizzards and other travel disruptions.  People stranded at the airport make great news viewing and keep people afraid that the climate is against them somehow and that humans are the ones responsible for this.  People have been stranded by weather for centuries.  Wagon trains in America had to make it across the mountains before snow came.  Since the first date for snow is not ever known until it occurs (one can estimate only based on past weather) wagon trains got stranded in blizzards and people died.  This was in the 1800’s, before CO2 had increased.  Same for floods, forest fires, heat waves.  In the 1800’s, heat waves were brutal because there was no air conditioning.  One learned to stay in the shade and try to keep cooler.  People died from heat.  Back then, it was just a part of life.  Bad things happened.  It was sad, but not preventable.  It still is a part of life, yet now humans have the idea they control the climate and can avoid all of this if they just ditch the air conditioning that keeps people alive and go back to staying in the shade.  Getting rid of what was a solution to a problem in order to create a bigger problem.  There is nothing that says this will actually help, short of models and people who appear to want to destroy capitalism.  Their evidence is very, very shaky.  While there are claims that 97% of scientists agree and so forth, one can create virtually any statistical outcome they want by picking input data and choosing careful wording of questions.  The statistic is virtually meaningless unless you know the question and you know the way the poll was done.  Be careful not to fall for the use of such statistics to convince you that a lot of people agree with the science.  Besides, it’s not really how many scientists agree, it’s whether or not they can prove their claim.  Climate change/global warming is not actually well proven.  The physics may be there, but the way the input is interpreted is quite another thing.  There are multiple ways to interpret the data and many ways used to adjust and exclude/include data.  In the world of models and statistics, there are no certainties and many beliefs about global warming are based on over-confidence in the models and statistics.

Is it safe out there?

Recently, global warming marketing specialists have come out with games, etc., to push the idea that what their view of global warming is should be believed.  A game is not science.  It’s a game.  Again, the creator puts in what they want in and leaves out whatever they don’t want.  Not a very realistic way of presenting “information” on climate.  It’s more like a campaign to convince kids that they must all think alike and must believe in global warming/climate change/climate chaos.  It is very tempting for adults to do things like this.  Adults kind of like kids that believe everything grownups tell them.  Unfortunately, that leaves the kids open to being fooled into believing things that are not true if adults are less than truthful.  The caring way to teach kids is to encourage them to think for themselves, to learn all they can about a subject from all sides and then when they have enough information, to decide what to believe.  It also means telling them that science is not generally settled and ideas can be wrong.  It’s the proper scientific way to look at the world, as something we are continually learning about.  There are definitely a few things in science that are more or less settled, but those things are stuff like the effects of gravity (we can measure it, but not explain it fully—Einstein's theory and others go a long way in that direction, but could change if someone comes up with a better explanation), that viruses cause diseases, etc.  Things you can demonstrate over and over again with the result being virtually the same each time. However, predictions of future developments like climate or how far humans can progress in a decade, how to prevent diseases that are not caused by viruses but rather multiple factors working together, and so forth, are not settled and may not be for decades.  That keeps scientists in business, of course!   😉

As we move into winter and summer, depending on the hemisphere in which one lives, the opportunity to exploit weather to frighten people increases.  Remember, weather has always been there and humans are more capable of dealing with it that probably any other time in history.  Enjoy it and embrace it.  Plan as much as you can for the extremes, of course.  Still, there’s no need to lose sleep out of fear over a coming catastrophe.  We humans have been dealing with weather and climate for centuries!

The many seasons of earth, each with it's own unique weather.