Thank global warming ~ soon you will be surfing at your beach house in upper Newfoundland
In case anybody missed out on the article “Hooray for Global Warming ~ Surf’s Up!” from James S. Robbins in the National Review on August 8, 2006, I wanted to make it resurface. It is especially encouraging for people who are investing now in Canadian beachfront property.
There are two important quotes from Mr. Robbins’ neighborhood. Here’s the first:
Why infinitely adaptable humanity has to pay the price for the evolutionary shortsightedness of other life forms is beyond me.
Infinitely adaptable? Wow. Hello asteroid. And the other:
There is no challenge posed by a slow-rolling phenomenon like global warming that cannot be overcome; and when deserts start blooming, blizzards stop hitting, and you are enjoying the surfing at your beach house in upper Newfoundland, you won’t care what caused global warming, you’ll just thank goodness it happened.
Yes, a real life “important” author in a prominent political periodical wrote this just a little over one year ago. So either he’s mocking our love of waves or saying that surfing justifies indifference. How can I not be alarmed?
All wild predictions and arguments about global warming aside, everybody seems to be forgetting one fact: the winter days are not going to get any longer in Newfoundland until an asteroid knocks us of our axis. This will affect our ultimate ability to surf into January in the Cold North. And who knows what will happen to the currents that bring those big surfing waves? Thanks for making us think all warm and fuzzy about palm-treed Canada. I think we should all vacation there.
As for the minute species that he thinks do not deserve to live, we’re actually talking about entire forests of incredibly old trees that are already starting to be killed off by tiny warmer-weather predator insects. This is happening TODAY. The process kills habitat for all sorts of animals that hold up the incredibly complex structure of life. Humans are part of the ecosystem, and we rely on it for food, air, and water.
The threat of global warming is a moot point for me in the case against fossil fuels. You can travel down the argument ladder to arrive at the bottom rung which is the fact that so many of the gases that we’re spewing by burning fossil fuels are poisonous to us. You don’t have to care at all about other species to understand this idea. That alone is enough proof for me that we need to push forward now towards readily available energy. Of course, then L.A. will lose its beautiful sunsets. What do we do?
And anytime someone tells you about how great global warming will be thanks to the many palm trees that will be growing in their yard, you smack them down and remind them that it’s about not just the temperature but the amount of sunlight also.
As for Robbins, maybe he should take some courses in complex systems so that he’ll understand what “cascading failure” might mean to the beach-dwelling human populations whose superiority he touts.
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Posted on September 27, 2007
Filed Under Global Warming, Politics |
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