CLIMATE CHANGE HYSTERIA AND HYPOCRISY

It seems what ever and whomever you read the cause is “climate change”. That is what this author calls “climate hysteria and hypocrisy”.

Yes we are experiencing MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE!  I am no a climate denier.  But a scientist well aware of our global environmental  problems.  Also well aware that the causes are not confined to one nation but will require a global response.  But to ascribe each and every one  of our problems to only one cause—climate change— is hypocrisy and hysteria.

Our unique and beautiful blue planet—perhaps the only one in creation— has been despoiled by man in many ways.  Perhaps the one problem that receives the most attention is: climate change.  That is really two problems: unfettered deforestation coupled with massive transfers of buried carbon (coal and oil) onto the surface where it is burned for fuel.   In the process of burning fossil fuels we dump some 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.  Our human actions are a form of feedback loop since as we dump CO2 into the atmosphere we are simultaneously (and unwisely) cutting down our global forests which are the natural sinks which absorb carbon.  As a result of increased production of waste carbon dioxide  coupled with decreased areas with forest cover which absorb carbon—the global heating gas carbon dioxide  has been gradually increasing in concentration in the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Age.   This gas blankets the earth’s surface trapping heat by preventing excess heat from escaping into space.

 But that is only two of our problems.  We are also undergoing massive urban and suburban expansion, extermination of our native fauna and flora, uncontrolled human population growth,  the chemical poisoning of the planet with thousands of tons of pesticides and herbicides we spray on our lands each year, and as these poisons drain into the oceans the despoliation of our global ocean as well .  (Think of it—-Japan just recently, September 9, 2019, has reported that it is planning to dump the radio-nuclide laced stored cooling water from its destroyed nuclear Fukushima power plants into the Pacific Ocean—and pollute an entire ocean with nuclear waste).  Not as harmful but among our other sins —there is the  ten millions of tons of indestructible plastics we dump in the oceans each year.

And let us not forget that we have exported our exploitative economic system to other less well developed nations —China and India— with huge populations (over 2 billion people) who now aspire to emulate our wasteful pollution generating despoiling ways.  The ecological and economic policies of these nations will have to be controlled to make any headway in our fight against global destruction.

So let us not blame all our problems on climate change.  To do we we ignore the others.  Yes it is there.  But we have other just as pressing problems of deforestation and habitat destruction which will destroy the planet’s entire ecosystem.  We must control the reckless and unnecessary use persistent chemical herbicides and pesticides.   We must control runaway human population growth.  We have to begin to think of our role as managers and preservers of the environment —not exploiters.

No need for hysteria....this is a long term problem and will require not the hysterical focus on only one aspect of our problem.  It will education and evolutionary change in our behavior and thinking.  Or the result:  we snuff our species out on this once blue and green and life giving planet.