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More thoughts on climate change
Feb. 25th, 2013 06:43 amMost everyone is worried about “climate change” and how to stop it. As I said before climate change is a natural process, that has been happening since this planet was formed, and we cannot stop it. It will happen no matter what we do. You think I’m living in a fantasy land? Then check out Venus and Mars where climate change has occurred without the “help” of humans.
One of the major concerns is the rise of the sea level and the effect on coastal cities. What people forget is that a major portion of the American mid-west was once an ocean bottom, as was most of the current U. S. east coast. Glaciation and plate tectonics has caused the mid-west to be what it is today.It is thought that the Great Salt Lake and the salt flats are the remnants of said ocean. I stand corrected on the GSL and salt flats. They are the remnants of a very large prehistoric lake known as Lake Bonneville.
Why is a rise of the sea levels and the flooding of coastal areas a human concern? It is because we chose to build our major cities, and homes, in the most vulnerable areas. It is the same when hurricanes devastate the coastal areas, especially the “barrier islands”. They are called barrier islands for a reason. They are there to protect the mainland from the brunt of a storm. We spend millions each year to “replenish” the beaches to replace sand that is lost to storms and “erosion”. We tend to forget that the sand movement is a natural occurrence and if we didn’t build unnatural jetties that block the movement of the sand, the beaches would replenish themselves. That is the reason why Wildwood, NJ beaches are so massive, but Cape May, NJ beaches, just to the south, are bare. The jetties, built to protect the entrance to Cape May Harbor, stop the natural southward movement of the sand and any sand that by-passes the jetties ends up on the DelMarVa peninsula.
As far as polar bears are concerned, they are relatively recent adaptation/mutation of the brown bear. Evolutionarily speaking they are a recent arrival on the scene. Not that I am not concerned about their survival, I am, but as other species have died out due to non-human climate change, wooly mammoths come to mind, their survival, in the wild, is not something we can readily control.
We humans are part of nature, but we have chosen to locate major settlements near the shorelines where they are very vulnerable. Remember that sea levels can drop as well as rise, as evidenced by the “Bering land bridge” and the massive undersea canyons off the east coast of the U.S. A large part of the continental shelf was once dry land, as the sea levels were much lower.
What would the outcry be if we found that instead of a rise in sea levels we found they were going to drop thirty to fifty feet and once bustling ports would be left high and dry?
So, we cannot stop, or drastically change, the happenstance of “Climate change”, but we can prepare for what nature is going to do.
You want to stop spending billions of dollars rebuilding towns destroyed by hurricanes, then reconsider where those towns are located. I know it would be nigh impossible to move cities like New York City, but smaller towns can be moved. If people choose to live in those vulnerable areas, then they should bear the major cost of re-building when their homes are damaged. Remember they are called “Barrier islands” for a reason. They weren’t placed there for human benefit. Dune erosion, which we say is “Bad” and “Horrible”, is a natural process. We are trying to bend nature to “our” will, and it isn’t going to happen. Nature has plenty of time to win this fight, and it will.
Climate change is real, but we humans have little impact on it, one way or the other. The massive glaciers of the last glaciation melted without human cause, as they formed without our “help”. People also have to remember that there has been, at times, a "Snowball Earth" and other times no polar ice-caps on this planet. Both happened and disappeared without human cause or intervention.
Do I think humanity is evil and should be “erased”? No! Though I think we should live more “in-tune” with nature and understand what is happening and stop pretending that we can control natural processes that will happen, even if we don’t want them to.
One of the major concerns is the rise of the sea level and the effect on coastal cities. What people forget is that a major portion of the American mid-west was once an ocean bottom, as was most of the current U. S. east coast. Glaciation and plate tectonics has caused the mid-west to be what it is today.
Why is a rise of the sea levels and the flooding of coastal areas a human concern? It is because we chose to build our major cities, and homes, in the most vulnerable areas. It is the same when hurricanes devastate the coastal areas, especially the “barrier islands”. They are called barrier islands for a reason. They are there to protect the mainland from the brunt of a storm. We spend millions each year to “replenish” the beaches to replace sand that is lost to storms and “erosion”. We tend to forget that the sand movement is a natural occurrence and if we didn’t build unnatural jetties that block the movement of the sand, the beaches would replenish themselves. That is the reason why Wildwood, NJ beaches are so massive, but Cape May, NJ beaches, just to the south, are bare. The jetties, built to protect the entrance to Cape May Harbor, stop the natural southward movement of the sand and any sand that by-passes the jetties ends up on the DelMarVa peninsula.
As far as polar bears are concerned, they are relatively recent adaptation/mutation of the brown bear. Evolutionarily speaking they are a recent arrival on the scene. Not that I am not concerned about their survival, I am, but as other species have died out due to non-human climate change, wooly mammoths come to mind, their survival, in the wild, is not something we can readily control.
We humans are part of nature, but we have chosen to locate major settlements near the shorelines where they are very vulnerable. Remember that sea levels can drop as well as rise, as evidenced by the “Bering land bridge” and the massive undersea canyons off the east coast of the U.S. A large part of the continental shelf was once dry land, as the sea levels were much lower.
What would the outcry be if we found that instead of a rise in sea levels we found they were going to drop thirty to fifty feet and once bustling ports would be left high and dry?
So, we cannot stop, or drastically change, the happenstance of “Climate change”, but we can prepare for what nature is going to do.
You want to stop spending billions of dollars rebuilding towns destroyed by hurricanes, then reconsider where those towns are located. I know it would be nigh impossible to move cities like New York City, but smaller towns can be moved. If people choose to live in those vulnerable areas, then they should bear the major cost of re-building when their homes are damaged. Remember they are called “Barrier islands” for a reason. They weren’t placed there for human benefit. Dune erosion, which we say is “Bad” and “Horrible”, is a natural process. We are trying to bend nature to “our” will, and it isn’t going to happen. Nature has plenty of time to win this fight, and it will.
Climate change is real, but we humans have little impact on it, one way or the other. The massive glaciers of the last glaciation melted without human cause, as they formed without our “help”. People also have to remember that there has been, at times, a "Snowball Earth" and other times no polar ice-caps on this planet. Both happened and disappeared without human cause or intervention.
Do I think humanity is evil and should be “erased”? No! Though I think we should live more “in-tune” with nature and understand what is happening and stop pretending that we can control natural processes that will happen, even if we don’t want them to.
