Thursday, September 29, 2016
The Next Time Your Surly Old Uncle Insists Climate Change Isn't Man Made
Here's a complete answer to those annoying gits who claim that climate change isn't man made.
Step One
Show them this list.
Global warming and severe storm events of increasing intensity, frequency and duration; both cyclical and sustained droughts and floods; sea level rise; ocean acidification; deforestation; desertification; the freshwater crisis; the accelerating loss of biodiversity; pest and disease migration; species extinction and migration, especially the collapse of global fisheries; accumulating waste and pollution of all descriptions; the energy crisis including the transition to clean alternative energy; nuclear proliferation; the spread of terrorism and organized crime; overpopulation and unsustainable consumption of natural resources.
Step Two
Ask them to select, out of the 8.7 million species of eukaryotic life on Earth, one species without which none of these catastrophes would have happened. Just one.
It's the one that has exhausted once viable fertile farmland around the planet, turning it into sterile desert. It's the same one that has destroyed vast swathes of the Earth's forests. The same one that has rapaciously destroyed one global fishery after another. It's the same species that has spawned nuclear proliferation, terrorism and organized crime. The same one that has grown in numbers from a record one billion to a record seven plus billion in less than three centuries. That's the species that is driving global warming and climate change. That's the species without which Earth wouldn't be in this mess.
That's mankind.
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ReplyDeleteWith every passing day more non-human life forms disappear from the biosphere while ever more human life forms appear. And both of those processes accelerate exponentially.
ReplyDeleteWe've become a pestilence.
Last year and the year before the WWF, in conjunction with the London Zoological Society and a couple of other orgs, released a State of the World report. The first report dealt with terrestrial life and concluded that half of all non-human life on Earth had been lost. The second year dealt with marine life and it also found half of the life in our oceans had been lost.
ReplyDeleteThat led me to contact the Global Footprint Network office in California. I wanted to know if these losses were human driven. In particular I asked whether the excessive use of Earth's renewable resources by our species left insufficient supply for every other species to sustain its numbers. Her reply was "exactly."
Oh dear.
Those who claim that climate change isn't man made usually want to continue making big messes.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's no shortage of their type either, Toby.
ReplyDeleteOne chart that says it all. You cant argue with math this fundemental;
ReplyDeleteAnyong.......and we keep on having babies up to ying-yang.
ReplyDelete