Global warming may or may not be a reality.
What is reality, is that we have absolutely no means available to us to alter either the course of warming or cooling. We may only adapt to the conditions as they arise.
It’s getting hotter? Change the distribution of crops that are grown, from tropical areas to what were once more temperate zones. Move the more temperate-zone crops to what was formerly the Arctic. Put plant geneticists to work in adapting plants to produce under conditions much hotter than is now common in the tropics.
Whoops, called the trends in climate change wrong? Then stand by with the development and propagation of plant life that can endure and thrive under the new, changed, colder conditions, like growing winter wheat in Georgia or Alabama.
Conditions overly dry? Then use desalination methods to convert sea water, in HUGE quantities, to sweet, potable water, fit for human (and plant) consumption, and pipe it inland, to make deserts bloom.
Conditions overly wet, and subject to monsoon-like rain patterns? Then grow plants adapted to these conditions already, like rice and sugar cane, to feed the millions grown dependent on the nutrition raised from the soil.
In every one of these various projections, you shall note that I have mentioned plants as the underlying solution to the problems raised by global climate change. Plants, and their ability to adapt to the changing conditions, are our complement in securing viability on this planet. Carbon dioxide is the medium through which the energy falling upon this planet each and every day is converted to that huge storehouse of sequestered energy within carbon-based life forms. Take the carbon dioxide out of the equation, and soon, plants die. As plants die, paradoxically, they decompose once again into - carbon dioxide. This restores the slim balance of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, so plants STOP dying.
The reality is, that no matter how aggressively we try to either INCREASE carbon dioxide, the growth of young, green plants will greedily reabsorb it, and if we manage, somehow, to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by human effort, it will mean exactly squat in terms of how much carbon dioxide is produced by non-anthropogenic means.
But taxation to prevent the “consequences” of global warming is a wonderful club to wave over the heads of those who are non-compliant with the dictates of the “smarter” people.
In 2000, Al Gore spoke of “risky schemes” in addressing some of the policies that George W. Bush advocated. This is probably one of the “riskiest schemes” yet perpetrated upon the human species by other humans. First, because it never addresses the problem at which it pretends to be directed, and secondly, by diverting so many of the resources of the world, almost guarantees we fall into some other much more nettlesome and deadly trap of our own making.
Poverty, and especially self-induced poverty, is no way to go through life.
Excellent!
Carbon dioxide, per say, is not the enemy.
The idea that we can substantially control or ‘change’ the earths weather(at this point in our understanding)is absurd.
I wholeheartedly agree that we should employ some strategy of adaptation such as you have put forth.
This seems practical.
Why is this idea not being studied with a view toward implementation?... Or is it?
Thanks for the post.
STE=Q