Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Climate change? There ain't no climate change


It's estimated that 50 million people will migrate to the North by 2020 to avoid starvation due to the change in climate. We're seeing the beginnings of it right now. Notice an influx of people from the African continent in your northern European country? We don't really notice it much in the U.S. because we have so many coming here for education. The last big migration I've noticed was with the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s. And of course there's always been an influx of Mexican and those from South America. The only problems with that are when immigration locates too many of them to one area straining a town's resources. If it's done right nobody really notices. I forget the exact numbers but in the late 70s and early 80s a whole bunch of folks from Southeast Asia came here but they were neatly spread out across the U.S. Now we'll face a rapidly growing number of people moving just to survive much like the potato famine in Ireland of the 1800s.
You'd think that we would have learned something in the last 200 years about human survival but I guess not. We tend to deny events until they become a disaster. The other day I was throwing out a bunch of furniture and clothing at work. The thought crossed my mind how people are literally starving in other countries while I was there throwing away a country piece by piece. The insanity of it all.
People tend to deny what's about to happen much like we take the weatherman with a grain of salt but based of all the scientific evidence we're in for some real changes. Never in the last few hundred years has anyone been able to circumnavigate the Northwest Passage. Countries are fighting to claim areas for oil drilling near the Arctic once totally covered in ice. And waterfront villages in Malaysia are now underwater. People can adapt to many things but when there's major shifts in climate and weather patterns on a large scale all the planning would be for naught. And if you thought the Gulf oil spill was a big deal you ain't seen nothing yet. But rather than a big quick event this will swallow us slowly like a snake with us barely realizing it.
But the real issue is what this will do to our food supplies. With weather patterns changing you can get drought in one area and monsoons in others. We saw a taste of it in Australia. This isn't about opinion it's about facts. I think I'd trust a few hundred scientists over a politician with an alterior motive any day.

7 comments:

The Blog Fodder said...

People always move from a poor economy to a better economy. It is called following the buffalo. If we had spent as much time and effort building the economies of the poor countries instead of raping and pillaging them, most recently under the guise of "protecting" them from "communists" and then "Islamic fanatics", they might not need to move into Europe and USA.

MRMacrum said...

But raping an dpillaging is what dudes do. We can't help ourselves.

Climate Change will happen no matter how politicized it is. Nature of the planet. It makes no difference who or what caused it, not getting ahead of it is a recipe for disaster either sooner or later.

The one thing that concerns me is the rabid population growth of the planet. But it does not concern the planet. The planet will find a way to deal with it. It always does.

jmsjoin said...

Yhep Islands are sinking important coastal cities will be under water and the ice shelf is melting faster than thought. I refuse to believe that man made, natural, or both, that GW ( not Bush) is still denied. I was preparing some interested people for it on my site but largely people stupidly think we are immune.

Randal Graves said...

LAKE ERIE IS MINE MOTHERFUCKERS!

Tom Harper said...

Does this mean a bunch of Californians and other sunbelters will be moving up to my nice remote region of Washington? Say it isn't so.

S.W. Anderson said...

"We tend to deny events until they become a disaster."

Believing that what is is what will be is ingrained in human nature. "What you see is what you get" in most minds too easily morphs into "What you see is what you'll go on getting."

On top of that, there's the whole matter of denial, even in the face of changes one can see and feel.

Migration to places perceived to offer more opportunities and a better standard of living are inevitable in an age of mass-market air travel and communications.

Some bright young codemeister from India spends a couple of years in Redmond working for Microsoft. He goes back to India, gets married and after awhile brings his family back here and seeks citizenship. Soon, his brother and family are running a dry cleaning business in Palo Alto.

Macrum's population concerns are well founded. But the good news about migrations is that they keep the gene pool healthy and the dining-out possibilities interesting.

BBC said...

Maybe we should just stop giving a shit? I just brought that up on the post I just put up. We're not going to be here long enough to see the worst of it anyway and there is nothing we can do about any of it.

Yhep Islands are sinking important coastal cities will be under water and the ice shelf is melting faster than thought.

And incompetent city planners and managers are trying to figure out how to save them instead of relocating to higher ground, hahahaha