Tag Archives: climate

The Latest (and Greatest) on Climate Change

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Thanks to climate-change skeptics, we’ve been fortunate to have a lot of talented, driven people doing great research that proves just how real and dangerous climate change really is. Unfortunately, even with the best of intentions, the media has turned the frequent updates from the scientific community into a deluge of climate change news, which led to the audience developing a sort of selective hearing when it comes to this topic. “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before”. However, here on Mentatul I need to address dozens of topics while keeping at roughly one post per week. This forces me to be very selective about what I post. So yes, this one is important.

Two articles are the reason for this post. The first one is about farts. Cow farts to be precise. The methane that they contain, to be even more precise, and how it affects global warming:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/samlemonick/2017/09/29/scientists-underestimated-how-bad-cow-farts-are^

And then I read this other article^ that lead me to another, even better article, which provides a rather appalling prognosis for our future. And it’s not even “the worst case scenario”. I’m sorry to say, but given all the statistics I’ve seen recently, it seems to be that the following article is presenting a future that has a high probability of becoming reality. And I see very few governments do anything about it, especially when it comes to the world’s biggest polluters.

I am tempted to say that you shouldn’t read this if you’re currently feeling good with your life, because this piece is a real downer. But it is also one of the most relevant and well-written articles on climate change that I’ve come across in the past couple of years. This is an alarm bell made of pure gold:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

I consider myself lucky to still have running water, electricity and generally healthy food available. In the same time, I feel it is almost disrespectful towards my child to enjoy all this without doing something about the immediate (speaking on a generational level) danger we’re in. I plan to do whatever I can to raise awareness about this topic. It’s never too late.

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The United Arab Emirates and Climate Interventionism

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In typical “man versus nature” fashion, the UAE wants to alter the rainfall patterns in the region. The country plans to achieve this by erecting an artificial mountain, which should literally scrape the atmosphere for humidity and cause it to fall as rain:

http://gizmodo.com/hell-no-the-uae-should-not-build-a-rain-making-mountai-1775007447^

Sometimes, these projects are nothing more than attention grabbers and pompous declarations. But our planet’s climate is no laughing matter. It’s disturbing that such plans have even made it this far.

It’s what I’d like to call “climate interventionism”. As if it wasn’t enough that we’ve worsened global warming, now we go about thinking we can understand climate models well enough to tamper with the airflow of an entire region.

What terrified me is not that the project is doomed to fail. It’s that it might work. The question we should be asking the builders is: at whose expense will this benefit you? Obviously, if the UAE diverts ocean humidity for its own purposes, somebody down the line is going to get less of it. And, as the butterfly effect^ shows, the consequences will be global and difficult to fathom.

Our planet’s air is much more of a shared resource than our rivers and lakes. Building a dam on a river has less of a global effect than interfering with massive quantities of air that was otherwise going on its merry way towards the other side of the planet.

To me, such projects showcase the extreme arrogance of man. We’re talking here about a country that wastes water in huge quantities, as the article I linked above points out. I have nothing against a country that tries to survive, but some humbleness would be expected before invoking the survival instinct.

We’ve seen many gargantuan projects completed by the oil-spoiled countries of the Middle East. Part of the heat that is currently building up in our oceans and atmosphere comes from oil extracted there. I wonder if they’ll think of this when the planetary ocean drowns their Palm Islands^. Life is not without a sense of irony.

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