Wednesday, February 25, 2004

If you are into end-of-the-world scenarios, this one about the pentagon preparing for "Abrupt Climate Change" filled me with dread.  Younger Dryas here we come.  What does the web have to say about it? Doug Carmichael's Roughcut sees a use for it in the upcomming campaign. This British blogger sez the british press sexed it up into a "suppressed secret report" boingboing has a good post about how speculation turned into certainty in the press.  Article in the Oakland Tribune sez:  Left-wing bloggers and conspiracy-minded environmentalists seized on news of the report as a sign that President Bush still is hiding the real threat to America and that Mother Nature must be a Democrat." Me?  I don't want to believe it either.  I like disorder and the concept of mankind punished by the gods as much as the next guy, but climate change doesn't get me there.  I will be really really really sad if the Gulf Stream goes away.  It seems like kind of a hard thing to get going again after it stops.  We can prove that our climate is changing and prove that climate change has happened very abruptly in the geologically recent past.  The report does what good science fiction does; takes true trends and spins a tale around them.  All the screaming doesn't help.  Look how easy it is to point at the hysteria surrounding this report and use that to dismiss all talk of global warming.  12:13:16 AM    comment []