It's valuable to me in particular because when I was paranoid and obsessed with peak oil leading to abrupt social change like riots, food hoarding, fuel shortages, Road Warrior and cats and dogs living together in harmony... real end of the world stuff. When I was scared of the whole thing, before I reached Acceptance where most of us landed after hard study of Peak Oil and years of getting used to it, only then did I realize Climate Alarmism is the same thing. It's a chance for people to feed their paranoia. And I think paranoia is a natural human reaction to that first wrinkle or gray hair or that weight you can't get rid of. Its realizing your own mortality after your teenage years and the bloom of your 20's is over. Facing that long slow grind to working towards retirement and waiting for death. And you have the money to donate. Do it for the children. Idiot.
We've had Climate Alarmism for decades. The current one is just more religious hogwash. In the 1970's, the world was slightly cooling, so a couple of con-men claimed the next ice age was coming any minute now and give them money to "study" it and research how to blame people for this. They said burning coal made soot that reflected heat back into space, making it colder. Mount Saint Helens erupted, and it was cooler for a couple years. Then nothing happened. The same guy then recruited various people and Al Gore to claim the planet was warming, using the same bad data tweaked another way. "Well I was wrong before, but I'm totally right this time, if you're just give me more money to study it." If this were Finance, he'd have been arrested for fraud, but it's Climate "research" and doesn't matter.
After Global Cooling, there was fear over the Ozone Hole. It is important to recall that before 1987, we'd never looked at ozone layers before. So this was the first time we'd looked, and first time we'd seen the hole. So its not like it just appeared. It just the first time we'd looked and there it was. For all we know, that hole has been over Antarctica since the dawn of time. Maybe the Magnetic field damages it, or moves it away. It didn't grow and swallow the Earth, like Gore claimed it would. Its stable. Whoops! But few people remember that, and nobody calls him on his 1990's nonsense. He's got so much more nonsense now.
How about the depletion of the Amazon Rainforest, all being predicted to be cut down by 2005. Remember that claim from 1992? No more Amazon, thousands of species lost, possibly millions we didn't even know were there, forever. And we'd all asphyxiate because the forest makes the air clean for the whole planet. Uh nope. Algae in the sea is a much larger source for oxygen, and North American trees are processing more oxygen than the Amazon because our trees are younger and closer to the CO2 anyway.
Also, slash and burn land is only used 3-5 years, then abandoned, where neighboring forest and buried seeds, no longer being manually pulled by farmers, grow quickly back into jungle. Most of the land slashed a few years ago is already regrowing jungle. It will take longer for the big trees to grow back, but the younger trees and growth are absorbing more CO2 than mature forest does. Also, slash and burn is a pain the butt, so any method of improving the soil is welcomed. This is tricky in the amazon because its got some unusual soils in places, and some of the continent doesn't drain for beans, and other parts don't get rain for half the year so irrigation is hard to accomplish. The amazon farmers just want to make a living and keep their families fed. The freaks claiming the jungle was all cut down years ago, based on the claims from 1992, are just feeding their paranoia and need anti-psychotic medications, and perhaps see some random jungle pictures with date stamps on them showing them it is still there, thanks very much.
The anti-jungle freaks also claimed that arable land is being lost. Arable means useful for farming. They suck at statistics. It isn't lost. It isn't being used. Mechanization works best on nice square or round pieces of land, with good cheap irrigation and regular surfaces so you don't get crop ruined by runoff. Contour plowing is work too, requires effort. So you use the land that works best with the plow, and ignore the corners and strips. This land was used when people were pulling plows behind oxen or mules, but not with big diesel combines. The freaks call those leftover bits "lost" because they are freakish, paranoid, idiots. I feel sorry for them, but they don't get it.
Furthermore, you can make new arable land. Making soil is something humans are good at. The Polderlands in Holland used to be shallow sea bottom. They were diked, the sea water was pumped out, they were deliberately flooded and soaked by fresh water several times until all the salt was gone, and then the Dutch got to work. They brought in clay and silt to mix with the sand, and lots of manure and compost. They turned sandy sea bottom into soil and kept at it for 450 years, until they could grow flowers, which are the highest dollar, highest density, highest fertility crop you can grow other than opium, which is also a flower. Fixing soil is a science, one I know how to do because I learned it in college. Every farmer in America, every competent one, knows this too, which is why I don't work in that field. They already know all about it. Plants need certain things to grow best, and getting your soil to provide those things requires mechanical and chemical effort, and if managed right will become relatively stable, allowing you to put time into improving more land the same way. Repeat, with the right materials, and you can plant a great deal. I suspect we'll harvest the dry lake beds in Nevada prior to flooding them and draining them of their salts for planned wildlife preserves, water skiing, and fishing resorts, because all the gypsum is valuable for fixing clay soils down in the flood plains or below volcanos. Maximum money and use of resources. And it doesn't require strong central govts. It requires capitalism and profit motive. There is money to be made. Preservationists will object to the loss of the Southwestern Deserts to development and irrigation projects, but real estate money in the trillions trumps a few loonies. Sorry. Take pictures. Build a museum. Retire. Boat ramps are income generating. And bait shops make more money than museums.
The water in the lakes can also provide water for fields to grow veggies, trees for the new desert towns and soccer fields, hydroelectric dams, etc. Nevada will bloom one day, and it will be filled with man-restored lakes, fed by irrigation canals using water from the Columbia river 600 miles away. This is a good balance, and restores habitat for fish, being left to die out by the indifference and poor management skills of current environmentalists and freaks, and migratory birds who need these lakes and stopover points and DID come back when temporary lakes were built near Las Vegas. If you fill the lakes, the birds will come. And that increased bird population is good. Hunting season, and local restaurants that will cook them for you, and remove all the pellets. A bass boat can also be used with bird hunting. I will point out, however, that providing all these lakes will probably increase local precipitation and thunderstorms because the summer heat has water it can evaporate with lakes there to provide for those clouds. This in turn will provide lightning across Nevada and into Utah and Wyoming and Western Colorado, which will make them greener too. This is the sort of climate change you actually want, if you want to make the land we've got able to support a lot more people living in it. It is a cheaper and gentler form of Terraforming. A huge civil engineering project that makes homes and jobs and food for 80 million people. When do Climate Loonies make homes for people? All they every talk about is death and destruction. That's a big clue they are loonies.
More and more I am becoming a fan of civil engineering development projects. I met a guy last weekend who is working on the project to restore the narrow gauge railroad route from Colfax to Nevada City, which served the mines back in the old days. They still have the engine and most of the route still exists. Needs to be restored, and the engine restored, legally, but there's a Chinese utility company that wants to build the route with water, natural gas, and power mains under the tracks in order to sell it along the route because all the houses there are on propane, which is expensive and requires truck deliveries. This would be cheaper and efficient. The tracks would be 3-rails, one between for the narrow gauge, and the wider set for standard trains to run maintenance and potentially a commuter train of more modern design or actual freight. The Chinese often make me nervous, but they DID build the railroads here in 1856 onwards, along with the Irish. So they deserve some trust on this. And this town needs all the fun tourist attractions it can get.
We're too low for the snow, but the roads are fun for riding a flock or Harleys or an open top convertible and a picnic lunch with your girl in the passenger seat. Up twisting 49, through the trees, along the Yuba river, to the top of the Sierras above Downieville. When the oil is gone, that will be harder to do, but I suspect bicyclists will try. Unless the Black Bears start hunting the roads. But that's another subject.
Someday the ice age will return. The glaciers will start growing in the Sierras and there will be news reports about them coming down the mountain, about them getting thicker and starting to creep. About trails being closed, and summer snowfalls and blizzards adding to the snowpack, and the geologists studying them because Climate Loonies all committed suicide when the glaciers grew, in a sudden burst of honesty and shock. And perhaps helped there when presented with the bills for all the climate money they'd taken for years of lies. Ahem. Academic fraud comes with a bill, not just a jail sentence. I wish those "scientists" would remember that.
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