Privacy settings make this anonymous……. An Alaskan doctor friend of mine and I have been discussing Climate Change. He posted this response this morning to something Id said on the subject during a radio broadcast here in Ireland. >2) Assuming the climate scientists are correct, then I think you need to stop wasting fruitless effort on stopping global warming and get on with preparing for it. I spend a lot of time trying to alter human behavior one on one, where the benefits are unambiguous, near term, and personal. Take an example of a morbidly obese man with hypertension, early diabetes, and high cholesterol. I can (and do) say Friend, if you do not lose 50 pounds starting right this instant, your life expectancy is most conveniently measured in months. How many people do that? Almost none. Because, the person weighs the very real immediate pain of strict dieting against the theoretical risk of a heart attack, and takes a calculated risk, right up to the moment they are in CCU making deals with God. And there we are talking deprivation of a modest nature for a few months. You are suggesting radical life changes forever. Take my word, its like teaching a pig to sing. It cant be done, and it annoys the pig. 3) It is an unlikely sell to suggest that we revert to a pre-WWII lifestyle while we watch China and India look at us and say Knock yourself out, fella. You have lived the good life for 100 years while we crouched in shacks and starved. Its our turn. 4) If the climate change community is going to actually achieve something, it needs to grow a pair. You and I both know that setting the thermostat to an uncomfortable level is going to delay the outcome (whatever it is) by MAYBE several months. What was really needed was for the bold climate crusader to say to his very Irish host Actually, there is one glimmer of hope. We could maintain and even increase our individual energy use, continue and expand our lifestyles and comforts, and have an ever expanding life of pleasure and comfort. All that has to happen is to reduce the global population to that of about 1930. So, we have to demand that the government require families to practice strict birth control and to limit families to no more than one child for the next 60 years or so. But, this inconvenient fact is never mentioned. Instead we are urged to stand in the cold waiting for a bus so we can get mugged at the depot. It looks good in the movies. It is not going to achieve much except add another hair shirt to the wardrobe. My personal feeling is that this is all academic. At some point well before the oceans rise there is going to be another epidemic, probably influenza, just like 1918. We are absolutely unprepared for this and overdue for it. The movie Contagion is very accurate. It does not show, however, the social collapse. In 1918, young people died all the time, and it was an understood part of the culture (my own grandmother died at about 23 years of age). Now, we think that hospitals and good insurance will make everything all right. They wont even scratch the surface, no one will fathom it, and what the disease doesnt do we will do to each other. Mother nature is going to thin the herd for us.< Cheerful fellow, aint he? Anyway, I made some calculations. If we start with 10 people getting sick on May 1, 2014 from a disease that kills everyone getting it and infects 1% more than those stricken every 24 hours, it will be May 11, 2014 before we have another person dying. At that rate of infection, the disease will kill the entire human population, all seven billion, by December 8, 2019, and they will miss the office Christmas party, and not buy me a birthday present either. Shit
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 06:26:45 +0000
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