Global Warming: The Next Hundred Years

We’ve all seen the latest global warming reports rising temperatures will lead to water shortages and famines for people and mass extinction for lots of other species with the next hundred years. The time table varies but most scientists seem to agree on the basic facts, so this threat is real.
Now I’m in agreement with the scientists here I think global warming is real and it will have some catastrophic effects, but I do have a bone to pick with them. Most of the predictions they make assume that there will be no scientific and technological progress in the next century.
Given the rate of scientific and technological progress over the last century that doesn’t seem very realistic. Unless we all become Communists or Muslim Fundamentalists in the next century that doesn’t seem very realistic. My guess is that there will be tremendous scientific and technological progress over the next century much of it driven by Global Warming and the crises it produces.
The crises of World War I, World War II and the Cold War gave technology and science tremendous jump starts in the 20th Century. My guess is that Global Warming will have a similar effect and the technologies and scientific advances generated by it will profoundly change the world.
The new technology probably won’t cure or reverse Global Warming but it will alleviate much of its effects. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology could alleviate and perhaps prevent the famines and food shortages at least in the rich countries. Space travel could allow us to replenish some of the resources we’re running out of here on Earth with raw materials from the moon or Mars. Improved nuclear fission or fusion could prevent global warming completely by giving us sources of power that don’t rely on fossil fuels.
One likely scenario in the near future is the continuing trend that the rich countries which have the money and resources to take advantage of the new science and technology will have a steadily improving quality of life. Those nations that don’t have the money and resources to take advantage of the new technology will see life get worse. The effects of Global Warming come, the Swedes, Canadians and Japanese don’t feel them they can afford air conditioners and genetically engineered crops. The Kenyans and Burmese can’t so they starve or die of heat exhaustion.
This could lead to war and conflict the water crisis could be a perfect example of this the poor people of Africa don’t have enough water to drink. Meanwhile every house in America and Europe has a private swimming pool. The poor have nots could attack their rich neighbors which would probably lead to slaughter. The rich can and will afford high tech weapons and the mercenaries to use them, the poor will have a rusty AK-47 and some forty year old ammo. Only in Marxist fantasies does an ignorant peasant with a forty year old gun overcome a professional army with the latest weaponry. In real life the equation is usually this the peasant ends up dead or moves to another country. Ask the people of Cuba what happened to the peasants who objected to Castro’s socialized agriculture in the 1960s and challenged the Red Army.
There could also be civil wars especially in countries like India and China where a growing upper class with access to the latest technology can live high on the hog while the average man starves in the gutter. The average man eventually rises up and the elite deploys the storm troopers, (only the storm troopers are killer robots which always obey orders and have no qualms about shooting down the poor). The elite go back to their golf game, the poor quietly go back to their shantytowns, bury the dead and turn to religion.
Another result will be increased immigration especially from poor regions hard hit by global warming. One major catastrophe we see happening already in Africa is the middle class flight the African middle class fed up with the dictator of the week, Marxist economics, genocide and totalitarian politics has largely moved to Europe and the United States. The doctors, the lawyers, the businessmen, the mechanics, the school teachers, even the bus drivers (the people who make modern civilization run) have quietly left Africa leaving only three classes of people in many countries ignorant peasants, thugs and Marxist intellectuals. A similar fate may soon befall much of Latin America.
How this will play out I don’t know but I have a feeling that the reality of global warming is going to be far more complex and much uglier than the nightmare scenarios the scientists are presenting us with. So the scientists nightmare scenarios aren’t predictions of the future they’re simply statements of conditions we’ll face in the coming decades how we adapt to those conditions is up to us.

Horror at Virginia Tech

The nation is reeling from the tragedy at Virginia Tech, my dad's school, he grew up in Christianburg about twenty miles from the campus.
Anybody who isn't living under a rock knows that Seung-Hui Cho wnet on a rampage on the campus gunning down 22 innocent people. The media is saying a great deal about the rampage but what they're not saying may say more about our society.
The Virginia Tech gunman was apparently motivated by vicious bigotry but this isn't mentioned by the media. Mr. Cho apparently hated rich people and blamed them for all of his problems.
The hatred of rich people is bigotry and prejudice pure and simple. Hating a person who has more money than you do is just as idiotic as hating a person for the color of their skin, their sexuality or their faith and potentially just as destructive.
Communists who institutionalized the hatred of rich people murdered 100 million people the vast majority of them poor, innocent and defenseless during the Twentieth Century. A typical example of Communist attitudes towards the poor was the North Vietnamese Communist Party which had peasants stone landlords to death.
Like the Communists of the past, Cho hated rich people and blamed his problems on them. Eventually he decided to something about it by picking up his gun just as left wing heroes like Marx, Lenin, Mao and Castro advise. We haven't heard much about Mr. Cho's politics but I have to wonder if he's a Marxist. If he has spent the past four years being indoctrinated in class hatred by Marxist professors (who are undoubtedly Country Club members and probably closet Republicans).
Want to bet we never hear of this anyplace besides a few conservative blogs. The media will ignore this bigotry of Mr. Cho's because it mirrors one of their own.
But want to bet that we'd hear all about it if Mr. Cho targeted white people, black people, Jews, Christians, Muslims or gays . There'd be a dozen TV specials telling us about the hate filled web sites Mr. Cho visited and the crack pots who inspired his brand of stupidity.
The media's silence on this is sick and troubling. How many innocent people have to get murdered by Marxist nuts before they see the danger in this.
Of course the rich are one of the few groups it's okay to hate and attack these days. People on both sides of the political isle do it. The Democrats whole program seems to be built around the hatred of the rich, the Democrats mindlessly defend the inheritance tax (even if such Democrats as Ted Kennedy and John Kerry seem to be expert evaders of it). Republicans rant and rave about the Eastern Liberal Establishment and the Hollywood elite they're attacking the rich.
So I seriously doubt this slaughter will change anybody's minds. What will it take for our nation's opinion leaders to wake up a rampage in Beverly Hills.

Somebody Actually Doing Something About Global Warming

The media is part of the problem when it comes to Global Warming and other eco catastrophes because it glorifies shallow and sensational symbolism while ignoring those who are really trying to do something.

The shallow and sensational symbolism of the hour is the self-proclaimed “No Impact Man” Colin Beavan. Beavan a New York writer and his family are trying to do their part for the environment by trying to engage in any potentially environmentally destructive activity. They have reduced their electricity use to almost nil, aren’t using sort of fossil burning transportation, are trying not to eat foods grown more than 250 miles from New York City and have even given up toilet paper. They will do all of this for a year and as virtually every Internet pundit has pointed out it’ll have virtually no impact on global warming. I’ll post no links to Colin Beavan here this egomaniac is attracting far too much attention as it is. Where is the department of social services? Why do I have a feeling if a garbage man from the Bronx tried to do that his family he’d get a visit from the social worker rather than publicity in The New York Times?

Predictably the media is lavishing a vast amount of attention on Beavan and his eco fast and ignoring people who are actually making progress against Global Warming. People like Bob Briggs, Briggs is a former state legislator and transit district board member from Arvada, Colorado and for decades Briggs has been trumpeting the cause of rail in Colorado.

Briggs has had quite a bit of success in his efforts to get one of the most auto dependant states in Colorado to switch to rail. Partially as a result of his efforts on the Regional Transportation District board, Denver has a growing light rail system and one of the longest light rail lines in the nation. Thousands of people take the light rail everyday getting thousands of cars and dozens of pollution generating buses off of the Denver area’s crowded highways. See his website http://www.rangerxpress.com for an example of what an average person can do.

Now Briggs has embarked on another equally quixotic crusade and is having some success in efforts to bring commuter rail to Colorado. His Rocky Mountain Rail Authority has raised $350,000 in matching funds needed to get a $1.46 million grant for a commuter rail study along Colorado’s Front Range. Briggs group has united such diverse Colorado communities as Aspen, Colorado Springs, Idaho, Springs and Castle Rock in efforts to bring in rail. He’s even got people in Wyoming talking about high speed rail. If the commuter rail lines Briggs supports get built it’ll take thousands of cars off the road and really reduce global warming.

Just getting people thinking and talking about rail is an uphill battle in Colorado and Wyoming but Briggs has accomplished just that. He’s done more he’s actually got Coloraoans excited about rail, so excited that there is now considerable public pressure to force the Colorado Department of Transportation to change its focus from highway building to rail.

Our local media is beginning to pay a little attention to Briggs and his efforts largely because they have been so successful. The national media doesn’t know that Briggs exists and I have a feeling that a great many of them would be shocked by him.

Briggs doesn’t confirm to their stereotypes he’s an average middle class guy who lives in a gasp suburb. Briggs’ political activism doesn’t involve the kind of colorful grandstanding reporters love he does things like drive around Colorado and make speeches to Rotary Clubs and Chambers of Commerce. Traditional activism that isn’t sexy or grandiose but it actually works.

Briggs succeeds because unlike Beavan he actually has faith in average people and America. Briggs believes that average people are smart enough to make their own decisions about transportation and will make intelligent choices if given the opportunity. Briggs believes, correctly, that we have the technology to maintain our present lifestyle and not destroy the environment.

If Global Warming is going to be prevented it will be by people like Bob Briggs who are trying to make real progress. Not by dim witted publicity hungry luddites like Colan Beavan who have no faith in themselves, their country or their fellow man.

Eco Hypocrisy Run Wild

One great thing about liberal do gooders they never fail us when we need some entertainment and a good hard laugh. Case in point the self-appointed "No Impact Man," Colin Beavan and his wife Michelle Conlin a pair of prosperous Manhattan writers.
The two have adopted a no impact lifestyle using no plastic, using no transportation that runs on fossil fuel, generating no trash, eating no food not grown more than 250 miles from New York City, they've even turned off the electricity in their Midtown Apartment. The idea is that these two can prevent global warming by giving up the modern lifestyle for one year.
This whole farce is so ridiculous I don't know where to begin, Beavan claims he isn't making an impact yet what about his media activities. He's doing this because he wants to write and sell a book, he has the book deal already signed. Think about that thousands of trees will be cut down to get the paper for the book, the trees will be cut down by diesel powered machines and hauled to the paper mill by diesel burning trucks. The paper will be moved to the printing plant by diesel powered trucks or trains. Then the printed books will be moved to Barns and Noble by diesel burning trucks. After his year's exile from the 21st Century, Beavan will undoubtedly embark upon a book tour flying around the country in jets to sell the volume.
If Beavan were serious he wouldn't write his book or he'd post a free paperless e-book on line. He doesn't. Nor does his wife abandon her job at Business Week banging away on a computer what powers it, all day, contributing articles to a magazine that contributes to global warming.
Beavan's little exercise in self important hypocrisy is the modern equivalent of a hair shirt. When they weren't hacking their enemies to death with swords or pillaging their neighbors for profit Medieval despots would put on uncomfortable shirts made of rough hair to prove they were good Christians living a simple life.
Beavan's simple life in Manhattan is a the modern equivalent of a hair shirt, he isn't giving up any of the power and privilege of being part of our pampered media elite. Only sacrificing some of its trappings. If Beavan were serious he'd give up his book contract, talk his wife into quitting Business Week, move to some small town, take a job teaching high school and live on an Organic Farm. The fact that he doesn't should tell us something aobut this guy.
Some say Beavan and his wife are simply going back a hundred years ago that's not true. A century ago an upper middle class couple like the Beavans would have had several servants who did all the house work by hand no impact on the environment. They would have travelled about by horse drawn cab, streetcar or subway and would have eaten foods brought in from all corners of the world by coal burning ships. Not I don't see Beavan waiting for the street car wearing a bowler hat.
Okay maybe Beavan wants to go back 150 years then he would have eaten food grown around New York or brought in by eco friendly canal boats. I'm sure a peacenick like Beavan would have loved 1850s New York. It was a lovely place, a well heeled gentleman like Mr. Beavan had to carry a weapon a sword or gun and know how to use it. Effective police forces were a half century in the future. If you ran into a mugger you'd better be ready to fight or give up your money. Oh and forget about democracy in the 1850s any citizen who tried to vote had to put up with armed gang members who had orders to cave in the head of anybody who voted for the wrong party.
Or 1860s New York, would Mr. Beavan have volunteered for service in the Union Army or paid one of his neighbors to go in his stead as wealthy Yankees did during the Civil War. Note I'm not even mentioning the lack of modern medicine here.
Beavan has a two year old daughter, I bet he takes her to the doctor when she gets sick and takes advantage of modern medicine.
The "No Impact Man" is a joke and a very bad one. With all the time and effort Beavan wastes on his hair shirt lifestyle he could make a real difference. For example he could spend his time promoting high speed trains, mass transit, commuter rail and electrification of the railroads things that won't attract the attention of the New York Times but would tremendously reduce our generation of Green House gases. Of course the Grey Lady would ignore these things but it'll pay attention to Mr. Beavan's hypocrisy.
The best way to deal with the No Impact is the sane way most Americans will treat him they'll ignore him as the arrogant crackpot he is. Imagine what would happen ifthe media did that, after about a week, Beavan would give up start taking the subway and eating Chinese takeout again and nobody will notice.
Hopefully, the sick reality TV lifestyle Beavan and his wife are inflicting on their daughter will end. Or maybe public laughter will put an end to this stupidity.