caorach
Well-Known Member
Moss probably had, and has, the biggest influence on the climate as our current atmosphere was, pretty much, generated by moss. Anyone wanting to stop climate change needs to start by getting rid of moss. This sits pretty well with your idea that the earth has always changed and that humans are fundamentally nothing special. One important thing to highlight in respect of this is that the plant life requires CO2 and, unknown to man at the time, during the late 1800s atmospheric CO2 concentrations had almost fallen to the point where plant life would cease on earth. Currently atmospheric CO2 concentrations are at a frighteningly low, but manageable, level and rising. Had they not have risen it is likely we'd be gone by now, as would the moss. This would have been disappointing for us but doubly so for the moss as it had been working on the atmosphere for much, much longer than us. Historically there is no correlation, never mind causal relationship, between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures.
However, where humans have an edge over other "stuff" currently on the planet is the ability to adapt and to plan for adaption. The "there's too many people on the planet" idea is a pretty old one and all the predictions of doom related to it have (so far at least) turned out to be wrong simply because we use the advances of modern science to feed everyone etc. At the minute people on earth live much longer, and have better lives, than in the past when the average age at death was around 40, so there is no evidence that the recent dramatic increase in population has resulted in a decline in quality of life. The big question is whether this progress and improvement is sustainable and history indicates that it probably is - science and man being smart allows him to achieve things that might be impossible for, say, moss to achieve. As Lomborg said "the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones" and this helps highlight that man has always found something "better" to sustain his life and his progress.
It is said that the "global warming" concept was presented to Thatcher by an advisor (see this for example: Comment on Sir Crispin Tickell ) who was part of an organisation called something like "The Optimum Population Trust" (something like that, they keep changing their name) and they believe that there are too many people on earth and that something must be done about it. The something never seems to involve their kids dying, but stopping developing countries from using fossil fuels to improve their own standard of living and quality of life kills a lot of people. We hear about how many people air pollution kills each year, for example, and it is always subtly implied that this is due to cars, or power stations, or similar. The truth is that most air pollution deaths are down to people in sub-Saharan Africa having to use dung (often) or other solid fuel to cook over an open fire in their house. Interestingly the annual 7 million global deaths from air pollution are the worlds greatest "environmental" problem but you don't hear that simply allowing poor people in Africa fossil fuel stoves for cooking would reduce it dramatically, at low cost and almost overnight, because that doesn't sit with the "optimum population/climate change" narrative. So when they want to not die from air pollution we tell them that they have to keep on dying because of climate change.
You have to wonder how history will view the deeply racist and anti-science policy mechanisms that the "global warming" narrative enabled. The people of Africa aren't keen on them already, this is just once recent example that you probably won't hear from European state media outlets: Africa sees new wall in EU's carbon border scheme [Business Africa] | Africanews
