WhatFinger


(Apologies to Bob Dylan)

Once more, with feeling. The Climes They Are A Changing.



The climate changes. Always has. Always will. Period.
Let me digress for a moment. Saying word “period” after making an emphatic statement now has two meanings. In the older meaning, it was to assure the listener that you have said something that is beyond dispute. President Obama has established a new interpretation. Saying “period” after an emphatic statement can now mean something very different. In the wake of the Obamacare rollout, we discovered that “period” can also mean “please disregard everything I just said, as it is a barefaced lie”. Be assured, I mean “period” in the old way. Anyway, back on topic. During the Hurionian Ice Age, the entire Earth was a snowball. No oceans, no land mass, and no coastline.

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Then the globe warmed, the ice went away, and there were no people around to cause it. Then it got cold again. And there were no people around to cause it. During the Cryogenian period, the Earth was plunged into some of the deepest cold it has ever experienced, then it got warmer. And there were no people around to cause it. Some of the other ice ages. Sturtian Varanger Andean-Saharan Karoo In between each of these ice ages, the globe warmed, and the ice went away. Then it came back. Every single time. Ice formed on the top of the mountains in Antarctica 34 million years ago. The Himalayas rose up several notches 19 million years ago, which triggered a drop of 8 degrees Celsius on the planet, which in turn made the ice on the mountains of Antarctica spread out over the entire continent, creating the ice sheets we are familiar with. Is anybody sensing a pattern here? If it’s cold, it’s going to get warmer. If it’s warm, it’s going to get colder. People or no people. Period. (Old use of “period”, not the Obama way) The Quaternary Ice Age started just a few million years ago – and is still going on. Ice has extended and retreated multiple times, and to various degrees, during this period, in cycles of about 10,000 years. In fact, there were many overlapping ice ages within the Quaternary, each separately named: the Bavelian and Cromerian complexes of glacials and interglacials; the Elsterian glacial; the Holsteinian interglacial and the Saalian glaciation, and others. The climes, they are a changing. We didn’t start it, and we can’t stop it. Trying to stop climate change is a lot like trying to stop a tsunami by standing on the beach, holding out your arm and yelling “halt”. The laws of unintended consequence says that trying to stop climate by imposing legislation that can be avoided by looking overseas can’t possibly work, and will make things worse. If it legislation pushes the cost of electricity up so far that it’s cheaper to send more manufacturing overseas, then more manufacturing will go overseas. Period. (Old way) When manufacturing goes overseas, it goes to places that don’t care about emissions. Result, more emissions in the atmosphere than there would have been if the government hadn't’ tried to save us from ourselves. One more point. Greenhouse gases are a big part of what makes the climate change, but many things other than human activity can cause the level of greenhouse house gases to fluctuate, and those things are beyond human control. Tectonic and volcanic activity to name two. And greenhouse gases aren't the only things that affect climate. Solar activity, the wobble of the Earth’s axis, and tidal effects of planetary motion, to name three. Climate fluctuations are so complicated, with so many variables, that even trying to put a cause on one the variables (human activity) is crazy. And the magnitude of the forces at work are so powerful that trying to make any meaningful change in the rate of climate change is the very definition of HUBRIS. We need to adapt to the inevitable change, because we can’t stop it. If sea levels are going to rise, then we need move inland, build dams, levees, seawalls, channels, canals and maybe even floating cities. What we don’t need to do it to pass laws (or presidential decrees) that make energy so expensive that we weaken our economy past the point of being able to do what we have to do to adapt. That’s the way I see it.


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Neill Arnhart -- Bio and Archives

Neill Arnhart lives in Southern Indiana with his wife, step daughter, two dachshunds named Ricky and Lucy, an Australian Cattle dog named Indiana (Indy for short) an inside cat named Elphaba, and about a dozen barn cats.  Aside from living in the US, he has lived on the island of Trinidad, and in Venezuela, back when it was nice place.

When not rousing the rabble with sarcastic essay’s, he hides behind the secret identity of a mild mannered insurance agent, specializing in Medicare, and other matters concerning senior citizens.


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