Global Warming: So What?

There is a lot of science out there regarding the Earth's current warming trend. My favorite is one I read a few years ago: Curt Stager's Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth (2012). There has also been a lot of political discussion about global warming, much of it hysterical on both sides. My own view is that warming is definitely happening, the records support that no matter what one thinks about the causes or what, if anything, should be done. Earth's climate is changing, but then that isn't anything new. Stager's book is convincing on that score. He takes a very long view and explores the planet's climate over many geological eras.

So what is to be done? Can we prevent warming? What should we be doing? I'm afraid the short answer, for a variety of reasons, is nothing. The Earth's climate is changing; it's getting steadily warmer. The polar ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. Average temperatures are going up. Seasons are changing. Flora and fauna are going extinct. Is any of this caused by humans? Almost certainly, when we think of the many varieties of human activity: agriculture, deforestation, use of fossil fuels; pollution of land, air and water. Is there anything humans can now do to slow or reverse the warming? Not likely, given the scale of what even the most optimistic experts have told us would need to be done just to slow the current warming trends.

But if we step back from the brink of hysteria for a moment, what does all of this really mean? The world is changing. Life on Earth will be different in the future. Younger generations will have to cope with these changes, but that has been true in the past as well. Humans have always had to adapt and change with alterations in climates and environments. Naturally, those of us who have been living in the present reality wish that reality to continue, but that seems unlikely. We want to imagine that our children and grandchildren will experience the same life on Earth that we have known, but such hope has always been illusory. Change has been the only constant. Nothing human endures unaltered by the passing of time.

Far from being cause for concern, this familiar truth of human existence should give us, if not comfort, at least a more rational perspective. True, the oceans will inevitably rise; some presently major centers of population will likely have to be abandoned, New Orleans and Miami come quickly to mind. Many familiar species of plants and animals will likely disappear; in fact, that's already happening. Future humans will have to learn to adapt to a new climate, but for them it will inevitably become the new normal. It will be the Earth they will learn to love and hope to preserve for their progeny.

Actually, rather than worrying about global warming, we would do our own offspring a much greater service if we were to turn our attention to cleaning up the oceans and preserving some of the remaining rain forests. That might actually make life in a warmer Earth future a lot more endurable. But, alas, given what we know of human beings, I would not hold out much hope for that outcome either. Another thing I've learned about humans is that they tend to make an awful mess, and rather than clean it up, they generally prefer to just move on. Given that history, perhaps our grandchildren and great-grandchildren better start looking for some nearby class M planets. But the way I see it, that's their problem.