A Problem Too Big for Our Small Minds
This is a useful article showing the effects of climate change. As is sadly the case the complexity of climate change is beyond the ability of homo sapiens to handle without extensive scientific analysis. The patterns are clear over the last two hundred years and the critical underlying warming is concurrent with human population growth and the explosive growth of fossil fuels over that time. Periodic climate variation does not fit the pattern hence the very strong scientific consensus. Deniers are driven by personnel issues and politically motivated ignorance.
On the human level we are simply unable to overcome our stupidity. The current lurch toward authoritarian ignorance may be terminal for our species unless we can get this turned around very, very quickly. Fortunately the majority of people realize this but we are hampered by our collapsing political and economic systems. Sadly there are still people who will insist that everything is fine until it is too late to do anything. No one wants to say that is too late but it may already be the case. The rising level of regional chaos is clearly linked to both climate change and unsustainable hypercapitalism. The result will be the spread of regional conflict as populations are pushed into migratory swarms by rising sea levels and loss of arable lands. The collapse of adequate returns on petrochemical energy will trigger a planetary economic transformation that has already seriously reduced income among the masses of the old industrial states and will destroy those states that have not moved quickly enough to sustainability and rational resource allocation.
People do not realize how fast this type of phase change can happen. The sudden failure of the US political system last November has already shifted the global centers of power to Berlin and Beijing. Canada is now quickly becoming the American center for technology and, specifically, AI that is our only hope. I’ve expected this yet it surprises me how fast the change has happened. No one has time for losers and, despite our natural wealth, we are now losers waiting to be looted and plundered.
