Climate Change Today

This week the White House released a new report on anthropomorphic climate change, AKA global warming.  Unlike previous reports, this one stressed that climate change has already begun to impact society, in a negative fashion.  droughts and storms are getting more frequent and severe, imposing real costs on us.

As a check on this, I went back and looked my insurance premiums of the last few years.  The insurance industry has extremely sophisticated systems for measuring risks and losses, and a lot of skin in the game to be sure they get it right.  My insurance premiums have experienced a modest increase, but nothing like the skyrocketing increases I should have seen if costs associated with climate change were really climbing rapidly.

It is not that I do not believe the basic science behind climate change.  Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are rising rapidly, and are well above historical levels.  Higher levels of greenhouse gases mean more heat is retained from the suns's radiation.

But if we  are truly on the verge of calamitous changes in planetary weather patterns, as some would have us believe, than we all have to make radical changes to our lifestyles.  And to enforce those changes, we have to accept an equally radical expansion of government power.

Tax credits for hybrid cars and compact florescent bulbs are not gong to cut our carbon footprint in half.  It will take gas and food rationing, restrictions on the amount of living space per person, and strict limits on climate control.  We are really talking about shifting to a low energy society, where the limits of what we can do will be defined by the limits of muscle power, instead of machine power as we have today.

To make this happen, we will have to cede wartime powers to the government, and hope that they keep the best interests of the citizens at heart.

A low energy society where we live in un-airconditioned, small houses, with travel restricted to the distance we can walk.  For sustainability's sake, food will be locally grown, so that your diet will be kept to only those items produced within fifty miles.

This basically looks like the lifestyle of a medieval peasant.  Or life in a third world country.

Maybe it is not surprising that so many are so skeptical about climate change.