Recently, there has been increasing talk... not of global warming, but global cooling. There is even talk about a possible recurrence of the "little ice age."
Some of the conjecture is a little fanciful... at this point. Still, it is ironic that as soon as the politicians have been convinced that the global warming debate is over, scientists are beginning to come out of the woodwork to say that we don't have to fear the warmth that might be coming our way... we'd better fear the cold.
This points to the very weakness of climate science and climate models... they contain a lot more conjecture than hard proof. It also points to the very weakness of "popular science"... it looks to simple answers for complex problems. CO2 is a prime example of the faulty "climate-science-theory-of-it-explains-everything." Others will latch on to land use changes... we're cutting down our forests and changing the climate. Others find environmental drivers at fault... China and India are cooling the planet from pollution. Others point to the sun. Or its "all of the above, but we don't understand how it all fits together."
So, while politicians are now ready to spend trillions of dollars to prevent global warming, maybe they should be figuring out how to get all of our homes insulated better and converted to efficient geothermal heating... forget the cooling. Maybe our scientists need to figure out how to get crops to grow faster to feed us with shorter growing seasons.
Maybe we should all buy stock in snow-thrower companies.
Or have you forgotten last winter already?
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