Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The weather

This past summer it rained almost every day in New York. The subway tunnels were awash, and the Central Park lawn  needed mowing nearly every day. Meanwhile, in Texas, the earth was parched and barren in a monumental drought.

Who among us didn't have the same thought: wouldn't it be great if we could move some of that water from New York, and put it in Texas? And someday that may actually happen.

Michio Kaku, prominent physicist at New York University, asserts that by the end of this century humankind will be able to control the weather.

Its already obvious that we understand much more about the weather than we did only a few years ago, and that weather forecasting has gotten extremely good.

Actually controlling the weather seems like a science fiction fantasy. Such a thing would be accomplished through scientific research and technology, it would seem, for the purpose of creating an earthly utopia.

It no longer seems that way. We can no longer afford to dream of utopia, and trust in science alone.

We have more pressing matters at hand. We have our obvious climate change happening now. We'll be lucky to merely survive, and learning how to control the weather and climate might at this point be our only hope for surviving.

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