Senselessly Arguing the Obvious

FLORIDA has had one hundred nineteen hurricanes since 1850, goes the drone, and the last one was caused by climate change. Those familiar with the climate change debate, which should no longer be a debate, the question having been settled decades ago, have heard tired, lame, idiotic arguments like this. On the superficial surface, to the unthinking, they seem to make sense, although they make none. The common thread of these fatuous contentions is that nature is so all powerful, and humankind, with all its technology and landscaping capabilities, is so very puny and insignificant, that the very notion of human activity changing the climate, even slightly, is sheer nonsense. Again, the argument has a certain appeal, especially to those who embrace religion, and view nature as the work of an omnipotent God, infinitely more powerful than the creatures of his own creation. They claim that those who think otherwise are arrogant. The arrogance actually resides within the climate change denial community; the arrogance of refusing to accept common, simple, long established science. It would be as if opponents of nuclear weaponry refused to believe in nuclear physics, or as if adherents to the Christian Bible refused to accept the reality of human evolution by natural selection, which, of course they do in frustratingly large numbers. No single hurricane is caused by climate change alone. The natural world is far more complex than such simplistic assertions would have us believe. More likely, all 119 Florida hurricanes since 1850 were slightly and over the years increasingly modified, magnified by climate change. People have been pumping carbon into the atmosphere for several hundred years, trapping heat, warming the planet. That is simple, factual, easy to observe and understand, and undeniable. Two jars of air samples, one containing abundantly more carbon than the other; the one with all the carbon will always have a higher temperature; it traps more heat than oxygen and nitrogen alone. The Earth, for millions of years, has undergone innumerable changes, geologically, and climatically, without the slightest contribution from human industry, thus proving no modern human complicity, goes the specious argument. As if the fact of our recent arrival on the planet prohibits our having any impact on it. Stand in a forest. On this land forests, oceans, molten lakes, deserts, grassy prairies, all have come and gone, many times over, over millions of years of naturally changing land forms. And yet, while standing in the forest, you, the puny recent arrival, particularly during a dry August, need only strike a match, and you, a puny person, can destroy thousands of acres of woodland. You and your match stick aren't so puny after all. Against the infinite backdrop of the universe, and even of the natural processes at work on Earth, humans may indeed be insignificant, and may not be here much longer, not having been here long. And yet, somehow, we manage to turn rivers into lakes, deserts into forests, and mountains into hollowed out pits. Our ability to inject billions of tons of carbon into the air, over decades and centuries, and our ability to leave the carbon alone, and to allow it to simply sit there and absorb the heat of sunlight, naturally, warming the atmosphere, is really not so extraordinary and unbelievable after all.