There goes the neighborhood
As most readers of this blog know, MD and I split our non-traveling time between Incline Village, Nevada (on the north shore of Lake Tahoe) and Santa Barbara, California. We don’t have a house in the city of Santa Barbara but in the unincorporated town of Montecito, which is a sleepy little suburb of Santa Barbara (as if Santa Barbara is large enough to have a suburb). We live on Park Lane, a street well known in Montecito, notably for the giant Eucalyptus trees that line it. Although there are Eucalyptus trees all over the Montecito/Santa Barbara area, as far as I know, Park Lane is the only street flanked by them.
As most of you also know, I am a man-made global warming/climate change denier. I’m not as much a denier as I am a pragmatist who realizes that even if there is something to the phenomenon (which in my view is far from certain), it’s way, way too expensive to fix in the ways we’re trying to fix it. And if all of us in the US and the UK (the two centers of GW hysteria) spend the fortune required to keep our respective countries green, we don’t have any control over the people in China and India. These countries are going to continue to release CO2 in enormous amounts (as will any other populous country that enters its own industrial age) irrespective of whether or not we all recycle, drive electric cars and shut down all our factories. But, that’s just my view.
Most of this GW hysteria has been fomented by Al Gore, who, as we all know, is not a scientist, but instead a person with no technical training who has profited mightily from the discord he has sown. Discord he has sown, I might add, while living in his energy-gobbling, CO2-emitting mansion in Tennessee and flying around in private jets to hobnob with others living the same basic lifestyle. But, to give him his due, he could be correct about it all; I just don’t think so. I guess time will tell. But if his predictions are like all the other impending-catastrophe predictions of the past, from Malthus to Ehrlich, they will come to naught.
So, what does all this have to do with Park Lane in Montecito?
Well, imagine my surprise when I read the little squib below in the Montecito Journal (our local paper) a couple of days ago. Go ahead and laugh.
If it does all come to pass, I guess I’ll just have to do the Southern, have him down (or up) for coffee, and we’ll hash it out.
Oh my. Another doctor, nutritionist, ADHD counselor who is WONDERFUL in his/her chosen field who then decides s/he is a: critic, journalist, politician. I loved Michael Eades in his area of expertise, but I yawn when he goes off on global warming or journalism or politics. And I am less trusting when it seems the desire is for celebrity and gravitas instead of the given expertise. OTOH, everyone is entitled to express opinions. And to simply go away.
Oh my. Another commenter with no sense of humor.
As a scientist, I do think that global warming is quite real. I’m not even looking at temperatures; my colleagues are studying the organisms that have shifted their ranges – plants, in particular – because of temperature intolerances. Here in the midwest, we are documenting the northward migration of plants, and the increase of invasive exotics that take advantage of the new ecological system.
Someone else who is simply documenting the global warming: http://www.extremeicesurvey.org/
It doesn’t matter WHY the earth is warming – the planet doesn’t care whether we’re here or not as it will continue to go on existing. If WE want to be here a few generations from now, we do need to figure out how to mitigate the effect that we do have and to adapt to the climate changes that are imposed upon us. Sticking our fingers in our ears and saying that global warming isn’t happening or that there’s nothing we can do is not a useful exercise.