Te Radar: Full of hot air

"Blame what you like I say, but just accept that things are not what they were and may never be so again."

Everyone knows climate change is really due to NASA spaceships punching holes in the atmosphere.

We've all heard them. Their voices normally pipe up just as news of an unusually severe winter storm is about to ravage some part of the world. "Unprecedented cold snap?" they shrill. "So much for Global Warming. Hyah hyah hyah."

When America's East Coast was recently threatened by a storm-ageddon there was a whirlwind of such cries from people who clearly hadn't been paying attention to what's happening on the country's dehydrated West Coast, where they've lost so much groundwater the mountains got taller (that's a fact I really love repeating).

"But the climate has always changed," they holler above the sound of my mountain raising statistic. Yes it has. For a long time most of everything was under ice. At other times the CO2 level was far higher than today. The big difference was that for much of that time, we weren't here. Had we been, we might have evolved as significantly hairier humanoids, or slightly more sentient shrubbery.

You don't even have to think that the changes in weather patterns are human-induced to realise that something undesirable is happening with the climate.

You can put it down to sun spots, aerosol spray cans, volcanoes, or the moon. A 2010 Yale study into Americans' knowledge of climate change found that 49 per cent believed the space program contributed to global warming by punching holes in the atmosphere. I wish it were that simple.
Blame what you like I say, but just accept that things are not what they were and they may never be so again.

That way it's easier to adjust to the possibility that climate changes may mean we have reached peak food, and we should all think about enlarging our pantries. The rain really doesn't seem to fall where rain used to fall. Goodness only knows how the plains in Spain are faring.
We may well have to contend with the migration of insects, predators and diseases travelling with rising air and sea temperatures. Will it take malaria in Auckland to change people's minds? Dengue in Dunedin? I suspect not even that will do it. They will simply blame immigration, and then start babbling on about house prices. Until an unseasonal flurry of snow flattens the house in question.

These are the same people who are currently responding to plummeting petrol prices with the phrase "So much for that oil crisis. Hyah hyah hyah."

They clearly haven't noticed that we are still using oil at a phenomenal rate, without finding all that much more of it. Nor have they been paying attention to the global geo-political brinkmanship of the oil industry.

But then again, why would you, unless you had a lot of time to pore over internet news sites and a desire to slowly and repeatedly whap your head onto your keyboard in frustration at the madness of human greed and suffering those regimes revolve around?

Why stand at the pump and consider Saudi Arabia's motives in taking an economic hit rather than lose market share by cutting production, as they did in the 70s? Instead you can wonder if the savings you'll make at the pump mean you could spring for a mega-wash-and-buff rather than just squeegee your windscreen.

I'm looking forward to reports of record sea ice in Antarctica this winter resulting in the trite refrain: "I thought they said the polar caps were melting. Hyah Hayh Hyah" line.

They are, I'll say. That's one of the reasons suggested for the record sea ice. And then I'll bore the nay-sayer with scientific explanations until they either understand, or leave me alone to despair. Hyah Hyah Hyah.

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