Monday, December 21, 2009

Where I Now Stand on Climate Change and Global Warming Issues: January 1, 2010 (''The Jeremiah Statement'')

''The Jeremiah Statement''

To be honest, I do not believe there is any need -- urgent or otherwise -- for urgent action to mitigate the impact of manmade climate change. I believe that climate change is real and that AGW is real and that the Earth (and its load of human inhabitants that it is now carrying, 7 billion and counting, with 9 billion expected by 2050, and 25 billion by the year 2500 -- if we get there, that is!) really passed a tragic and irreversible tipping point that will result in the death of billions of people within the next 500 years, closer to the year 2500 than to the year 2100. I have no use anymore in arguing with the climate denialists of the Western world, with their heads in the provervbial sand -- former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, who will likely become the next US President in 2012, among them. They live in their own world and are not interested in reality. Let them be. They mean well. But they just don't "get it". Their descendants, several generations in the future, will get it. Sarah Palin's great great great grandchildren will also get it.

For me, the far distant future is bleak. Billions will die in massive human die-offs from 2300 AD to 2500 AD. Now now. Now life is good. Enjoy.

For me, we cannot do anything worthwhile or meaningful to mitigate the problems of climate change and global warming. All we can do, in my humble opinion, arrived at after much research and reading in the field of climate change -- and especially taking into account the ideas and remarks of visionaries such as James Lovelock, James Hansen, Bill McKibben, Mark Lynas, George Monbiot, Ross Gelbspan, Tim Flannery and Wang Chung-ho -- is to prepare now, gently and quietly, for the worst-case scenarios.

The world will not end. The human species will perserve and continue -- using 144 polar cities scattered across the extreme north and extreme south of the Earth and administered by the United Nations. But it won't be a pretty picture.

I won't be here, of course, to witness any of what I am talking about now. But I know that some humans will survive, perhaps as many as many one million, perhaps as few as 200,000, serving as "breeding pairs" in the north and south. Godspeed, all!

The polar cities will be located in Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland, Iceland and Norway, and also in Tasmania, New  Zealand and Antarctica. Let us hope everyone who makes it safely to these polar cities arrives in peace. It scenes could very likely be something like "Mad Max" meets "The Road." It could be hell on Earth. It won't be fun.

That's my point of view. I respect those scientists and opinion-makers who still advocate mitigation and adaptation and geo-engineering to solve the problems of climate change, and I hope their work goes on. But for me, as a postmodern Jeremiah, I see polar cities as the saviors of humankind, in the year 2500, perhaps not until the year 3500, or perhaps as early as 2222.

I have nothing else to say. Billions will migrate north by 2500. Billions will die. Some millions or thousands will survive in polar cities set up by the UN for climate refugees worldwide, thus ensuring that that the human species will not die off completely. These polar cities will save the day.

Two words: polar cities. Get used to them.

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