AGW post 112, 4.18.19

Another title for this post could be, "How to Stop Worrying, and Love the Smog".  But I jest.

Actually, one way to stop worrying is to "embrace the suck".  If not in reality, than in one's own imagination.  That's because worrying is mostly in one's own imagination.  One creates these mental monsters in one's own head.  One effective way to deal with these mental monsters is to define them, and then find useful strategies to deal with them.

So, in order to embrace the suck, let's pretend that the doomsters are right.  So, what exactly are the doomsters saying?  Let's exclude the politicians for now.  The politicians say we are all going to die.  That is, unless we vote for them, and they will ride to our rescue.

If we listen to the worse case scenarios, the oceans will rise eight feet.  That's pretty bad, but it will take 80 years to happen.  Plenty of time to adjust.  Secondly, temperatures will get hotter out there.  If no action is taken, people will die.  Yeah?  If you don't eat, you will die too.  In 80 years, you may die of old age anyway.  But, never mind.  If it gets hotter, you can adjust to that.  If you don't adjust to changing circumstance, you will die in any case.  But that's life, is it not?

Back to the politicians.  Since, the worse case scenarios are not existential in nature, but a matter of convenience, then what to do?  Would you want to give up today's comforts, so that somebody in the future won't have to be uncomfortable?  It will take 80 years to get to that point even in their worst case scenario.  But they'll say: "what about future generations"?  But you can ask:  "what about today?"  What about those cities that will disappear?  Well, cities have been disappearing anyway.  Have you noticed Detroit lately?

Okay, we've embraced the suck for a moment.  Looking on the other side of the coin, these predictions have been wrong for the most part for the last 30 years.  If they keep getting it wrong at this rate, we won't even have to embrace the suck even in our imaginations.  So, stop worrying, and love you up some smog.