Global Warming and Evolution - A Cynic's View
Posted on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 10:40 PM by Richard Schitts
This isn't what it sounds like. I believe in global warming and evolution. What I am skeptical about is the consequences of global warming. Where is all this panic coming from?
Everybody likes to get all worked up about the consequences of global warming, a flame environmentalists are happy to stoke. Sea levels will rise and populations will migrate. Some land that is farmable now won't be farmable, and some land that isn't farmable now will be farmable. Climate change has happened before without our help: there was a major ice age 12,000 years ago and a "mini" ice age 500 years ago. The sun goes through cycles, so the earth goes through cycles. The point is, the earth's climate is always changing. But then again so are we. Three Million years ago we were "apes". Now we are people. This is a blink of an eye on the geological time scale. Even as recently as 200,000 years ago some of our relatives were probably Neanderthals. Things don't evolve at a constant rate; they evolve slower or faster depending on natural selection. The dinosaurs didn't just disappear. Some of them died off, but some of them evolved into the creatures you see today.
-He's been here all along, but my how time has changed him!
Picture the velociraptor from Jurassic park. Over thousands of years environmental pressure "favored" smaller and smaller raptors. A large raptor has smaller baby raptors and so on. The raptor is also starting to evolve feathers, beginning with deformed scales. Pretty soon the raptor is a bird - he didn't go extinct at all, he evolved into something else. This may not be entirely scientific, but birds are close relatives to dinosaurs. Major global warming does not mean extinction, it means evolution. Evolution is inevitable anyways. Nothing we can do will stop the climate from eventually forcing us to evolve.
We do need to be responsible with the environment to make it easier for future generations. Environmentalists are always railing against technology, when in reality technology is out best hope to be green and maintain our current lifestyle (not end up in a Greenpeace Future Scenarios: A Loose - Loose).
The fear of global warming seems to be more fear of change and the unknown than anything else. Look on the bright side, if Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Greenland and Northern Russia all get warmer it will be great! There will be lots of room to move all of those farms from the cost. So chill out!
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