The Third Rock Forum - Where is the Devil?

A recent gathering by those who aim to fight climate change pledged a sum of about $200 billion to help finance the world’s efforts to prevent climate change. What is the background to this international effort?

Scientists have gathered enough knowledge to build up a picture about climate change through millions of years on Planet Earth. There is enough evidence to suggest that Planet Earth creates cyclical Ice Age periods lasting approximately 100,000 years. These periods are interleaved by warmer climate periods, lasting between 15,000 and 20,000 years.  During an Ice Age period, most of North America and Europe, for example, were covered in a blanket of ice which in warmer climactic periods recede, even the poles were occasionally free of ice. Greenland was at some time a green land as a result.  Our current warmer climate period has already lasted about 18,000 years and, scientifically, our period is still considered to be at the end of an ice age due to the fact that two poles are still covered in ice. 

So, the proposition is that we, humanity, have interfered with this cyclical climate change by burning fossil fuels during the past 250 years, causing a temperature rise of between 1 to 4 degrees depending on who is talking.  Furthermore, the proposition goes, we can prevent this climate change by burning 30-40% less of fossil fuel and replacing the energy deficiency by green, renewable energy sources, such as windmills and tidal energy power stations among other measures.  Looking for “the devil” in this argument I do not think that we need to bother with the detail.

If I may lower the tone of this submission, I have a close second proposal for preventing global warming.  We should  lower the  temperature of the Sun by firing icebergs at it at high speed, probably the speed of light, to prevent the icebergs melting before they hit the target. This proposition will only cost 100,000 trillion dollars and would provide continued employment to Al Gore and several scientists and engineers, not to mention lawyers.