Get serious

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Nov 22

RE: Humans a key instrument of climate change.  Op-ed by Wayne Poole of Dundas.  The Hamilton Spectator 29 Nov 22.

Actually, there is no scientific evidence that humans are instruments of climate change, and if so, to what degree.  Having to establish that degree to which humans are responsible would require an estimation, and an admission of, natural climate variability.  The politics of the cause requires that humans be held to blame for ti all, and this is done by bald and repeated assertion.

Wayne Poole was being romantic and not factual when he talked about humans changing a region’s climate.  Floods, droughts, fires, environmental, habitat, and species destruction are Poole’s examples of climate change.  None of these are so much as weather events.

But Poole hits on a point that was hammered on during the COP27 conference by the likes of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and their sympathizers.  That is that the human species is a curse upon the earth, and “ecojustice” requires that the human species go extinct by 2100.

This is not a new ideal.  Poole’s outlook mimics the Gaia concept.  Google “Deep Ecology” for another take on the idea of human’s deserving extinction, and notice how long those ideas have been around. Once fringe ideas are now becoming mainstream.

Poole’s most direct ancestor is Malthus, whose much discredited theory Poole repeats unwittingly.

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