My diary has a useless usefull note for every day of the year. Today in 1974 they started the search for Lord lucan and next Tuesday was the day in 1759, admiral Hawke won the battle of Quiberon bay. However it also told me that Sunday Nov 25th in 2348 BC , according to genesis 6.9 , was the day the flood started. So they had global warming then ?
Where I live in Dalyan its happening again. My garden is a lake after 36hrs non stop, and more is forecast tomorrow. Roads are rivers, rivers are torrents and fields have become lakes. Part of the reason is that the Ariks (ditches) have been filled in to make way for development of new villas, mostly for foreign owners. There has been some muttering as these villas are mostly built on concrete platforms and are above the water, but a lot of the older turkish houses arent, and are awash. I feel sorry for the owners but noticed that the mutterers are driving around in new cars, paid for by land they sold for development building, and for work they carried out building them. And guess who filled in the Ariks, and built the roads up !
The council are now digging trenches across roads, to take away the water. Pity they didn’t think about what they were doing when they allowed the building and authorised the arik destruction “to eliminate mosquitos”.
Still if its global warming, then they cant be blamed. Mind you last year when we didn’t get much rain, that was global warming as well ! And this summer was so hot here because of global warming, and it was also so awful - wet and cold , throughout most of europe because of - you guessed it, global warming. Confusing ? I remember hot summers , and wet ones , and cold winters and warm ones. That was Ok until the experts discovered their power to scare and confuse us all. It seems that they are never wrong - they will tell us that you have to take a long term view , and go off to another conference to discuss it all. It will be in an exotic location of course, because those are the most threatened.
Well I've got news for them ! This planet started about 4.5 billion years ago, it’s warmed, cooled, warmed and cooled again a few times since, not to mention the occasional giant meteorite zapping into it . But it’s still around thanks… and will be for few more billion years. But We won’t.
We’ve been here about 100,000 years, ( bit less if you believe Irish bishop James Ussher who in 1650 worked out that the bible made the creation of everything about 6000 years ago - on oct 26th, day before my birthday)
The simple fact is that we aren’t damaging the planet, but we are damaging our ability to live on it. Or our great grandchildren’s. But lets face it given the mess we make of simple things like not over populating it, or just feeding everyone, perhaps we don’t deserve to last that long.
The dinosaurs did a better job, I bet they probably farted out more global warming gasses than we ever produce, but they didn’t have conferences about it. They might not have had the ability to reason but they lasted about 150 million years , and it was an unforeseen event, a large piece of rock, that did for them. Flatulence didn’t come into it.
The good thing of course is that though we may mourn here in our beautiful environment in the Dalyan delta, the destruction of the ditches , the levelling of hedge rows, the surging swell of hundreds of river boats, the effect we have, in global terms , won’t last that long. The arrogance that makes us think we are top of the evolutionary tree, and believe in an everlasting human soul, also overestimates the impact of what we do. Granted we have produced the music of Mozart, the prose of Shakespeare and the art of Michelangelo, which the dinosaurs probably didn’t manage, but we have also invented an infinite variety of ways and reasons for killing ourselves and other species, from the spear to the neutron bomb, and we are still doing it.
It must be great to be an expert. To know so much about so little. All you have to do is pick a theme then fit everything to it. I heard one on the radio forecasting a recession next year in the UK. He said everyone will find life harder. As it was national radio and the press and other experts are also saying it, lots of people will worry. They will probably put off buying things, taking holidays and generally spending less so things will slow down. Then of course some businesses will fail, people will be out of work, everyone will spend less, and have less to spend. Hang on – that’s a recession ! Golly arent experts marvellous, pity they never forecast good things.
I suppose that Noah was the first environmental expert. Saying that god told him was a neat idea, carries lots of weight, but without television and newspapers to spread the panic, no-one noticed I suppose - and look what happened! Arent we lucky to have the media to warn us all – I’m off to mount ararat tomorrow, anyone know where I can find a pair of Ardvaarks
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