H. P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness
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The Wall Street Journal: The War on Drugs Is a Failure
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Also, the latest in global warming alarmism, from the New Scientist:
How to survive the coming century
How unbiased is it? The author is called Gaia.
(I'm kidding, but they are being a bit extreme)
For instance:
"All of the world's major deserts are predicted to expand, with the Sahara reaching right into central Europe.
Glacial retreat will dry Europe's rivers from the Danube to the Rhine, with similar effects in mountainous regions including the Peruvian Andes, and the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, which as result will no longer supply water to Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Bhutan, India and Vietnam."
Is it just me, or does it seem like the author is saying Europe's river water comes from glaciers? The one link the article had anywhere near that was to an article that said no such thing. There seems to be some consensus that rainfall in Europe will decrease by as much as 20% in the worst case scenario, but that's nowhere near enough to "dry Europe's rivers". As with so many other impacts of climate change, the effect will be to increase rainfall in the winter and decrease it in the summer.
The idea that the Himalayas will "no longer supply water" is ludicrous. Maybe someone should explain to the author what a drainage basin is and where river water comes from. Yes, a significant portion of river water in summer comes from glaciers, and apparently in a worst-case scenario the Ganges may become a seasonal river, flowing only in the summer, but rivers will not vanish because of glacier retreat. They'll only vanish if rainfall stops completely.
After scaring you with overblown images of desertification, the author gets to the real point:
"In order to survive, humans may need to do something radical: rethink our society not along geopolitical lines but in terms of resource distribution."
"If we use land, energy, food and water efficiently, our population has a chance of surviving - provided we have the time and willingness to adapt."
And the article goes on and on about what kind of a global planned economy we need to set up to "survive the coming century":
"We need to look at the world afresh and see it in terms of where the resources are, and then plan the population, food and energy production around that."
I have to write some more on environmentalist alarmism in the future, but the biggest reason articles like this make me highly sceptical is the effortless way in which the writers go from looking at the science of global warming to positing global fascism to deal with it. From the author's own website:
"The most obvious logical solution is to move the people where the resources are, and I explore this idea in a recent article. There are other options. How about enforced sterilization of people that have produced one child - this would immediately shrink the population?"
Um, because human population may decrease in the future, we should decrease it ourselves by force? Why not just advocate shooting people? One of the comments to the post hits right to the heart of this kind of thinking:
"Hi agree with limiting population growth - people should have to apply to have children, instead of it being everyones god given right. The world is being filled up with the ill-conceived offspring of degenerates and criminals, from families too large to already look after themselves."
Maybe a little extreme, but then again, James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia theory, basically agrees with him: 'humans will survive and be "culled and, I hope, refined."' Also, how does Ms. Vince imagine we would go about "moving people to where the resources are"? By force? What other way is there?
I'm not a global warming skeptic, and I'm not arguing global warming isn't happening. I'm arguing that I'm frightened by the possibilities of what might happen if global warming gets worse; I'm also frightened by the idea of the kind of people who write these articles getting to impose their ideas on the world.
The idea of "planning the world" in the way the article describes would require a total abandonment of many of our basic human rights and of representative government. Environmentalists try to justify this by saying it is necessary to the survival of our species. Somehow, eco-fascism doesn't seem like too extreme a word to describe these people.
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Finally, some old school Internet humor: Niilo Paasivirta
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