File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9711, message 123


Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 00:23:41 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Global Warming


In message <3.0.1.32.19971106084455.0076adc4-AT-pop.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> writes
> Poor people in Aculpulco are
>homeless today because a hurricane was brought on by such climate changes.

Excuse mre Louis, are you really suggesting that the Hurricane in
Acapulco was brought on by global warming? and that
> an
>unexpected drought related to the same exact set of environmental changes
>that is afflicting Mexico.

I really don't think you understand that global warming is, by
comparison to droughts or hurricanes, a climactic change that moves at a
much slower pace. There is no sense in which contingent atmospheric
conditions - like hurricanes - or seasonal ones - like droughts - can be
attributed to global warming.

As you say
>I cite Rachel's Weekly


>The chief scientific debate over global warming is not
>WHETHER it will happen, but WHEN its effects will become undeniably
>obvious.

>reports published by the World Meteorological Organization and the United
>Nations stating their consensus belief that the CO2 buildup in Earth's
>atmosphere will lead to an average global temperature increase of between
>2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit during the next century.

So what possible bearing a (one-sided) prediction of a temperature
change in the next century could have on droughts and hurricanes in this
is a mystery. As a real social question, we should look instead at why
hurricanes, as largely unavoidable events, have differential effects.
Improved building design is the best remedy here. In terms of droughts,
anyone really concerned to do something would look at the farming
techniques and how they could be improved to accomodate any natural
conditions.

As to long term climactic trends, they are of course real problems in
the long term. The first question I would ask is how the greenhouse
effect is expected to interact with the ordinary cycle of natural
climactic changes expected? However, I don't suppose that anyone whose
principle goal is to wallow in self-pity and angst would have bothered
to situate greenhouse gases in the context of real climactic change,
when it is so much more fun to extrapolate one trend in isolation from
all real conditions. Out of such non-science one can make doomsday
scenarios that will satisfy ones chiliastic fantasies.

Fraternally
-- 
James Heartfield


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