So now we are told that we may be in for a cold decade – natural background variation, oscillations, around the inexorable upward trend of man-made global warming. Just noise, no reason to abandon the effort to have a carbon-free lifestyle.
Well yes, such fluctuations in complex systems are normal, only to be expected.
But what if the entirely natural cold brings catastrophe enough to cause a massive disruption – to our society, economics, culture, politics & life style - all of its own?
The total human population of the globe has been rising pretty steadily since the day (whenever we currently think that was) when the first recognisably human pair emerged from the genetic lottery. But an assumption that the rise can be characterised by an uninterruptedly upward curve - while quite possibly confirming our population to be of the expected size today, & therefore with a certain circularity confirming our hypothesis about the pattern of growth - leads to the erroneous conclusion that there are now more people alive than have ever lived before – that the living now outnumber the dead.
Comment so far on the news of the possible cooling is centred on the political difficulties this will cause for governments trying to persuade voters to support the actions necessary to avoid the consequences of warming. But problems now are always more pressing than problems which may arise only after our three score years & ten are well & truly over, however much this might dismay our more confidently far sighted scientists.
