This week’s global warming predictions.

Every single day, there is something alarming in the news about climate change.  Click on any headline about a natural disaster like a forest fire or a flood or a hurricane, and there will be dire warnings in the article about how this particular phenomenon is worse than ever before because of climate change.  Google the words “climate change,” and you can learn about how it is making poison ivy itchier, glaciers smaller, and the world generally less pleasant to live in.  It is even being theorized that there could be a connection between earthquakes and climate change.

What I don’t understand is why climate change is seen as a bad thing.  It’s normal for the climate to change.  Millions of years before the dinosaurs, the Earth was a solid ball of ice.  During the time of the dinosaurs, there was no ice at all.  The planet continued to cool off and warm up, all without human intervention, and when humans did come along, they adapted to changes in the climate.  Up until the 20th century, nobody thought that a change in the weather warranted prophesying the end of the world.

Today, there is constant alarmism.  The media trumpet melting glaciers and how the rising sea levels will wipe out whole countries, ignoring the fact that 30% of the Netherlands was once underwater.  Is it only in the Netherlands that water management can maintain human habitation?  I think not.  Polar bears are seen to be of special concern, with fears that melting ice will cause them to go extinct, yet according to the World Wildlife Fund, they still exist in their original habitat, range, and natural numbers.  Such being the case, I take leave to doubt that climate change is wiping out polar bears.

In short, not a single horror that has been predicted for the 21st century because of a changing climate has come to pass.  The human race is adapting, as it has always adapted, to new weather conditions.  The planet may warm up, as it has done in the past, and after it warms up, it will cool off, as it has done in the past.  There’s nothing frightening about that simple fact of nature.  The only thing I’ve ever found disconcerting about climate change is the number of people who accept the distressing predictions, without noticing how those predictions get pushed back several decades when they don’t come to pass.