Great Decisions 2020 CLIMATE CHANGE and Global Order Feb 7, 2020 Great Decisions and Friday Round Table addressed Global Warming three times in 2007, 08 and 2009. I did the first one and made contributions to the others, as today. Let me read off some significant lines to get us rolling. A Pacific island nation purchased a county in the outback of Australia. I reported approvingly. More recently they had an election which stopped planning for the Australian towns. A candidate had presented the position that the upper economy nations should put the entire population of his island into first class hotels And he won the election. The earth is wrapped in dozens of physical cycles that are interacting and an important one is that of temperature. They all effect our lives. Recall that Asia and Alaska were jointed in the last ice age--2 million to 12 thousand years ago. Warming melts ice and raised the sea level causing flooding which required the population of Beringia to continue moving east to America becoming what we call Indians. To counter that being from thousands of years of cold we may see a thousand years of warm. There are degrees of Ice Age, the recent big one is called Wisconsin Glacia. See the name and periods of some on ups and downs on the timescale handout. Note some recent ones. For example the Renaissance in Europe was fueled by warming from Charlemagne, 800 AD to the Black Plague about 1300 AD. Then there was a Little Ice Age which had people ice skating on the Thames River in London and had carriage traffic between Germany and Scandinavia on solid ice on the Baltic Sea with hotels built on that ice. That Little Ice Age ended at about the time of American Civil War. We are currently warming after both the last giant Ice Age and the Little Ice Age. Many people, including Greta, the teenage girl from Sweden who told the UN to stop the warming, does not seem to understand that temperatures go up and down, measured not in weeks, but in centuries and millennia. There are a lot of people that only view their lifetime and cannot put the history of mankind into perspective. Hence your handout. The Point - for this class - is that the end of even a Little Ice Age means temperatures go up for the following centuries. If Bangladesh is to flood from global warming, will Greenland become suitable for relocation thru the melted arctic sea lanes to carry the millions of Muslim who would replace the Lief Erikson people that lived there during the medieval warm period. We had a presentation from the Iowa State weather department that said that 5% of global warming was caused by men. Thus each dollar spent on control of warmth will gain a nickle of benefit. Except China pollutes more than the U.S. and Europe combined. Plus India and others are unrestricted polluters. Thus to gain a nickle of benefit, will cost half a sawbuck. The expression of "global" certainly includes the surface temperature conditions on earth, but also includes the atmosphere, inside of earth's mantel, and solar conditions such as radiation and sunspots, all influencing aspects of mankind's earth of rock, sea, and prairie. The big ICE AGE bottomed at the very end and killed off most large mammals such as herds of Mastodon hunted by Early man. The temperature in North America in this period averaged 12F. When it ended 12,000 years ago there was a start to civilization with mankind who dropped hunting animals and began to herd them. In another thousand years man had established farming and villages. The Temperature in Marshalltown of today's world averages 42F {average low of 37 and high of 56}. So we have seen Mother Nature make a universal warming up of 30F. If we were to slow global warming by 3F in our lifetime, as some are suggesting, we could see a further change in civilization. {I suspect a robotic world by mid-century.} Consider that the record summertime heat in Australia caused the spread of wildfires that are killing off millions of animals and a few humans. If we happily stopped the rise in temperature and water level, we might trigger global cooling which could kill off agriculture and all humankind on the surface of the earth. The earth has a significant breath of conditions - such as temperature - that are not understood by common people or politicians who would pass laws regulating temperature seeking election to office. Lets continue discussion PROS and CONS We all know the harm that global warming causes. * Polar animals will have to move farther north. * Bangladesh, Holland, plus New Orleans and Miami will have to build higher levees. Or the constitution would provide for better free enterprise to relocate - rather than to demand political subsidies. What are the advantages of warming: * Increased productivity of all sorts of vegetation. This includes food crops (and now fuel). * Higher productivity of livestock (weight gains through winter.) * Greater expansion of livable areas of the world: Greenland will become green again. Minnesota will become habitable. * New varieties of animals move north * Reduction of fuel bills * Fewer Iowan Sunbirds leaving the state. And will increase attendance of this class. * Our landscaping and gardens will have a greater selection of tasteful and flowering trees and shrubs Just simply more comfortable weather in Iowa -- with greater life pleasures at lower cost. Can we personally just appreciate the better weather?