How come it's alway stupid people that call others stupid? Anyway, read the following smarty pants...
Actually, as Cox makes clear at the end of the book, the fact that the most dramatic changes happened so long ago turns out to be intriguing in its own right. Even with the recent global warming, the climate of the past 8,000 years -- the entire history of human civilization -- has been strangely stable compared with the preceding 240,000 years.
Climatewise, we're in a prolonged, precarious lull -- a lull that may well be shattered by the greenhouse gases we're spewing into the atmosphere. In the final pages, Cox connects the dots between human-induced global warming and the likelihood of another lurch into abrupt climate change.
When confronted with the recent warming that already has altered life on Earth, our current political leaders shrug, obfuscate or write it off as natural variation. "Prove that we're responsible," they demand. But as Cox notes in his conclusion, if and when the switch gets thrown on our climate again -- and there are "ominous signs" that abrupt change may already be underway -- it won't matter a whit who or what caused it.
fredbortz.com |
