"What if the secret behind civilization is that we've had really good weather?" So writes Eugene Linden in his new book "The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations." In a
long article at CNN Money, he paints a picture of how dependent our civilization is on the weather - and how things just might go out of wack in a big hurry. More below....
What if the secret behind civilization is that we've had really good weather? Humankind has prospered and multiplied during one of the most benign climate eras in the history of the planet. And the past two centuries -- which witnessed the great expansion of the Industrial Revolution, a sixfold increase in human population, the triumph of the consumer society, and the rise of the integrated global economy -- have been particularly stable. One would have to go back 115,000 years to find a time as tranquil and warm as the present.
Oh, fortunate ones, have you made good use of your fortune - or have you squandered it? What will you do if your fortunes change?
The consensus on climate change has solidified to rival the medical consensus on the dangers of smoking--but in the matter of climate, public perception has yet to catch up. Like the tourists on Phuket beaches who stood and gazed at an oncoming tsunami because it was outside their experience, society is reacting to the coming wave of climate change without urgency.
The transition from, say, warm to cold is far more abrupt--taking decades, not centuries--and far more chaotic than previously supposed. Scientists now compare such transitions to the flickering of a flame or a fluorescent bulb--where the "flickers" may be quite violent, marked by fluctuations in temperatures of more than 18 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few years, as well as extreme variation in wind speeds and precipitation.
There's lots more - check it out at
Cloudy With a Chance of Chaos or visit Eugene Linden's web site at
http://eugenelinden.com.