17A038 Warm Weather by Jim Davies, 10/31/2017    

It's been a delightful October, as all living in the North and East are well aware; daytime temps in the 60s and 70s, sometimes hitting even 80 degrees, and the Fall colors lasting the whole month, instead of just for the usual spectacular but brief blaze of the first or second week. If this is part of Global Warming, bring it on!

It's probably not, because variations of climate in a single region are no indication of what's happening the world over; nonetheless, it gives a foretaste of what might happen in the event that the GW alarmists happen to be correct. As they may, of course; the Earth's climate has always varied, and it would be amazing were it suddenly to stabilize. Whether it will cool down or heat up is much less easy to predict, as even some of the prophets of doom well know; half a century ago they were trying to scare us with tales of a new Ice Age.

The foretaste tells us that warmth will spread Northwards, making it more economic to farm in upper latitudes; good news for Canada and Russia, not so good for Central America. Since there is an abundance of land in those Northerly countries, presently difficult to farm, that may well mean there will be a significant net increase in food production, good news for a hungry world. It would in any case cause a shift of useful, natural resources and mankind will have to adapt to them. The key question will then be, what is the most efficient social system for that adaptation.

The oceans will presumably also rise a few inches, and that will mean that government levees won't work any longer and will need to be rebuilt or, where foundations permit, extended. Taking past performance into account, it's to be hoped that the work is not undertaken by government, if any. Beachfront and other properties now built along the high-water line will need to be moved or protected. Plenty of work to be done, though it will be spread over five or ten decades. All assuming, again, that the future is one of GW and not of GC. In the latter case, the opposites will apply.

The arrogance of the well-funded GW predictors is incredible. John Coleman, who co-founded weather.com, has very credibly pointed out that it's extremely hard to predict as little as one week ahead, though his company has done pretty well in the business of providing heads-ups of what will likely happen tomorrow and the day after. That "climate scientists" who mostly draw their salaries from funds taken from taxpayers at gunpoint (rather than from paying customers free to buy elsewhere) can keep a straight face and say what the weather will be like not just weeks ahead but years and decades, simply beggars the imagination.

Worse yet is the myth that (should GW happen to be a correct forecast) it is being caused by human action (hence Anthropogenic Global Warming or AGW.) As John Stossel put it well in 2006 in his Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity, "If our fossil-fuel burning is responsible for the warming [of 0.6 degrees C during the 20th century]... why wasn't there much more warming in the second half [of it, for] we burned much more fuel during that time?" But such questions don't slow down the march of the AGW warriors; they are out to induce guilt, and reason is, to them, no obstacle.

Guilt, and then the surrender of even more power to government; for that's what the campaign is really all about. Funds are confiscated from productive people and handed to "Climate Scientists" on condition that they unitedly build the case for the AGW myth, thus to induce us to beg government for a solution; and they will say without batting an eye that the problem is so huge that only government can fix it. The PC answer to the question above, about the most efficient social system to handle man's adaptation, will be collectivized force. It always is.

In reality there is no rational alternative to a free market, for nothing is so nimble; the ability to respond rapidly to stimuli and newly-discovered conditions is essential in this as in every other field. If the ocean measurably rises, prices at the beachfront will fall and so signal a need to cut losses or to add surge protections. If temperatures in Siberia sustain a rise, so will land prices signal an opportunity to create a farm where none existed before. And so on; whatever the adjustment needed, price changes will give the signal and action will be taken at once, and at the least cost possible given competing bids. That's the way the market works. No planning boards, no committees, no begging for funds, no bribery or corruption, no delay.

No migration controls and borders, either, will impede any freely-chosen relocation by individuals and families seeking to escape conditions that are becoming adverse and find opportunities where they have opened up. How absurd, that if indeed some major climatic change should affect the whole of mankind, some silly, bigoted government rules should stand in the way of voluntary gradual movement.

Happily, provided ZGB readers keep actively mentoring friends through the Freedom Academy, by the time those signals are sounded, if they ever are, the matter will be settled; there will be no government to interfere with those efficient market operations. Climate change - if it happens, and in whatever direction - will be taken in our stride.