Doomsday Politics 2018

Doomsday Politics February 2018

We now have two doomsday arguments going on in the popular media.

Climate change, with its deceitful presentations from just about everyone, from all sides of the debate has now been joined by lurid stories of a change in planet Earth's magnetic polarity.

In the climate change sensational drama story, the earth is heating up, the ice caps will melt, and huge proportions of the world populations will drown or starve.

In the same sensationalist style, a shift in the magnetic force, that emanates from the core of our planet, will not only change polarity but will weaken to such an extent that harmful radiation from the sun will cause a world wide permanent failure of electrical supply and electronic communications, over the whole of Gaia, this to be followed by mass cancer related deaths, triggered by the radiation. The claim is that between these two deadly harmful effects there will be colossal numbers of human and animal deaths.

So do we all give up now and commit suicide? Or do we seek more rational and less sensation seeking suppliers of information? In both cases the fact is we do not have any certainty about what the situation will be in one hundred years time, let alone the thousand it will take for everything to become clear and settled. By certainty I mean without any doubt, clearly established as inevitable without any rational contradiction.

Climate change is part of life; the climate has always been changing, from long before humans evolved and probably will continue to change until, in a few million years time, the sun enlarges and burns earth to nothing. Human activity probably increases the rate of change, but not by a very large amount. One large episode of volcanic activity can produce as much climate change, in a short period, as all of human activity does in the same time. Climate change is inevitable. No tax increase is ever going to stop it. Governments around the world have to start focusing on trying to obtain accurate predictions, factoring in the known cycles of volcano activity, the history of changes to the main air streams, those called jet streams, and the ocean currents. Start making plans for how to cope, including serious consideration to lowering the population. But first they and we need facts, not adjusted figures, not hockey-stick graphs, faked up to pretend to be evidence when it was speculation.

The effect of changes to the Earth's magnetic field is still speculation. Although science has evidence that indicates it has reversed polarity in the ancient past, the same science suggests that the present North-South pole positions have remained stable for almost twice as long as previous situations. We do not know why. Since the last change was before humans had any record keeping mechanisms, we have no actual knowledge of the effect the change had. Everything is speculation and estimates. These range from negligible effect that no one will even notice, to mass destruction of civilisation as we know it. Even the time scale is unknown.

As always in human collective reaction to events, there will be opportunist politicians and religious leaders who will seek to provide themselves with power and wealth by exploitation of the uncertainty.

There is very little we can be certain about. The only certain fact is that both of these global changes will take place, whatever laws are made to prevent them.

If, and this is also unknown, the magnetic field of our home planet weakens, then the risk of greater levels of solar radiation increases and this radiation may affect the rate of change in the climate. The only other real certainties are that the media will try to sell more papers and air time, by sensationalising the possibilities and that governments will use this as an excuse to raise tax and reduce personal freedoms.

The United Nations should get its act together; forget all the political posturing, forget all the celebrity “ambassadors” for this cause or that cause. The UN should get together all the best scientists and ensure they seek truth, not justify any political position but work independently of all governments. They should seek to establish the best possible predictive science. Then use this to firstly establish the range of possibilities then the range of probabilities. Then they can offer clear guidance as to these probabilities. The leaders of the world populations will then have to offer the people choices of what to do.

When selecting these scientists, it is no good including any of those who so vehemently adhere to “climate change is caused by human activity” or any of those who deny climate change ever happens.

This has to be a search for truth with no preset policy or dependency on funding from those with their own agendas. No commercial input, no defence input, no political manipulation. Honest science is needed. This is one area where artificial intelligence may be a great benefit, but as always, the setting of parameters and data gathering structures must not be left to any one faction or belief system.

This is what should happen. Anyone care to bet the lives of their great great grandchildren on it actually being done?