It's getting hot in here

2 hours ago

As I mentioned in a few of my posts over the last couple of weeks, I recently got onboarded to a platform called Prolific. It's a US only thing where businesses and universities post studies for people to participate in. After you complete the study, you get a specific amount of money for participating. That's not really what this post is about though.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed more and more studies related to climate change on the Prolific site. While some people might be instantly triggered by something like that, I don't really mind too much. You see, I am one of the woke sheep who think that climate change is indeed real. I honestly guess we shouldn't be surprised that something as obvious as keeping our planet healthy has been so politicized. Whenever there is money involved, you better believe there is going to be some effort to control it.

One of the big arguments I have heard against climate change is that the whole thing is cyclical. I guess I should take a step back first. I think there isn't as much debate about climate change in general as there is about how much impact humans have on said climate change. It's highly likely that one side of the political spectrum does believe climate change exists, but they don't feel that humans are the exacerbating factor in it as some would believe.

Personally, while I do agree that climate changes across the planet over the eons are likely a bit cyclical, I can't overlook the fact that humans are introducing a lot of additional factors which never existed before. Take for example the wildfires that seem to be so common across the globe these days. I have little doubt fires like that have been happening for centuries if not longer. Lightning strikes a tree in a forest and then next thing you know the countryside is on fire.

The key difference is the stuff that falls in the path of said fire. Before humans were so conspicuous, these things would do their work and then fizzle out for one reason or another. As I said though, humans have this keen desire to build things and those things we build, only cause more issues.

Have you ever seen a couch catch fire? Living in the country, I have been to my fair share of bonfires where just about anything has been thrown on the pile. I remember when I moved out of my old house and in with @mrsbozz, we took the couch from that old house to my buddies to burn. It's downright scary how fast that thing went up. I mean terrifying. It was engulfed in some of the hottest heat I have ever felt. Now imagine a whole community of houses full of couches and other highly flammable furniture.

It's a bit easy to see how it becomes so hard for them to control these blazes.

Sadly, it's likely only going to get worse and worse. The problem with greener technologies as I see it is two-fold. First, the whole idea of renewable energy has become so political that people reject it simply because of how they vote each election. In addition to that, I think it has been oversold. It's not that I don't think solar power has its uses, but I think the carbon footprint likely isn't as "clean" as they might lead you to believe.

In addition to that, I can't necessarily support razing green spaces to put up a massive solar field. Is that really better? Definitely better than a coal plant, but on some level it feels like we are destroying green spaces so we can protect the green spaces? Doesn't really make sense does it?

I think the other thing that drives me crazy about all of this is the fact that we know it's coming. People have written countless books about a dead planet because humans used up all the resources. People think that's just fiction, it could never happen, yet how many times have we seen fiction become reality over the past centuries. The Simpsons writers probably hold the record for the most ridiculous stuff they have predicted.

I recently read a book where every 2050 years or so a planet is basically wiped clean and the few people who are left over are tasked with rebuilding from scratch. In said book it had taken them at least 7 cycles to realize this was even happening and try to better prepare for it. It would be a great way to control the population and protect the planet though right? I guess you'd just have to hope you and your family landed somewhere in the late middle versus the beginning or the end right?

We are supposed to hit a heat index of 100 degrees today in the northern US and we are barely even into June. In addition to that, a few tornadoes hit less than five miles from our house yesterday. It's hard for this topic not to be top of mind when you are watching it happen in real time.

Hard for some of us I guess, the rest want to spend their time arguing if it is even real or not.