Moderating the Golden Mean

The year 2013, set to wrap up shortly, has left an indelible impression that Global Warming is not an imminent concern. Climate Change may be another thing altogether, since it seems as though, to us poor cowering human creatures of nature, that each time a storm of one kind or another occurs, it seems far more violent than all those that have taken place in dim memory. More frequent and more powerful earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires and flooding.

Yet looking back in documented history of such natural events, they have always been with us, always extracted their share of human misery and environmental change, and humans have always been involved in degradation of our environment. Cyclic alterations in weather and atmospheric conditions influenced in large part by our sun; growth cycles and other indices of natural change are a well-enough known phenomena to science.

Yet much of all of this has been ascribed to the penchant of humans to abuse the bounty of nature, to so upset the balance through our flagrant misuse of natural resources that we have insulted and assaulted nature and her bounty once too often. Modern-day prophets were thundering their anger with accusations of anthropogenic atrocities leading to an inevitable apocalypse with the total collapse of benign nature resulting in a backlash that would threaten the survival of all living species on our globe.

Polar bears, those beautiful, wild and powerful creatures of huge physical power and imaginative appeal, were barely managing to breed and feed in the face of a shrinking ice presence on the polar seas. Photographs of those noble beasts became an easily identifiable icon of the natural world disrupted by the ceaseless misuse of nature's resources by a disrespectful human population the world over. Of late, aboriginal peoples, Inuit of the Far North, have reported an abundance of polar bears.

And how could this be in a warming atmosphere slowly destroying their habitat? Perhaps in the news out of Antarctica that the sea ice has established record growth, extending over a greater area than any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first came into use. As for the Arctic, the melting of the entire polar ice cap prophesied by Al Gore five years ago, has fizzled. Into a reality that has seen a 50% increase over 2012, in a succession of sea-ice growth year after year.

U.S. weather stations have reported over two thousand record cold and snow days. And so far this year nearly 60% of the U.S. was covered in snow, at a rate doubling last year's snow events.  Canada has been experiencing similar snow events. Snow has descended in astonishing volumes across the Middle East with Egypt covered in snow for the first time in a century. Jerusalem was covered by between sixteen inches and three feet of snow.

Global warming, it appears, has come to a halt. Not a sudden, thudding halt, but a gradual one, over the past 17 years. Scientific predictions are now of global cooling. Businesses that took advantage of the threats issued by global warming resulting from the burning of fossil fuels causing carbon dioxide emissions overloading the atmosphere leading to the steady warming that would threaten us all are now themselves being threatened by extinction.

European and North American producers of solar panels and wind turbines are filing for bankruptcies, after laying off their worker forces. China's Suntech, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world, has also filed for bankruptcy. As has China's largest manufacturers of wind turbines; Sinovel is in the process of closing its production plants in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

The once-reviled coal, despised as the dirtiest source of energy production, sending clouds of particulate effluent and carbon into the atmosphere is returning to its dominant role as an energy provider, particularly in developing economies. But the next-generation fuels, shale gas and shale oil, with their fracking extraction methods that have sent environmentalists into spasms of gloom and furious accusation are rising in prevalence and providence into a new energy era.

The Kyoto Protocol has now been abandoned by energy-producing countries, leaving it to cover a mere 15% of global emissions. Australia has elected a new government that promptly scrapped carbon tax and discharged into oblivion its climate change ministry as well. The public, relieved from the weight of the scenarios described by climate change advocates, has abandoned its previous concerns.

Another hellish prediction of the Earth, failing nicely out of the way. A word to the wise everywhere might remind that energy and resource extraction and conservation on the other hand, is a prudent course reflective of common sense. Nothing is limitless, not the means to achieve an end, and nor should our limitless desire to achieve new ends be without restraint. That ages-old prescription of moderation in all things is never misplaced.