Global Warming, Get Used To It

All the dire warnings about global warming may not be so bad after all. What if a climate change means things get better. “For as long as mankind has populated the earth most of the habitable landmasses with climates favorable to our species have been situated in a narrow belt centered around the equator.” anthropologist Gus Fring, (no relation to the character in the Breaking Bad tv show) says. “We inhabit and prosper in what are known as the temperate zones. Too close to the equator it becomes hot and dry, bad conditions for a species whose makeup is 90% water. Too far north or south and it’s too cold for our species for about the same reason, we freeze.” Fring adds. “It is likely that all the gloom and doom forecasts have got it wrong. Yes, the areas we inhabit will become more intolerable to us, low lying areas will flood, dry areas will become drier, weather patterns will change but some areas will benefit from these global alterations.” He continues. “Think of the Russian steppes, Siberia for example. Located in the high northern latitudes its landscape and resources would be similar to America’s Montana and North Dakota if situated a few degrees more south. Or, at the extreme, Antaritica, which is so cold it had no resident population of humans until scientists and researchers braved the conditions in state-of-the-art dwellings. With the changes that are currently predicted, areas of the Antarctic  could become as livable as New Zealand, which isn’t that far away.”

Fring, an anthropologist specializing in human adaptation at the University of Washington in Seattle, notes that as the earths most adaptable species it may be wrong to look at climate change as a bad thing, better to think of it as just another challenge to mankind. “People are either optimists or pessimists in about equal numbers.” He says. “Maybe we should stop fighting it and just go with the flow.”