More Detroiters to Die...in the Future.

Detroit will face an dramatic spike in heat related deaths by the end of this century. You know, this century, the one which has well over 80 years left in it. But oh yes, it will happen. Thus speaketh the Natural Resources Defense Council, and environmental watchdog group.

Of course, it's all based on computer simulations, and the presumption that global warming will continue unchecked for all of those eighty some years. That by itself should be a clue that we are talking about bad science, be real science and real scientists generally doesn't like to make sweeping predictions about the future, particularly the far future. You see, science lives in a combination of the past and the present, in things we know or can reasonably expect based on actual observation. It is not upon the projected results of whatever data we feed into a computer.

Bad science likes global warming. It likes the idea of promulgating scare stories because scare stories bring attention to it. Then we can have centers such as the NRDC, who, of course, in their position as self appointed guardians of nature and all things environmental, can tell us that more of our great grandchildren will die many years from now if we don't do something NOW. Yet a cursory glance at the NRDC website shows what it cares about: global warming, saving the oceans and endangered species, nuclear nonproliferation, clean energy, and of course the old bugbear, recycling. In short, if it's a leftist cause, they're in it up to their necks.

To be fair, their mission statement sounds good: To safeguard the Earth: its people, its plants and animals and the natural systems on which all life depends. But we nonetheless aren't comfortable with anything which puts Earth first. To be sure, we cannot survive without it. But the Earth is here for people, and not for its own sake or the sake of other life forms. People first, Earth second, that's our mantra.

As such, we are skeptical that the aims of the NRDC are really for the people, even when they issue warnings ostensibly for the people such as warnings of futuristic calamity. Too much of what they are in favor of or against (recycling, which is simply much ado about rubbish, which they favor; urban sprawl, which simply takes property rights away from owners, which they oppose) are in fact anti-people. Add in the fact that it is far too easy to warn of a disaster generations away (if it ever occurs at all) and far after they could be held accountable for any errors they might make (and costs they might incur on future generations) and we are quite comfortable mocking their fears. We believe in humanity enough that we believe it will overcome the heat of the coming years if it in fact comes, and will work things all the better if the temperatures in fact, as we believe, do not rise quite so fantastically or even gradually.

The future, if left to itself, will work itself out. That's a true belief in the person and humanity. All else environmentally is Chicken Little demagoguery.