Ruins Might Get, uh, Ruined by Warming

Hilti Foundation/Reuters

How much more ridiculous can you get? According to the latest drivel out of Nairobi, climate change might change the geography around archaeological sites, and the answer is not to "lock things up in museums and zoos." Excuse me, but I thought that part of preserving a culture's heritage was allowing that culture to appreciate it. Are we simply to let these ruins lie in inaccessible places, take pictures, and only appreciate them in picture books and websites? What good are museums if we can't see these artifacts up close? Just having visitors to ancient sites "ruins" the place with foot traffic, pollution from taffic, and just plain old aging.

This is one of the lamest excuses for trying to prevent global warming, which we don't even know that we can do. According to a new study out of Canada, results confirm an earlier study that forests may not be the carbon sink that the carbon trading schemes depend on. The biomass, for sure, locks up carbon, but the ecological system "breathes" carbon dioxide and methane, making forests carbon-neutral, and not a way to "soak up" excess carbon. That's why all this talk of what we can do to "save the planet" is so annoying, because we don't even know if what we propose will hurt the planet more. We don't even know if industrial emissions are really the cause of the climate change, or if it's because we're finally noticing the effects of coming out of "The Little Ice Age." Let's not muck up the planet by trying to save it.

(h/t to the bro, and Tim Blair)