Stories like this one don’t help the cause of making people believe we should become hysterical about global warming. Apparently a part of Peru is growing ever colder, threatening the people who live there. The cause? Global warming! Aaugh! From the story:
The few hundred people who live here are hardened to poverty and months of sub-zero temperatures during the long winter. But, for the fourth year running, the cold came early. First their animals and now their children are dying and in such escalating numbers that many fear that life in the village may be rapidly approaching an end.
In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.
But see, the world isn’t growing ever hotter. There has been a pause in the previous warming trend for the last decade or more. Indeed, stories such as this support the hypothesis that warming and colding are primarily driven by the activity of the sun, which impacts the currents, and we are in a time of low solar activity—which may explain the arctic snap we are experiencing in the Northern Hemisphere. In any event, climate is very complex, and warming hysterics only give themselves black eyes when they try to convince us that every difficult weather condition—hot and cold—is caused by man-caused global warming.
The article also tries to panic the herd by focusing on the serious health problems the children of the village experience from the cold, a real problem for the people, no question, and opines that the failure (thankfully) of Copenhagen will cause more poor children to die. Actually, I think it is the reverse. The failure of Copenhagen—long may it continue—may allow destitute countries the latitude to develop their economies. Increasing prosperity is the best way to help the poor children of the world.
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