Late for a party? Miss a meeting? Forget to pay your rent? Blame climate change; everyone else is doing it. From an increase in severe acne to all societal collapses since the beginning of time, just about everything gone wrong in the world today can be attributed to climate change. Here’s a list of 100 storylines blaming climate change as the problem.
*1. The deaths of Aspen trees in the West
*2. Incredible shrinking sheep
*3. Caribbean coral deaths
*4. Eskimos forced to leave their village
*5. Disappearing lake in Chile
*6. Early heat wave in Vietnam
*7. Malaria and water-borne diseases in Africa
*8. Invasion of jellyfish in the Mediterranean
*9. Break in the Arctic Ice Shelf
*10. Monsoons in India
*11. Birds laying their eggs early
*12. 160,000 deaths a year
*13. 315,000 deaths a year
*14. 300,000 deaths a year
*15. Decline in snowpack in the West
*16. Deaths of walruses in Alaska
*17. Hunger in Nepal
*18. The appearance of oxygen-starved dead zones in the oceans
*19. Surge in fatal shark attacks
*20. Increasing number of typhoid cases in the Philippines
*21. Boy Scout tornado deaths
*22. Rise in asthma and hayfever
*23. Duller fall foliage in 2007
*24. Floods in Jakarta
*25. Radical ecological shift in the North Sea
*26. Snowfall in Baghdad
*27. Western tree deaths
*28. Diminishing desert resources
*29. Pine beetles
*30. Swedish beetles
*31. Severe acne
*32. Global conflict
*33. Crash of Air France 447
*34. Black Hawk Down incident
*35. Amphibians breeding earlier
*36. Flesh-eating disease
*37. Global cooling
*38. Bird strikes on US Airways 1549
*39. Beer tastes different
*40. Cougar attacks in Alberta
*41. Suicide of farmers in Australia
*42. Squirrels reproduce earlier
*43. Monkeys moving to Great Rift Valley in Kenya
*44. Confusion of migrating birds
*45. Bigger tuna fish
*46. Water shortages in Las Vegas
*47. Worldwide hunger
*48. Longer days
*49. Earth spinning faster
*50. Gender balance of crocodiles
*51. Skin cancer deaths in UK
*52. Increase in kidney stones in India
*53. Penguin chicks frozen by global warming
*54. Deaths of Minnesota moose
*55. Increased threat of HIV/AIDS in developing countries
*56. Increase of wasps in Alaska
*57. Killer stingrays off British coasts
*58. All societal collapses since the beginning of time
*59. Bigger spiders
*60. Increase in size of giant squid
*61. Increase of orchids in UK
*62. Collapse of gingerbread houses in Sweden
*63. Cow infertility
*64. Conflict in Darfur
*65. Bluetongue outbreak in UK cows
*66. Worldwide wars
*67. Insomnia of children worried about global warming
*68. Anxiety problems for people worried about climate change
*69. Migration of cockroaches
*70. Taller mountains due to melting glaciers
*71. Drowning of four polar bears
*72. UFO sightings in the UK
*73. Hurricane Katrina
*74. Greener mountains in Sweden
*75. Decreased maple in maple trees
*76. Cold wave in India
*77. Worse traffic in LA because immigrants moving north
*78. Increase in heart attacks and strokes
*79. Rise in insurance premiums
*80. Invasion of European species of earthworm in UK
*81. Cold spells in Australia
*82. Increase in crime
*83. Boiling oceans
*84. Grizzly deaths
*85. Dengue fever
*86. Lack of monsoons
*87. Caterpillars devouring 45 towns in Liberia
*88. Acid rain recovery
*89. Global wheat shortage; food price hikes
*90. Extinction of 13 species in Bangladesh
*91. Changes in swan migration patterns in Siberia
*92. The early arrival of Turkey’s endangered caretta carettas
*93. Radical North Sea shift
*94. Heroin addiction
*95. Plant species climbing up mountains
*96. Deadly fires in Australia
*97. Droughts in Australia
*98. The demise of California’s agriculture by the end of the century
*99. Tsunami in South East Asia
*100. Fashion victim: the death of the winter wardrobe
And the list goes on. The truth is climate change is causing some of these events, but the earth’s average temperature has been increasing and decreasing since the beginning of time. Maybe the increase in UFO sightings can’t be pinpointed to climate change but certainly animals will adapt to new habitats as the climate changes. But climate change and adaptation to it is nothing new. There’s an underlying assumption that human activity is causing the climate to change in many of these stories, but the scientific consensus on what causes climate change is anything but a consensus. Temperatures have risen and fallen many times before and the earth was cooling as recently as the period from the 1940s to the 1970s giving rise to fears of a coming ice age:
“At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”
The other implication of this list is that a reduction in Co2 with cap and trade policies like Waxman-Markey and Boxer-Kerry will cure problems as disparate as hurricanes, wars, crime, hunger and