Merkel: stating the obvious
Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, is visiting our fair land. Ever observant, she reportedly spouted some politically-correct non-sequiturs at a climate change research centre:
Climate change is already happening in South Africa, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday during a visit to a biodiversity centre in Cape Town.
Uhm, yeah, duh! Climate changes. Deal with it. It always has, it always will; saying that “it’s happening” is as dumb as expressing surprise that the sun rises in the morning. In fact, it’s probably because the sun rises in the morning.
“You can see that climate change is already a reality here,” said Merkel, as she visited Biota Africa, a centre where German and South African scientists conduct research on African climate change.
Fancy that: a politician visits a government-funded facility and says the work they do is really important.
“Climate change is more obvious in South Africa than in Germany,” she said.
Huh? It is? How? Why? Last time I checked, northern hemisphere temperatures had in fact risen more than those in the southern hemisphere. Granted, Germans spend a lot more time indoors, because their climate sucks, so perhaps they’re not used to noticing the obvious.
“If the temperature rises seven degrees in South Africa, then it is too late,” said Merkel, on her third day of her South African visit.
Seven degrees? That’s the extreme upper bound of the wild guess the IPCC made, based on inaccurate extrapolation from preconceived notions using incomplete data in inadequate computer models. If temperature rises seven degrees in South Africa it won’t be “too late”, it’ll be 2100. If temperatures really do rise for the next 93 years, we’ll likely have done a little work about how to handle them. Imagine the futuristic possibilities of irrigation, shade netting, flood barriers and outdoor multi-zone climate control. Imagine the benefits of longer growing seasons, and shorter winters heated by less dirty wood, coal and paraffin. Just imagine. Postulate anything, to make any nonsensical point you like. After all, we’re engaging in fiction here.
