I'll never forget being the co-organizer of a statewide conference on the topic about 25 years ago. I invited experts from BU, Harvard and MIT as keynote speakers. One of the presenters showed aerials depicting present conditions of Boston versus projected flood conditions for the year 2020 after accounting for sea level rise. Based on his projections, some 40% of present day Boston was to become submerged. His clarion call was for the state to raise roads under the guise of "sustainability." Sea walls would also, of course, be necessary. His conclusion was that we might already be too late.
In the intervening years, seas have risen about 8 centimeters and the entirety of his projections have been proven wrong. One of his colleagues who was a panelist on the IPCC corroborated his projections. We all left the conference feeling doomed. We were largely convinced that we were mere decades from seeing coastal cities washed away, heat killing thousands and exotic diseases attacking New Englanders.
About the same time I began an intensive research project into geologic conditions 10,000 years ago, 20,000, 100,000 and farther. I quickly realized that climate has always changed, often dramatically. For instance, 20,000 years ago, the Atlantic was far, far higher than it is today. Present day Boston lay under 160 feet of water. 12,000 years ago the sea had fallen and my home was covered in ice that rose almost a mile high. 100,000 years ago, the Arctic had palm years and elephants. Yet today, there's panic imagining that temperatures might rise a few degrees. Clearly, it's time to glue ourselves to roads and throw soup at famous paintings.
And it's true that our leaders seem to have an agenda. That agenda has permeated schools and universities. And tragically, a significant percentage of children believe we are living in the end days. That's nonsense, of course. Life goes on.
